One thread which will always live rent free in my head was one I read about the crossbows in Pathfinder 1 and a prestige class associated with it. Specifically how Crossbows had no utility besides a backup weapon for a Wizard and why the whole prestige class for martials to specialize in it was just a trap that did nothing but lock the player into an intentionally underpowered playstyle. A dev came in and explained that it was physically impossible for a human to multiattack with a crossbow or shoot "Harder", thus they didn't give it any ability to attack more than once per turn or scale damage with stats. He posted a video of a sharpshooter doing rapid fire target shots and stated that, if this was what a specialist with optimal equipment capped out at, letting martials accomplish better with a crossbow would be ludicrous. Someone replied "Alright. What UA-cam video did you use to decide the upper limits of a Wish spell?" For some reason, that guy never got a reply.
This is going to sound silly, but I have a theory on why martial classes suck. It is literally just the nerds versus the jocks situation but in tabletop form.
I have to give this to the developer. Magic is allowed to bend or shape reality because it's... well... magic. A mundane (nonmagical) act cannot bend or shape reality. It's the sad truth. In the early DnD novels, the spellcasters of each group were the undisputed most powerful members.
@thewonderfullymadejaraid7015 all I hear is a whole lotta yap why give illusion of choice if you won't let me choose how I want to play if you wanted me to play magic class make the only classes magical don't pretend like I could be some arbiter of justice using my bare hands if all I get is a sub Optimal character. It's fantasy isn't it so if you can be merlin I should be able to be belwoulf or Hercules or kratos or asura any guy who can solve problems with strength and will sometimes with a little cunning, The point of a game is fun I Want fun
@@kringle7804 I'm not against against martials becoming superhuman. I'm against them being able to alter the physics of the world around them. Homelander is supremely superhuman, but he is still bound by the pyshics of the world around him. He can't pick up a plane in the comical Superman style because the pinpoint pressure would cause him to just go straight through the plane. It doesn't matter how superhuman a fighter is, he still can't alter the constants of the physical world around him. It doesn't matter how supreme his ability is, he can't force a mundane crossbow past its inherent physical limitations. Please be more respectful to people who have different opinions from yours.
@@thewonderfullymadejaraid7015 let's take a step back if we look at the og commet the devs took a video of a professional firing a crossbow the issue with that is the only reason it takes so long to fire is the poundage of the crossbow eventually if your strong enough you could fire almost rapidly if need be, So due to the fictional setting crossbows should be able to fire more then once depending on strength and they should be able to hit harder depending on poundage of said crossbow
"You just want to give martials anime powers" "YES THAT IS MY ENTIRE POINT MUNDANE PEOPLE ARENT DOING THE THINGS ADVENTURERS DO" respect+ for the honesty mate
well you know. step one wati till almost midnight, intensify polymorph castng until permanent, rinse and repeat. one hundred permanent polymorph stacks later. Oh cool, you got vaporize, but wait your polymorph is gone. uh oh, you are at full health. you can't even get nocked out, as you go to next plymorph when incapacitated. What's that, got paralized, oh where did the poison go/ Oh right, wherever the polymorph went.
100% it needs to be like full metal alchemist basically where the magic and martial arts can actually stack against one another, avatar is another good example.
Some people want that "just good at sword" fantasy. If you want more fwoosh in your swing there is always multiclassing. (I do agree that martial are underwhelming if you don't optimize the heck out of them and that's especially bad for new players)
@@brawlyaura5799 Nah. 4e had a TON of other problems that had nothing to do with class design. 4e was the first time WoTC tried to get rid of the OGL, and its why what they tried to pull earlier this year was so utterly moronic. Paizo's Pathfinder getting a chance to get a foot in the door was entirely due to this flub, and a bit more than 10 years later, they made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE all over again! This is what happens when you change out the C-Suite and don;t bother to hire people who have a clue. It also doesn't help that 5e essentially got rid of Feats, at least as they existed in 3.0 and 3.5. They could at least close the gap a little bit. 3.5 actually did precisely what's been suggested and created the Book of Nine Swords. A lot of people complained about it, but it really was the correct answer, mostly because the complainers had no real clue what they were talking about!
This, this, this, a thousand times this! Simply presenting some more "out there" physical abilities under a tag different from "supernatural" (which has come to mean "magical in origin because of said bias), it'd be easier to digest for the pearl clutching sort, making everyone happy. I agree on the monks, but that should be a choice of the player (offering both supernatural and extraordinary or "mythical" options)
STRIKE Touch • Baseline Rank (Might) or (Martial Arts) • 1 Hero Point per rank You have some kind of damaging close combat attack like claws, energized fists, or a unique melee weapon. You can use this Power to both perform and defend yourself against close combat attacks. You must specify the kind of damage inflicted when you buy this Power (unless you apply the Weapons Con (discussed below). Occasionally, a more descriptive term may be used when the Power inflicts physical damage. For example, Strike (Bite) or Strike (Claws) may be used in place of Strike (Physical). This is purely for flavor and has no mechanical effect.
Why do people say martials should *have* to play by immersive low fantasy rules if casters don't? In a lot of low-fantasy magic is definitely powerful, but tends to have a lot of very exacting rules, restrictions, and drawbacks to it to make that power feel earned in the first place.
There’s already somatic, verbal, and material requirements to spells, plus your spell slots and level and background. You could add more material requirements or something, or reduce spell slots, but that could quickly make martials better if you only get to cast a couple times and they can bonk every turn
@@muscularclassrepresentativ5663 For me, the main oddity was that spells have the same speed as melee attacks. That is, one move lasts 6 seconds. And all a fighter can do is one blow with a sword. Professionals can do 6 kicks in 6 seconds. If they really want realism, then let the warriors have a realistic number of hits.
I mean the reasons why they did that is to avoid mage player getting bored during combat, if their spells needed two turn to be cast it means they only play every 2 turn order , if a turn order last 20 minute they basically play once every 40 minute, while martial would play twice within the same time frame. One think that could be done is adding more gameplay to casting a spell, like maybe you need to generate a temporary ressources, or reach a requirement to cast a spell, this pretty common in board game and card game, that way casting a spell is still a multiturn adventure, but you play every turn order. But trying to homebrew this on DnD, mean doing a complete rework of casters in general. @@СинийЕгипетскийКот
@@tijn0770 @Tijn 07 OK I'll take the bait. At level 2 a wizard will have 16 dex and 16 int with point buy, and a leather armor. They have 14 AC. Twice per day (so 2 encounters out of the 6 to 8 recommended in the dmg) they can use their bladesong, so I'll take the 3 bonus to AC it gives and average it out to 1 AC for the whole day. (if i'm being generous) Three times per day they can cast shield (I won't judge the person that choses to do that, but I definitely believe that it's extremely inneficient at this level) which gives us an uptime of 1/8 if you consider 6 fights that last 4 turns. So shield ups your average AC in a day at that level by 5/8=0.625 With bladesong and shield I get to 14+1+0.625=15.625 AC average on a full day. Your initial statement was "you can't hit a lvl2 bladesinger". I just showed that except for three rounds per day, they definitely don't do what you claimed.
A good why to explain this system. All of the Casters gain the ability to channel their innate magic in some way, so because Martials can't channel their energy outwards, it begins stockpiling within the character and gain supernatural feats. Totally agree this would help.
One fix I made is that there's a list of feats martial characters are able to obtain when they get an ASI, in addition to the normal ASI or feat. Some may say it's unfair, but when your party members can kill an army by pelvic thrusting it's fine if the guy who fights good can fight a little better
@@sev1120 I had a completely different idea in mind. Essentially a spell system for Martial classes that allows them to do normally impossible tricks. The idea is that whatever Magic exists can be channeled through spells OR through Martial Technique, though both are somewhat mutually exclusive, so the Martial system and Caster system can not exchange slots. For example, the Rouge and Monk might get "Blink Movement" which would allow them to use a bonus action(in combat) to move without being spotted, think like a ninja moving so fast they just blur pass, or even just appear elsewhere. While a Fighter might gain the ability to just autopass a saving throw for spells once per long rest. If you want an idea, it would basically be just looking up what characters like Batman, Captain America, or any other 'powerless' hero or villain achieve. Then using that as a baseline for the system.
The French webseries "Noob" has a nifty explanation in their fictional MMO's lore. Basically, people naturally have cells that receive and store mana (mana is only generated by the gods of the setting, people don't have inner/natural mana). And they works exactly like classic muscle cells. So a warrior for exemple is spending his time training and hitting things have his physical, brawny muscles developping more and more, but at the same time his magical cells are are atrophied and weakened by lack of use. A wizard on the other had will train in tapping into as much mana as possible, mastering how to use it more effectively, etc. And as a result his magical cells are multiplying in number and quality, while his mundane muscles get weaker. A hybrid like a paladin will balance his training in martial and magic, but because he tries to catch two rabbits at once and can't train as much into one or the other like the wizard or warrior. He is physically stronger than the wizard but have less mana and spell power, and vice versa for the warrior. But just like a wizard still have some muscles despite not using them, even the most non-magical inclined fighter has some traces of magic in him, which open the door to some not quite mundane abilities for those classes, like, the barbarian rage is also powered by those little magic remnants, which explains some of the weird stuff like accelerated healing they have in that state.
I feel like the best way to handle the whole "mundane martials" issue is to take a page from mythology heroes, as you said. Beowulf isn't explicitly magical, but he is very much superhuman. He does stuff real people can't do because... idk he's strong. I feel like that kind of mythical hero who definitely is magical, but doesn't appear so, is the way to go here.
@@cirkleobserver3217 Just gonna say, Achilles being practically invincible except for his heel, and eventually dying of a poisoned arrow to said heel *reeks* of being a fighter with like, 47 AC or some BS but then finally an assassin rogue crits him on a surprise round.
@@cirkleobserver3217 There isn't one because their world view didn't need one. They knew that someone could be "as strong as five men" it was just kinda rare, so why not 25 it'd just be rarer. 100? well that must be incredibly rare. 1,000? A man worthy of legends but without a concept of a cap on human ability...WHY NOT? That's the core of mythic martials, there is no cap on how far mundane ability can go, just WHAT IT CAN DO. Your martial can't hurl fireballs (humans can't do that, so that's magic.), but he can 100% chuck mountains (humans can pick up heavy things, this is just capless).
@@incendiious Yes while they hit as hard as a dragon and have a lot of hp, now apply martial abilities to ANYWHERE else. Do your martials swim for three weeks while conserving their strength? Run on clouds? Shatter mountains? All of these are things martial characters do in mythology.
D&D just doesn't really work as a ruleset for a low magic setting. But if you want a low magic setting with D&D rules, your best bet is limiting the campaign to lvl 1-4.
@@KingPiccolOwned it happens quite commonly even in DnD lore lol all wizards get the wildmagic feature but only the negatives (slightly nerfed to help you survive) while wildmagic caster istelf leans into that chaos (high risk, but also the reward exists)
Make mages half casters, already half casters 1/3 casters, and get rid of subclasses that give spells (arcane trickster, etc). Basically slow magic progression.
I think it's so strange that martials have terrible stamina. Wizards get so many spells every level, fighters don't even get a second action surge until level 17. Imagine a wizard with one spell slot.
@@weaponizedpizza8825 I think a second action surge at late levels is fine, fighters can do plenty without a second action surge. I agree with some stuff in the vid, i do think martials need a serious buff, but i dont think a second action surge is really necessary later, and i say that as someone who plays a whit ton of fighter
I continue to say that the best and probably only way to improve ttrpg martials is to treat them exactly like spellcasters (via "stances" and "combat moves").
@@jackalltrades1293 In a way that difference might be simply the magic one of them have. Think of all the rarely used spells like jump, steel wind strike, expeditious retreat and so on. These things could have been developed to emulate what the high level martials could do without magic. Imagine playing a fighter and being able to run and jump better than a scrawny warlock who had to make a deal for their power and can somehow still keep pace with your years of training.
@@doxkowalski915 I can see stuff like that ya, so long as it doesn’t work exactly like spells do. So like making them passive abilities and whatnot. As long as martials, casters and half casters have a clear difference in their design philosophy I’m fine with it, and all for giving martials that good shit.
@@jackalltrades1293 And that already provides a worldbuilding concept and a basis for potential conflict between the two types. We have physically frail ordinary humans able to reshape reality, and superhumans who can tank a dragon bite and then bite back while leaping after the retreating beast.
And very often they build on half-caster foundations, like the Gloom Stalker Ranger, rather than non-caster classes. Standard optimization for a crossbow build (not necessarily the absolutely most minmaxed) is V-human (or custom lineage) Gloom Stalker 5/Assassin 3/Battlemaster 3 with Archery style, Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert. This is about as solid as you get as a martial dmg dealer without multiclassing into a dedicated spellcaster class and it *still* uses spellcasting as a Ranger.
@@TheTdroid what you said, and also let us look at the majority of the new, official subclasses published for martials... how many of them seem to have magic/magical-like abilities that they gain as a result of their subclass choice?
@@harmonlanager2670curious what the rest of your party is doing then If you have any full casters in your oarty, I can tell you they're playing their classes wrong, are just being very nice to you or you're very oblivious if you don't notice them overshadowing you
One of the most infuriating things about this entire debate is when older D&D players hear these points, chuckle and say something to the effect of "Well, that's just how crazy spellcasters can be when you know what your doing!" As if this is some kind of super secret hidden perk of knowing the game mechanics. Its the exact same smug shit eating energy you see in someone who wins RTS's by shamelessly spaming cheese builds and then laughs about it.
Yeah. I don't know why, but it seems that so-called veterans of D&D are allergic to actually balancing the game. They want wizards to be broken and overpowered compared to martials for some reason. Since we're freely allowed to multiclass, we're never going to get a balanced system, but we should at least be able to expect balance singleclass characters.
Might I suggest a homebrew creator named Laser Llama? They've made amazing alternatives to the martial classes that changes some small things, but also gives all martials a thing called "Exploit Dice". Basically it's Battle Maneuvers but base class, way more options, and each different martial class gets their own list to choose from, just like spells.
Also, casters get hirelings earlier, cheaper, and in greater number than anyone else because it's listed as one of those many options they can take. They're called 'animal companion', 'find familiar', 'animate dead', 'conjure woodland beings', etc.
Nah, if hirelings to you are 3 buddies that carry your torches you're doing it wrong. A fifth level wizard gets a tower and a fifth level fighter gets an army.
@@derljackson5365 MCDM Strongholds and Followers. The book is rather expensive but the basic idea is: Fighters: Keeps Casters: Towers Priests: Temples Thieves: Buisness and Spycraft. A wizard could build a keep, but the fighter will raise more soldiers faster, and be able to train them better. Besides, they'd rather refine, enhance and edit their spells in their tower. They'll get an alchemist or sage and thats good enough to keep them happy but when the mighty host comes barreling from the hinterlands they're gonna need soldiers to hold the field of battle and nobody does war better than warriors. Priests attend, worship, commune with and summon higher powers, wizards mangle the nature of matter to taste, but rogues bathe in silver and secrets, and barbarians gather their savage horde. Economic, political, and military power rival and even dwarf the mystical and divine. Full rules in the book, but once a fighter gets his keep, he also gets 3 units of soldiers. There are random tables for whether its infantry, archers, calvary, or more exotic fantasy stuff, how heavily armored they are, how much experience they have. Stuff like that. Its not so complicated but as long as you have rules for armies and big battles to use, and fighters are better at getting those armies, and sole wizards can't stop those armies(rules of warfare make casters obsolete at scale), fighters have a tangible mechanical advantage over casters in terms of politics. In certain campaigns and settings, a wealthy rogue running a thieves guild can be similarly powerful, but mileage can vary. Requires alot more work to make intrigue stronger than a fireball, as opposed to making a big army stronger than a fireball. Hope helps :)
A *boring* but *efficient* way to buff martials are to make "non-magical" weapon upgrades of standard weapons. Why do so many deal a mere piddly 1D8? A standard rapier is 1D8, but a Refined Rapier could be 2D8, and a Duelist's Rapier 3D8 per hit. Weapons could be moddable with equipment martials find, and none of them count as magic. If this was built into the 5E system, martials would be guaranteed to excel in dealing damage to single targets in a much more significant way, allowing at least the satisfaction of single-target alpha strikes to compensate for the lack of options. Then when you throw in legendary magical weapons on top of that, they would be powerful enough to compare with casting a mid-to-high level spell every turn without the awful, trash spell slot system.
There is a great homebrew book Valda's Spore of Secrets that adds a craftsman class along with a robust weapon upgrade system. You can use it to customize weapons in the world which would make having a Dwarven longsword a big deal because it can do x better than an ordinary one, and z worse than one forged from steel or something. Really recommend having a look.
I've recently been learning pf2e as I'm planning on making the switch from 5e. And one of the magic item enchantments you can get is striking enchantments, which do exactly what you described. They add damage dice
Now that is a cool idea!! I don't find that boring at all, especially if the players go on adventures for or craft such items themselves, or with a mentor!
@@brysonorosa632 Glad you like it. When I called it "boring," I meant that it effectively makes martials stronger without giving them any neat new options, and options definitely should also be part of the solution. But even just a raw damage buff by itself mitigates so much of the power disparity between casters and martials. Add some abilities on the weapons or build more abilities into the martial classes and then they're set.
I haven't played much of DnD 5e, or any ttrpg anyhow. But after looking through the books for 5e for a bit, I feel like the entire game design is stacked against the martials. 1) Multiattack doesn't stack. So if you try too multiclass, which you most likely are doing, you end up having dead levels because they don't stack. 2) The subclass features all conflict with your turns. Example: Rune Knight's runes all require either a bonus action, or a reaction. But then you can't use Giant's Might. Or you can use Giant's Might, but won't be able to use your runes. Or if you've multiclassed with Barbarian, you can't Rage when you use runes. Or you can't use Flurry of Blows if you've done it with Monk. Caster's don't have to worry about a bonus action or reaction because their actions are all streamlined and useable with any action. 3) Caster's main offensive stat ends up as an even better defensive stat. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves all have incredibly debilitating effects if you fail. And since any caster would have one of those stats maxed, they're less likely to be under those effects. But martials can't do that, or else they'll lose out on damage, hp, or utility. 4) And my biggest point, is this. Why is it, that for my martial character to be even a fraction as useful as a caster, I have to build them with a very specific build. What if my character isn't an archer, or doesn't utilize two handed weapons, or polearms. That means that for me to be able to do the one thing my class is supposed to do, I have to sacrifice creativity, customization, and my own choices to be able to do the thing I am even able to do. That point, of how martials have to sacrifice player expression and creativity, is to me why martials need to be changed. It goes against the whole point of DnD if I have to make that choice or fall behind.
Yeah. If you want a martial you can build in various different ways, you need to go half-caster for the spells and supernatural abilities. Not only are Pala and Ranger neck in neck with Fighters on the martial side all the way to lvl 10 just from their base class, but their subclasses and spellcasting lets them do so much more, includiing keeping up with Fighters dmg most of the time into higher lvl as well. If you look at the most versatile and powerful characters who are first and foremost martials, they're all half-casters. Gloom Stalker, Drake Warden, Oath of Ancients/Vengeance etc. And because they are half-casters, they often get outright supernatural features other martials don't. Aura of Protection is one of the best defensive passives in the game. Umbral Sight is amazing for being an assassin type character, offering great offensive and defensive benefits. Drake Wardens get a frikkin' dragon mount! And even with half-casters, if you want to avoid the hand crossbow / glaive choice, you have to multiclass for specific features. You want a dual wielder? Have fun with your Ranger 5->Rogue, because that's the version that kinda works, and even then you need the DM to give you badass weapons to keep up with a crossbow expert.
I’m not an optimizer at all and neither are my players. But watching this made me realize that in my the current game I’m running, my decision to let the fighter a retainer and the rogue a lycanthropic buff - which I’d initially planned to balance out by giving the casters little bonuses too - was actually an inadvertently mechanically wise move! I wonder if other DMs tend to unconsciously help their martials out.
@@fadeleaf845 YES! I hate how bad ice spells are! The fact that only fire and a handful of other spells are good SUCKS! You just can’t do anything truly flavorful without absolutely sabotaging your character!
I think how the anime Overlord handles martial/melee fighters is a perfect example of how to do it for dnd. Everyone can swing a sword or punch but certain classes have access to a wide moveset unique to that class, in addition to movesets universally shared by everyone who can stab stuff
A big point in that setting is that some of what 'Martial Arts' can do, there ARE no spells in the system to replicate. This on top of seemingly infinite stacking, including of the same effect (Ability Boost, Greater Ability Boost, etc) lets those artists put out utterly bonkers nonsense to hit stupidly out of their weight class. The protagonist's literally divine level raw stats convince the locals they have some wicked strong Martial Arts they use in battle when they fake being a fighter. This suggests things like 'effective teleportation' travel speeds and 'level that building with the shockwave from my striking the ground' or 'shrug off a napalm bath' are well within known Martial Arts capacities and the closest thing to a limit on them seems to be how many sustained effects (or active effects if you like) a Martial Artist can strain their body to have running at once. Meaning those abilities are essentially toggles, not limited in use within a given time period. That kind of 'doesn't take a move or attack action' to swap effects around, sometimes turning things on only for a single strike, is a big damn deal. Heck, a swordsman combined a quick draw attack and essentially 'Blindsense if it was a 9th level spell level of power' into an attack that is easily hypersonic, if not 'measurable fraction of light speed'. Given the mind shattering level disparity between the supernatural ability using monsters and spell casters in Overlord who take these abilities as legitimate threats and the fodder level Martial Artists producing them? Assuming a similar scaling, a high level Martial Artist would be less 'improbably skilled swordsman' and more 'wind of destruction' or 'humanoid typhoon'.
@@Sorain1 Yeah, that's why in my homebrew I have something called "temporary ability score" where (example) someone can self-cast "lesser dexterity" to increase their DEX by 2 for 1 minute. These spells being better for martial classes as it increases their DPR, unlike spell which do fixed damage, this way they can catch up. These spells can act like class features for martial classes (though are also available to be cast as spells). But what I typically do is I give 1 "lvl 1" spell slot per martial class level to cast those spells for simplicity. I was really inspired by overlord lol
Interesting comparison I thought of: While a 20th level Fighter is King Arthur, Tristan or Aragorn, a 20th level caster is Merlin, Morgan LeFey or Gandalf. One side is entirely human in limitation, the other is so powerful that the story has to sideline them so they don't simply solve every problem.
@@gabrielamaral978 the kingsfoil plant to slow a magic blade. The army of undead that follows him into battle. You don’t see a lot of magic in general in lotr.
NGL, making martial characters more anime sounds hella fun. Imagine moving so fast in between targets that you're essentially flashstepping, or attacking so many times it looks like you're casting Judgement Cut. Or you know, you could just play Druid. A caster that can turn into a martial as a bonus action.
Or bladesinger. Or hexblade warlock. Or battle smith artificer. Hexblade can get up to 3 attacks. Battle Smith can do the same at 9th level with haste. Bladesinger has ridiculous AC and the blade cantrips make you comparable in damage to a martial.
In my homebrew setting, I make it clear that there is a force in the cosmos that is drawn to feats of heroism and bravery. They call it the Dust of Divinity, but nobody really knows what it is or how it works. It's just some background element that explains in-universe how a raging barbarian can fall from the edge of space and survive the impact with the ground. Heroic warriors are literally superhuman, and that's just the way of things. This makes it reasonable to give out crazy anime powers if it suits the character. How does the fighter swing his axe so hard that that it creates a 60 foot cone of razor wind? I dunno, man. Must be the dust.
giving martials fighting stances and being able to swap midbattle and other options to dynamically affect combat would be fun. features like tunnel fighter were fun albeit strong. i really hope wotc fixes martials in one dnd, but i doubt it since it is WIZARDS of the coast after all...
Wish the would bring those fighting styles back. I always thought that most champion features should have been base fighter features. The fact you get 2 fighting styles should go to every fighter and if they did, you could have these really strong fighting styles available only at later levels
I once tried to think about something like this after playing DMC4, though I dropped the idea because I couldn't translate it well to a RPG I was playing at the time
There was a 3rd party suppliment for Pathfinder 1e that I tried once, and given they are different systems, and it overcompensated for the martial. This was level 3 and one of my players was always full health, could teleport, and there was something else really annoying (it might have been an AOE that oneshot creatures that should be a challenge alone, I am not sure). Everyone saw it was busted and even the player decided that it was a bit too much. I guarantee he would have been still outclasses at later levels but you have to be careful at those delicate lower levels.
This is one of the BIGGEST reasons 4e will always be my favorite D&D. None of this Martial = mundane bullcrap limiting their abilities to being "realistic". It was a source of POWER every bit as extraordinary as Arcane, Divine, etc.
What if martial arts were like how they are portrated in Baki: Inhumanly strong hyper-disciplined fighting machines who can do shit like make someone fall over with their pinky finger, see biological weak points like a recent wound or disease, stop a shotgun blast by hardening their pecs and send people flying 100+ feet with a one-inch-punch.
@@HaispawnerThat wouldn't even be enough IMO, you'd have to turn that to 11. Cause or stop earthquakes with a stomp? more like cause earthquakes with a stomp, creating fizzures under enemies, reimagine their bones to turn their limbs into whips, walk through glass, punch air? What about just dislocating your bones entirely for extra range. Poison hand? What about poison blood and poison breath? Fill the room with toxic gas just by hyperventilating. Punch wind at people! Air slashes! Reactions that allow you to position behind an enemy and deal damage in a "nothin personnel kid" moment! Leaping up into the air to attack a flying target with a falling sword slash! Being able to boomerang your weapon just naturally if it hits someone! Being able to protect the whole party from dragons breath with a shield or weapon parry! Being able to parry anything!
Honest to Goodness, it feels like we need "Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords" now more than ever, a 3.5 supplement that did exactly what you would want: martial characters with multitudinous Stances and Maneuvers that function as Martial "Spellcasting" but with flashy stunts and, more importantly, tons of options (even if just for three classes made for the book)
I hate it, but I hate it because half of the content of weaboo fightan magic is so horrendously worded that they actually make those classes broken AF. If they can fix the wording of it however, it would be perfect for fixing martial issues without rendering non martial useless by comparison.
@@apexnova2947 okay, question number 2. Does Diamond Mind still operate on multipliers? That is the one school I ban the shit out of even when I *do* allow that book in 3.5 My worlds just are not motivated enough for Vergil Roleplay.
@@Rebellions I honestly couldn't say, because the manuvers and "schools" have been primarily renamed, and theres more then before. I don't ban anything cuz I have just accepted that my players are gonna be powerful and my goal is to allow them to make what they want to make, and I have never had a martial break the game like a caster.
@@Rebellions Nothing goes on multipliers in Path of War from what I remember (Which is what Apex Nova was talking about) and it's instead a bunch of flat bonuses, bonus dice, and extra abilities like being able to counter attack to force an enemy's strike to miss or an acrobatics roll to dodge a blow, etc etc, that kinda stuff. It is nothing like Nine Swords was other than the Stance and Maneuver system as they even got rid of weapon dependence for schools outside of stances or maneuvers that specifically call for a school's weapon type. So I could take Scarlet Throne which is normally used with one handed blades and instead use a mace or a spear.
3.5's Tome of Battle gave fighters supernatural abilities in the form of combat stances and maneuvers. Although it also had prestige classes that let you make gish builds able to use spells and combat maneuvers.
The vast majority of those abilities are extraordinary, not supernatural, outside of the desert wind and shadow hand disciplines. A lot of it was certainly beyond anything possible IRL but it did not draw on any kind of magical force to create its effect. The variety was also pretty oversold. The vast majority of maneuvers were "hit it a little different" and do extra damage or bypass a defense often both in higher levels. Don't get me wrong. I *love* Tome of Battle and I still play 3e to this day. It's just not nearly as clean a fix as is often touted, even if it does help a lot.
I think people should look to mythical characters like Hercules or Lu Bu. Unimaginable feats of strength, cunning, and courage. Have fighters become immune to fear and charm, give barbarians the ability to throw dragons, etc. Either that or have spellcasting actually be hard to learn.
i would limit the spells they get to use, all that power needs to pay an equivalent price, either cut their spell pool in half or maybe have some wild magic going off after 3 spells with chaotic results?
I feel like the martial being terrible makes a lot of sense. Martials are supposed to be weak, because magic is the only way people can improve, so while martials reach their peak, magicians constantly improve over and over This also makes sense because we never heard of a important DnD character being martial but we heard them being magic users in some way
@@mrosskne because they don’t have a reason to be strong. Magic is manipulating a cosmic force, martials just punch hard, there’s no way to compare between them. Martials are by default, flawed. Instead of martials we could get combat mages
All martial should get something like the Maneuvers. Each class has its own list of maneuvers and each subclass gets access to special maneuvers from other lists. That's my rebalance idea but I ain't doing the legwork on it. But it would make things very cool imo
Fun fact maneuvers were originally supposed to be something for all fighters and removed all of battlemaster took the 3rd level feature and stuck it on 5th level fighter and so far it definitely closes off the gap between casters and fighters by a little bit so now any fighter has battlefield control buffs debuffs and maneuverability and now they still suck but with access to magical weapons they're close in power to the spirits bard in the party however they're the most consistent damage dealer in the party
@@lucasramey6427 I played the first dnd next play test and yeah, everyone had maneuvers. The only thing to fight in that play test was an alligator. But that is actually where I got my idea. It's an improvement over the power system of 4e that felt too bland. As the OP says in the vdieo, go ahead and give them thematic super abilities. A fight still would never have wish, but running across walls, blocking spells with swords, throwing shields and they ricochet around corners
As one of the contributors to Tabletop Builds, thank you for the shout outs and links! The quality of the video was high. It's hard to cover all the detail in 15 minutes, but you provided a well-paced and entertaining summary.
I was led here by pack tactics and honestly this just solidifies my solution of doubling all martial damage and making the battle master fighter a core mechanic in all martials.
@@gts1676what pisses me of is that armor doesn’t increase your chance of not being able to cast your spell now. Removing spell mishap basically allow ridiculous multiclassing that allow caster to wear heavy armor with no repercussion.
@@gts1676just make "pure-exclusive" feats that are as OP as munchkin multiclassing Wizards already lowkey have this feature considering how strong their higher lvl spells are - make it a hard choice to sacrifice class progression speed
As a longtime DM who started with Pathfinder 1E, I found myself subconsciously powering up the martials in my game. Making the horizon walker ranger wise and powerful, making the fighter a vampire with additional damage to user and target, handing the rogue powerful magic. I think I was able to make martials just as important as casters, but it took real effort and I doubt it was as fun for them. I miss Pathfinder’s crazy bullshit.
as someone who went the other way, I just... can't go back, 5e just has too many problems & pathfinder so many options that I can't go back to my pisspoor fighter who can't even mount up, and cut something in half with a lance the *long* way
Pathfinder also benefits from full prep making casters less flexible and full casters having a hard time dealing damage. There's a huge disparity in damage potential between a caster and a martial in Pathfinder and unbounded accuracy means the Fighter quickly gets to the point of auto-hitting while also being the only person who's AC has a chance of doing anything.
@@aurtosebaelheim5942 yeah, simplifying the scaling makes it easy for casters to match martials. Vancian spellcasting (all that preparing at the start of the day) is far more interesting to me, and makes a lot of spells a deliberate choice that feels nicer to use. Most people don't like it as much as I do, though, lol
Can i message you on a platform for advice to help my martial? They are a new player and are pretty bummed out they don't get a lot of cool stuff at all, like next level they get advantage on initiative, and that's it, I tried buffing the class but I don't think its enough
Something I'd like to add is that this isn't a problem in other RPG's. In Final Fantasy the Black Mage is a class that channels the power of the void to create fireballs and lightning bolts to destroy their enemies and the Dragoon channels the power of a dragon god to fly around and destroy their enemies, The Summoner summons literal GODS to help them in battle and the Monk just goes ham with their fists and there's no difference between those classes viability. Because SE understands that it's just as cool to see your character flip around and do some wild anime shenanigans with their spear as it is to use the void to erase your enemies. In D&D a Sorcerer can deal 280 damage avg. in 1 action (3.5 avg. d6 roll*8d6 dmg*10 targets) with a base level fireball, a Berserker Barbarian can get mad and do one extra attack on one target, take a level of exhaustion, and cripple their character. The Sorcerer can also re-roll their damage dice up to five times at lvl 5 if they want. This much imbalance exists because????????? Martials are way lamer and way weaker for no reason, and other RPG's have been getting this right for decades.
DnD 5e players: God, the Martial vs Caster disparity is unbelievably unbalanced in favor of casters. Pathfinder 2e Players: Is this some sort of broken joke I'm too balanced to understand?
Casters are still stronger than martials in Pathfinder 2nd edition once you get past level 5ish and especially past level 7. The main way in which they avoid this being too obvious is by role division - casters are controllers and leaders, while martials are defenders and strikers. Because people overvalue single target damage, and because your party really suffers if you don't have the roles covered, this makes it look like martials are balanced with casters when in actuality casters are still stronger overall. There are some casters that can lean into the martial roles (the Summoner and the Magus) but because they are so limited in spell slots, they don't feel like they're casters to a lot of people (even though they are).
@@keybladebard4089 For one, yes. The second is giving Sorcerer unrestricted access to the Arcane spell list. Aaand the fact that I am not overly impressed with the additions given to warriors. And the fact that it now looks it is still a half-caster+fullcaster meta, because someone thought it was a good idea to give the half-casters Weapon Mastery as well.
One D&D is a pretty big slap in the face for anyone who thought martial classes would get some good balancing going for them. Yeah, they make subclasses like Eldritch Knight and Champion better, but they buffed the Wizard by moving their most bonkers feature three levels lower.
@@jacobgoodrich6984 how so? Even ignoring most of the points in the vid, besides rogue, all pure martial can do almost nothing outside of combat. Every single spellcaster has options outside of combat. For that reason alone, making them significantly better at combat can help balance them out with full and half casters.
One of the changes I gave to the champion fighter was giving them more chances to make opportunity attacks AND gave them additional attacks of opportunities based on proficiency bonus. To also increase consistency at later levels they can throw weapons with the throwing property as an attack of opportunity if an enemy attacks an ally. So long as it's within 30 feet. I felt like more attacks = more chances to crit with the champion so I felt that the idea would help it out quite a bit
Oh also the opportunity attacks chances and opportunities aren't on a cool down. Its per turn. Standing up from prone provokes opportunity attacks again for all classes.
@@WhyYouMadBoi Well my question to you is: How does this fit the champion fighters theme? Also: How can an opportunity attack even make someone prone in the first place?
@@kelmirosue3251 No if they are prone already you can use a attack action to instead shove or use shield master bonus action to shove them prone. This leads to the enemy either standing up proking opportunity attacks or staying down and taking advantage swings. I never said reaction to knock them prone and I said its to all creatures even PCs.
To fix martials, I would suggest the "Alternate Classes" By LaserLlama They created alternate versions of the Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, and Rouge. And to a lesser extent Ranger, Sorcerer, and Artificer. For his Alternate Martials, with the exeption of the Monk, they took the Superiorety Dice from the Battle Master Fighter and turned them into a core class feature for all three, dubbing them Martial, Savage, and Devious exploits. Some of them give extra damage, while others mimic spells like Haste, Thunderwave, Tenser's Transfermation, Slow, and even Steel Wind Strike. For the Fighter alone there is like 40 Exploits they can learn. I use them in my game and my players are having a great time. Great Video BTW
One of the main reasons I like PF2e's martis is that some of their feats just give its martials straight up superpowers. Barbarians can create earthquakes and punch magic into nothing, Fighters can break space and time to teleport and strike 80 feet away with a melee attack, and titan wrestler lets me suplex dragons. But probably the best part is that, as far as I can see, there is no bs caster subclass that is straight up better martial. There is no moon druids or bladesingers, and I am quite happy about that.
Pf2e is what i went to after 5e because of how overpwered things are in 5e and while the game is not for everyone i would say if your look for more of a game I would recommend 2e but if your going for more roleplay i would stick with 5e.
Something that I keep suggesting my DM friends is to read up on the generic object portion of the DMG, even if by a little, considering in giving martials siege damage and having figthers and barbarians slicing castle walls in half. as martials level up they should start looking like walking natural disasters
4e let you do that as Barbarian. Don't like rages? Rage Strike instead. Built an entire character around the idea of 'Fey step to your face: Rage Strike the entire tower in half.' it shocked me just how brutal the spike damage could be at Heroic tier.
I hate how people think that high level casters have justified strength because magic but high level martial is still just a skilled guy with a sword High level martial should be like hercules, gilgamesh, conan or mikula selyanovich If you dont know who mikula was, it was the guy that had a bag with the weight of the entire earth just in his pocket and challenged svyatogor to a lifting contest with the bag which svyatogor failed And if you dont know who svyatogor was, it was the dude as tall as mountain that wasnt even woken up by ilya muromets strikes and when he walked the ground itself litteraly shaked
Guts from berserk and batman ate good examples of normal humans achieving super human feats. Both are enhanced by gadgets. I agree fighters and the other classes should be able to perform literal Herculean or beowulf like feats. Guts swings a 300 pound hunk of raw iron in the shape of a sword with one hand and Batman is the greatest detective to ever live. Thinking of fighters like this will make them more interesting
IIRC, Guts also has the benefit of his sword becoming slightly magical purely as a side-effect of how many supernatural creatures (particularly demons) he's slain with it.
@@DragonKingZero But the thing to keep in mind is that Guts' dragonslayer became magical *after* inflating his demon killcount into insane levels. So his greatsword was magical not in spite of him being monstrously powerful, but *because* of it.
I think the reasons listed in this video are why Battle Master was the first martial class that actually interested me, because it has a smidgen more choices to make and features to use with the maneuvers you get. And those maneuvers give you only a fraction of what spell abilities can do, so I think it'd be cool to see ALL martials get their own sets of maneuvers to choose from to give them options to customize their characters as well as more battlefield control abilities that all casters already have access to superior versions of.
The books literally say by level 5 you are the apex of what a mortal human can be. 20 in an attribute means you are in the 1%. You should never meet another mortal with 20 strength or intelligence save a few rare exceptions like a college arch mage; and even then them only being 18 or 19 is justifiable. Level 3 is the end of the "grounded fantasy" phase of DnD. People who want power to stay low to the ground till later need to stick to 2e; and I'm saying this as a primarily 2e player.
@@Leivve can you tell me where it says this I really want to show this to my dm, because he brings up the “DnD is suppose to be realistic” crap at every turn.
This excellent video summarizes everything single problem I have in DnD 5e about Martials, just a couple points I wanted to add. - With every new sourcebook, new spells, and magic items get added! Guess how many new core, nonmagical weapons got added... Zero! In 5e's NINE years, WOTC hasn't added a SINGLE new core weapon for martial classes. Yet hundreds of new magic spells and items. - Caster's Cantrips scale better than even the Fighter's extra attack, getting their fourth "extra attack", three levels earlier than the Fighter. Without needing to dedicate 20 levels into an inferior class. A level 12 character could pick up a cantrip via a feat and be just as if not more effective than a martial artist trained for their whole life, or a Druid who practiced the same spell for years. - Most Caster subclasses and features direct them into being SAD (usually towards their spellcasting ability), making them easier to allocate ASIs for and to have room for feats and multiclassing. Martials, for some odd reason, have a tendency of being MAD (Look at the Battlemaster maneuvers for proof.) with subclasses often needing investment in too many ability scores to make well-rounded /effective characters. Awesome video Ahero, this video reminds me why I switched to PF2e.
They haven't powercrept martials since the PHB, which is insane. Combinations like Archery+XBE+SS and GWM+PAM+Sentinel, and subclasses like Totem Warrior and Battlemaster, are *still* the main options for martial builds, outside of multiclassing. Most of the martial powercreep has happened with half-casters with additions like Gloom Stalker and Hexblade. Which is a big problem when 1) half-casters were already better than martials, and 2) there have been so many new spells added to the game of varying power. Someone trying to optimize a DPR Fighter in 2014 would play a Battlemaster+Archery+XBE+SS. Someone trying to optimize a DPR Fighter in 2023 is *still* playing Battlemaster+Archery+XBE+SS. Even balance aside, martials are basically stagnant on a fundamental character building level. People usually dislike powercreep in principle, which I understand, but 5e martials are an example of what happens where there is too little of it. Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue and Monk were bad in 2014. They are even worse now, because the rest of the system has advanced without them.
They were called "extraordinary features" in 3.5 Su: Supernatural affect that mimics magic. Ex: Extraordinary affect that mimics magic (but isn't magic) It's frightening how many things are just still there in 3.5. That just didn't get brought over.
^^^ the reason I've moved to pathfinder XD my stabby bois get to actually do things in that system, and it's *awesome* like I still lose to casters on most cases, but I if you need one dude killed? you don't call the wizard, you call the cavilier, and that single change I adore. (of course, if you just need something out of commission, you do still call the wizard, because CC is always busted, and force cage is actively busted, but my lance does a very satisfying amount of damage.)
@@citizensnips3850 I said they where *better* in pathfinder. A 5th edition martial serves no purpose, a pathfinder one does actual damage, and is capable of doing things other then just standing around waiting for the wizard to decide to end the combat encounter.
@thetzeentchianrepresentati5547 I know what you said, I'm saying you're full of it to think martials in pathfinder are better than in 5e. In pathfinder a martial cannot stand against a caster after a certain point.
@@citizensnips3850 In 5e, that point is level 5. In pathfinder my caviler out damaged our casters for his entire career, now that game ended at level eight, but he had just picked up a *very* fancy lance, so these numbers are a bit skewed, but I expect that around 240 damage would *continue* to out damage our casters against single targets well into the late game, *possibly* loosing out around level 15. The only games I've gotten past level 14 are the pathfinder CRPGS, and the martials where doing *very* respectable damage there, being out-damaged by a caster mostly because of a combination of fancy equipment, and hellfire rays. (something like +6d6 fire and +2d6 acid per ray, and like +10 to hit with ranged touch attacks from equipment.) In the tabletop game, we're far from optimized (the DM won't give us any gold,) but the caster just... can't dish out the damage the paladin can. So, I'm curious where your experience for that statement is coming from, because I've done the math, and a like 5th level druid in 5e out damages a 11th level optimized gloomstalker/fighter *attacking from stealth* in their one turn of nova. I have the math to back that up somewhere in here, but I'll need to trawl back through youtube comments to get it.
I still don't understand why for example strength is made the way it is. Like, yay, you can carry 15 pounds of weight per point of strength. At 10 Str, that's 150 pounds, which is about what the average human can do. But, at 20 STR, that's 300 pounds. And bear in mind, 20 on a stat is supposed to be superhuman. So, a SUPERHUMAN can only lift about as much as a very buff dude in the gym. A barbarian with the might of the titans at level 20 can lift 360 pounds....Like, what the fuck. The strongmen can lift literally over a thousand pounds in real life, but a LITERAL PRIMAL CHAMPION can only lift 360? And scaling with size is also extremely stupid. Like....you can become huge - literally 20-25 feet tall musclebound goliath, and you can only lift 1200 pounds? Paul Anderson had a record of 1200LBS squat 40 years ago....what the fuck. That's just one example of why martials are weak. A DM literally has to go against the rules to make them even a bit more functional.
You fail to consider that that's the limit they can carry while not being hindered in any way. Carrying 300lbs for 16 hours is absolutely wild and claiming that its not is disingenuous at best. With this being said, I've also long advocated for the idea of level 5+ martials being quite literally superhuman and think that they should do more with what they have.
@Zachary Seddon That is not the limit they can carry without being hindered in any way. That is LITERALLY the limit they can carry. And the Optional Rule: Encumbrance specifies further restrictions on weight and capacity, making it granular and even more restrictive. Also, a the rules state that you can travel only up to 8 hours without consequence anyway, regardless of encumbrance. There is no rule governing how weight applies to your character other than that you can't past your weight limit, unless the DM decides to give you some check or something. The rules are so simple that they stop making sense. For me, there is a relatively simple solution to this specific problem - make STR score above 10 give 50 weight limit instead of 15. And make anything above 20 give 100 instead of 50. That way, you actually have an explanation, for example, of how a dragon would be capable of lifting boulders that would in D&D terms be literally out of their weightlifting category (a fairly small boulder can weigh multiple thousands of pounds, which LITERALLY NO CREATURE in D&D should be able to move, let alone lift).
Another thing I feel needs to be mentioned, but any strength based martial basically has to invest in a stat that has extremely limited utility outside combat. Outside the occasional athletics check, you’re just better off focusing Dex. No DM asks you how strong your hands are or how much can you benchpress, but they are more likely to ask how nimble you are, how fast you are, or have you make dexterity based saves. Strength kinda just sucks as a stat.
A part of this whole thing that really annoys me is that newer dms and players will berate you for using PA, GWM or CA because they're "broken", but they're absolutely required for martials to even "mimic a fraction of [casters] power"
I banned polearm master + sentinel at lvl 4 in one of my campaigns (along with a growing list of build options). Not because of the caster v martial balance thing, but because we had a min/maxer playing with an average group who wanted to focus on roleplay. The presence of the min/maxer made it literally impossible to balance combat for the party, since everything was either too easy or bordering on a TPK.
@@TheTdroid maybe instead of gutting class options you can have a real life discussion with your player, or set up encounters in a way that aren't being shredded by one of the most mediocre synergies in 5e.
There needs to be a 5e equivalent to the Tome of Battle from 3.5. I have never felt more on par with my casting party mates as a martial than when I was playing as a Warblade.
Even at their best, with extraordinary features and the like, when compared to casters, martials in 3.5e still felt like the "look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power". Martials had more stuff they could do in 3.5e compared to 5e, but paradoxically, they were still victims of the worst case of caster supremacy of any edition. 4e was the only time that martials werent garbage compared to casters, and people complained. A lot. And many of the complaints werent even about specifically how the balancing was done, but just that it was done at all.
Great video, man! Pack Tactics sent me on over here. The math is undeniable. In practice, though, I have found that a lot of tables play spellcasters so sub-optimally that martials don’t *feel* weaker. I have a group where the wizard won’t take almost any of the true S-tier spells and just opts for straight damage and the bard keeps hitting things with a rapier or using a crossbow. Like…they are having fun, so I am happy for them to do that. But these completely suboptimal choices has the added bonus effect of balancing the game ironically. I *suspect* that a lot of tables are like this, and hence there is this feeling you see on some replies to a Treantmonk vid about how powerful the monk is etc etc.
@@hugofontes5708 You're just throwing words together that you don't actually understand instead of trying to communicate. "In practice, though, I have found that a lot of tables play spellcasters so sub-optimally that martials don’t feel weaker." In a good game, it wouldn't be possible to ruin the game for others by playing intelligently. So you wouldn't need to play sub-optimally.
WotC: we are gonna make Martial shine on OneDnD Players: good WotC: we are removing critical hits from spells Players: oh, well, if is to make Martial shine, i guess is... WotC: but also any additional damage made affar from the weapon damage is out of the equation, no more double smite or double sneak attack Players: but... thats a nerf for martial, not for spellcasters WotC: but nothing, we know what we are doing, is "balanced", this buffs martial! Players: no, this actually WotC: oh, and acrobatics and athletics are useless for grapple Players: stop, why are you doing this? WotC: for balance, of course, hahahahaha
Great video! Love the changes and love the fact that adding loads of martial decision points would not only rebalance and specialize martials, but also make them a considerably less bland experience to play. It only takes a few combats of "BA rage, action attack" until the bad guys fall over before I start flirting with a multi-class dip into something more interesting and tactically stimulating.
This is one of my biggest concerns as well. Why play a fighter when the fantasy falls so flat in practice? The fighter fantasy is about improvisation and ingenuity, but the lack of maneuvers, stances, and mechanical options makes it almost impossible to translate.
Since magic is interwoven into everything in most dnd settings, its completely fine to give martials supernatural abilities as a base mechanic. Just because theyre simple doesnt mean they have to be weak. There are plenty of ways to power a martial class and maintain their threat level alongside the meteor throwers. Improving their action economy, buffing the damage they do, giving them abilities or passives, whats strange is that wotc seems to put so much thought into what certain classes aren't allowed to do while others are allowed to do anything they can think of
Except the people that still Play it because it's their favourite edition of D&D, and chances are If you are a very technical minded Player that enjoys playing tactically you will gravitate to atleast be interested in 4e.
I'm a big fan of giving martials more control, distraction, etc. abilities on homebrews, and giving them tanking aspects unavailable to other classes. What boggles my mind is how often people scream "overpowered" for a martial class when it's intentionally designed to give that class more utility (and as such, stronger than the baseline for the class), even when this resulting utility is weaker than what even a suboptimal caster would have at the same level. (did an experiment with some fighter subclass concepts recently for this)
This is one of the reasons that I think that a lot of the default subclasses for martials from the basic rules should just be class features. A fighter should get improved critical, better physicality, more fighting styles, and Regen. This still wouldn't close the gap, but it would help. A rogue should get better mobility, shenanigans with quick items, and the ability to use any items. A barb should get another attack while raging without exhaustion, and the ability to resist charmed and feared (raging or no) Monks should absolutely get the open hand maneuvers regardless of subclass, in addition to quivering palm and the other open hand features. Rangers should get all of the special hunter manuever options. Again, this isn't necessarily going to close the gap, but it helps to start.
Yeah, would be nice if the stuff from Champion, and maybe even Battlemaster were just built into the main fighter class, and then your subclass can be Rune Knight or Psy Warrior, or whatever.
While I do agree, the problem is wizards chose to typically only have ONE class/subclass feature. I don't know why they went this way when a caster effectively gets multiple class features per level.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 warlocks get a subclass and eldritch invocations and that was so popular that they released a feat that gave you an additional invocation instead of or in additional to multi classing into warlock
Monks also should get a lot more Ki. Like I’m talking about either additional Ki like: Wisdom mod = Additional Ki or More Ki 2x your monk level. So a max level monk would be 40 ki total. And if not that and just sticking with the wisdom mod, change their capstone feature for the base class (because it sucks massive cock) to be instead choosing one monk ability from Flurry of Blows, Patient defense or Step of the wind to no longer cost Ki to use but you can only choose one of these abilities to not use Ki.
@Fraction Facta I think what he meant was giving them some of the abilities from the subclass as default and then replacing the subclass abilities that were given with something else. For example, I've seen people say the crit boost from Champion fighter should be standard in the fighter kit. In which place, that feature would be replaced with something else. Thus giving the chassis more abilities and then having the abilities from the subclass on top of that.
They don't seem to understand that none of the classes are normal people. A fighter is not like any regular soldier, they can do much more than regular people. They are those people who cut down trees with a single swing. Those who take the hit of a dragon on their shield and barely flinch. Shields are also a thing that should be a lot better.
I might flat out give literally every fighter battle master maneuvers in addition to their other class features, plus more sparing lists for other martial classes. i think the most interesting way to scale up fighters while keeping them relatively mundane is to offer much more variety in weapons and tactics that let them deal with enemies in more engaging ways.
I've heard yams just go out and give every single pure martial superiority dice and maneuvers at the same rate that battle masters gets them. Apparently it doesn't break anything at all.
Early in the playtest of "D&D Next," that was the assumption. The Superiority Dice were a core part of the Fighter class, and subclasses gave you more options to use them. I still think about how cool that was. I love Fighters, and for a brief moment I thought that they were going to make the class more interesting.
I let Fighters get their extra attacks earlier. First extra attack at 3rd level, and second extra attack at fifth, with the third extra attack at 12th. It ensures that they actually get to make use of their trademark feature over the course of a campaign for the levels at which I know that I will be running. (I personally never plan to run anything over 14th or 15th level and never run below 3rd level). It also ensures that they are always one step ahead of the other martials in terms of their ability to "extra attack". I also allow fighters to obtain the "Superior Technique" Fighting Style from Tasha's for free at first level, with the change that their Superiority dice for that particular maneuver scales with their proficiency bonus. It allows each of the Fighters the ability to have their own "Special Move" of sorts, that they can use multiple times a day which to me, feels very much in character. I am comfortable doing this because I know how much their scaling is dependent on my own DM-ing decisions in the form of giving them different magic weapons. I highly recommend to other DMs that they give this a try. I have had little to no issues accounting for it on my end and my players LOVE it. I've had multiple players come to me and explain that they would "Never play a Fighter over another martial, but in your game I would".
i really wanted the extraordinary, supernatural and spell-like descriptors from pathfinder on 5e. adding some extraordinary abilities for fighters is just *chef's kiss*
The supernatural abilities remind me of Warhammer chaos warriors. Essentially demon worshipping vikings that get various magic items and powers from their gods in exchange for undying loyalty and effective service. Like the god Khorne can give you a collar that can effectively counterspell at will or make you strong enough to rip a giant’s arm off and beat it to death with it. I’ve always wanted to play a character like that
The Spheres of Might system (an add-on for Pathfinder 1e, and DnD 5e) does this. It gives martial characters features that either allow them to do more interesting things in combat, or to have some non-combat utility. The fact that a third-party add-on is needed to do this is sad, but you aren't the first to see the problem.
I played on a 5e game server that averaged 18-25-ish people on simultaneously at the daily peak. As getting brought to events was akin to getting picked for teams (and pvp was allowed), it ended up turning *very* competitive and was thus _merciless_ about build optimization. There was _one_ high-level martial at the end, and they were inferior to casters well below their level outside of their _one_ niche. Many individual spells are far more dangerous than attacks and dealing damage for overcoming challenges and manipulating circumstances (suggestion, command, invisibility, flight, dream, polymorph, etc), and by virtue of getting so many, casters can often fulfil _multiple_ roles while also fulfilling a martial's well enough (and often _better_ than them with less investment). The existence of learnable arcane magic (wizards) questions the in-universe reason for strictly non-magical characters. Any nation that managed to build up and maintain wizards in an organized military structure would almost certainly replace conventional non-magical men-at-arms. The tools of men-at-arms always adapt with technology; it would be asinine to refuse to integrate the setting's most versatile and powerful technology. Barring barrier to entry, magic would become _one_ of a military and individual men-at-arms' tools. Related to that, I think one _potential_ solution would be significantly advanced ability trees related around various weapons, tactics, or superhuman maneuvers, much like you discuss, and many of them (until late levels, anyways) could play into how these weapons real niches (eg maces and hammers generally inflict less damage yet bypass armor, greatswords were excellent at fighting multiple opponents, etc) and thus not break the 'not-supernatural' fantasy. Importantly, though, they would need to gain enough abilities to have more than one role or strategy, like casters. Whether they need to be _as_ versatile (versus better at a smaller range) or whether these abilities need to work on exactly the same sort of resource expenditure is another question. While having a different resource expenditure style could contribute to distinct styles of play, that increases how asymmetric the game balance is, and is thus harder to balance properly. I think there are a handful of martial builds that are superior within a niche, and thus have some validity in gameplay; however, they are not nearly as valuable as casters in general. Bearbarian rogue is a _massive_ damage soak, whereas a Cavalier-paladin of the proper oath (while paladin is a caster, the abilities of concern are not spells) is one of the few ways to forcibly redirect attacks towards yourself (with penalties to boot). On the other hand, much of the time, you would be better off bringing another caster, regardless.
Well mainly because technically in D&D iq is calculated by int which is int score times 10. A wizard apprintice has 14 int which is 140 IQ points which is genius level. You literally need to be a genius or above to learn magic. There isn't many geniuses IRL and there wouldn't be many in D&D so yeah. Sorcerers are extremely rare and good luck trying to become anything more than a level 1 warlock before being stoned to death.
@@WhyYouMadBoi 1) How accurately the distribution of ability scores is not necessarily a perfect correlation with the real-world IQ Bell Curve, and ASI by level (when AS are balanced around ASI) are completely unrealistic. Also, 'genius' generally means 160 or higher. 2) While this depends on how exactly spellwork is done in-setting, unless it required some active mental work requiring above-average cognition to actually operate the spell, the operations could be performed through rote memorization developed by an intelligent mage. Even if it does require advanced mental functions, how well IQ represents this (this could just as well fall under Wisdom) is very debatable. 3) The minimum ability score requirements for casting spells that existed in earlier editions was not ported to 5e. 5e requires 13 or higher in the appropriate ability scores to _multiclass._ While a higher INT is still valuable (save DCs, bonus to attack rolls, additional spells known), it is not strictly necessary. This is to say naught on low-casters like the Eldritch Knight subclass or Magic Initiate. 4) Militaries (and especially 'adventurers', which are frequently outliers, exceptions, heroes or the like) are not representative of the general population. They differ significantly by numerous metrics, and it is not unreasonable to expect that they could attract and field sufficient individuals of the minimum intelligence threshold to create a military edge. 5) Sorcerers are indeed rare. While hypothetically a nation could put in place programs that might increase their numbers, I am not going to get into eugenics here. 7) Reactions to Warlocks are setting and culture-specific. While hostility is the default response in canonical D&D settings, that attitude is not a human (let alone dwarf/elf/orc/tiefling or other) universal. A given culture could just as well have Warlocks as their priestly class instead of Clerics.
@@NevisYsbryd 1) this has been in D&D since 2nd edition at the lastest it was in a dragon magazine. But this also doesn't mean shit with ASI at all. It does corrolate with 6 being the minimum amount needed for sentience in D&D which 50-60 iq points is mild mental redardation with it being 50 and below people need support for their entire life. also 140 is labeled genius from the sources I'm looking at. Where's yours and I'll show mine. 2) We already said it is standard D&D setting aka forgotten realms aka abeir-Toril your homebrew setting doesn't mean shit here. In fact every offical setting in D&D work off of the weave even eberron and of course artificers aren't in abeir-toril 3) You're using 13 even though we are talking about as a whole and of course NPCs. NPCs can't have character classes unless its a special case as with Drizz't. 4)Militaries, you wanna talk that let's take an example. Waterdeep which got a population of 2 million has the Force Grey which is an elite force of spellcasters which is under Blackstaff Vajra Safahr. Only 5 members and not all of them are spellcasters same with the gray hands which is where they pull their members from. The only army in canon that had a big enough army with enough wizards was The Netherrese and that place blew up and now only 3 settlements are left and they ain't raising no army.
@@NevisYsbryd 5) Yeah and how are you going to get a dragonhoard big enough to make draconic sorcerers? How about enough dark energies to surge through, just sending children into the shadowfell? Don't get me started on wild magic. 6? 7?) Not really its D&D setting and of course warlocks all have a patron mark which shows that they are a warlock. Dwarves hates it, elves hates it, Orcs wouldn't mind much but then again they are zealot as fuck you worship gruumsh while grey might leave ya alone. Tieflings don't got a culture themselves. No one likes warlocks and its a fact the only ones that do are the evil races unless its a super cool summer court fey or obvious celestial body.
@@WhyYouMadBoi It is not in the 5e player's handbook or DMG. Dragon Magazine is optional, non-core content. IQ does not increase with experience (well, fluid intelligence does not, crystallized does), and strength is not tied to one's expertise in class-related activities but to athletics. ASIs are an arbitrary game mechanic with little to no correlation with reality. Nowhere was it stated as a given that we are using canonical official settings. *Many* tables use the official rules unaltered without using the official setting. I brought up 13 because it is the only AS value that acts as a prerequisite besides a few feats, and then only for multiclassing. Player versus npc classes is an arbitrary game mechanic that is often dispensed with for npcs with any abilities of note. Nor is casting categorically forbidden to commoners; 3.5 Unearthed Arcana included commoner classes, including one for spellcasting. The official setting's writing and worldbuilding is far more about tropes than any remotely realistic or consistent logistics, socioeconomics, or military strategy. Another nation could just as well build up another mage empire akin to the Netherese (albeit barring divine intervention, which is very much on the table in Forgotten Realms). I literally said I was not going to get into the specifics of national eugenics programs. The one thing I willl say is that sorcerers are not half-breeds; they spawn erratically down genetic lines for several generations. They would not need to make first-generation sorcerers but ensure that existing sorcerers produce many heirs to increase the statistical odds of producing a greater number of sorcerers. While that might reduce their number and power overtime as the magical bloodline is diluted, it is hypothetically possible. Again, reactions to warlocks are culture-specific and setting-specific. While they are widely hostile in official D&D settings, tables are not restricted to using these settings and need not import the same cultural norms to their games.
The monk ki point thing is very important. Ki is less plentiful and does less than spell slots honestly I’ve considered making a blade singer wizard to recreate the avatar fantasy.
The "encounter stamina" fallacy is so vital, I appreciate you highlighting it here. In my play experience, it's also quite rare for a session to get enough encounters in before the casters are truly tapped out (and then the martials are usually screwed for healing by that point!). The alleged consistency of fighters et al doesn't help at all when the casters are able to recharge constantly. If the game is high fantasy, then the martial classes deserve to be fantastical.
This is made worse when a lot of tables and DnD westmarches HATE short resting for some reason. Fighter's second wind recharges on short rest, giving them a better shortrest than most classes, but this is irrelevent if your DM considers tryiing to use one of the game's core mechanics to be exploitation.
Idk man when I run my encounters the casters run out of spells by encounter 3 or 4. By the 5th or 6th, the martials are carrying. Sure, they've spent more hp as well, but if they weren't there, the caster would never have used their spells in the first place...
@@seeker296 If that's the case there are a few possibilities: A) Your encounters are too hard B) Your casters are doing most of the work, thus exhausting themselves C) You players are being very unoptimal. Not that it matters much, a caster using cantrips isn't bad at all.
@@stoneharvey1017this video is about an inherent unbalance in the game thay exists on paper and when someone comments that their experience at the table is different and more balanced than the video claims, your response is to tell them something must be not right with how they play. That's a bit ridiculous to claim that their encounters are too hard because they're achieving better balance among their players. You're basically arguing that if they're not experiencing the inherent unbalance that something must not be quite right at their table. "Of course casters are always better than martials and if they're not at your table, either you or your players aren't making the right decisions."
If your casters are running out of spell slots, that means your monsters are so strong that beating them actually requires using **that** many spells. If they're this powerful, then the team would have long since been dead by this point if those players weren't playing casters. IE casters are still doing all the work. Either that, or the casters are playing extremely unoptimal. Even then though, his premise doesn't make much sense. Casters using cantrips are still plenty effective. So the martials shouldn't really be "carrying" all that much. If those martials were just casters instead, the team would also still be stronger. More spells, means more encounters where you still have access to spells.
Those first two seconds were absolutely brutal to these classes. I don't know if you're the editor if it's someone else, but whomever is is absolutely brutal
As a GM this is one of the reasons I love PF2E vs 5E. Watching player power diverge so dramatically is frustrating. I know 5E caster players can chafe a bit at not being able to do single target damage on par with martials but seeing martial players faces light up when they realize how powerful they feel is a treat every time.
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 as someone who played 5e and tried pf2e highly reccomend make them try for a short campaing. The difference between systems is abysmal and for a plus the martials dont suck. For example casters have it more difficult to make an attack roll with their spells that being said the damage is high but compared to a fighter who is gonna have more chance of scoring a critical hit (critical hits in pf2 you have to score an attack that is 10 points higher than the enemy ac example enemy has 12 ac player throws dice and gets a 22 final that a critical even if the dice wasnt a 20)
And then you breach beyond T2 and realize "holy fuck its even worse due to the 3 action economy (and not well thought out way how making a tome of battle/pow route with 60% of the options being noobtraps so you still become a single target pouncer, stealth archer or i-AoO-and-stop-the-enemy-if-close box no matter which way)" AND T1(+level 5) attempting to be a blaster caster is for most routes a burden.
A really interesting idea me and a couple mates came up with was the idea that the more a person's fame spread, the more influence and power they literally gained. Like if a Fighter once managed to deflect an enemy firebolt with their shield, then anyone who saw that happen would spread the word, and as time goes on, that story turns into the Fighter's shield parting a dragon's firebreath like a rock against a wave. That fame and recognition slowly empowers that fighter, since people are more likely to tell stories about gallant knights in armor and shields than they are to tell stories about that one guy who everyone hates because he holds a stick and has horns and a tail
Changes I would do: -Let strength, constitution and dex be used in roleplay (use strength to break someone's spear to intimidate them for example) -Make it so martials at high-ish levels get more damage with their weapons (a greatsword deal 2d6+(strmod*2) for example) -Give them "special attacks" in exchange for number of attacks (use a sword to throw a cutting projectile with 30ft of range in exchange for 2 action attacks)
The “nerfing spellcasters” backlash stings the most, because a lot of the ideas I have to fix this imbalance hinge around exactly that. I had the concept in mind to make recovering spell slots require the spending of hit dice, with class rebalances and tweaks to the rest system to account for it… but generally speaking, players react harshly to nerfs of any kind. You’d have to give all classes some significant power boosts to offset that, I feel. Even then, that kind of nerf still gives spellcasters even more choices to make. You could go the Pathfinder route of giving all martials access to maneuvers, with Battlemasters getting extra maneuvers and superiority dice… I also have ideas for making attunement drain resources rather than requiring attunement slots, which when combined with the above would give martials another edge in terms of both strength and choice. I also have ideas for buffs to melee combat, but… hell, this is a hard problem to tackle.
At the very least, they can probably move or change the most problematic spells. Given how they are handling summoning spells now, I think it's safe to say Conjure Animals as it's written in 5e won't be seen in One DnD. That said, I'm sure One DnD is going to still have a massive gap between martials and casters as long as WOTC remain ignorant to the issues.
You know how in 3e removing all the limits on spellcasters like maximum spells known caused huge problems? yeah? Let's make it so wizards preperation is like changing out sorc spells known, except BETTER IN EVERY WAY.
@@seacliff217 The “most problematic” spells aren’t problematic because they’re strong is the thing, they’re problematic because they expose the problems laid out in this video and/or are simply frustrating at tables. Conjure Animals power-wise is well-balanced relative to the rest of the Druid’s kit, but its most obvious use is for single-target damage, and so it makes martial players feel invalidated when it inevitably outperforms them. Not to mention how slow new players are with their turns with that particular spell. Meanwhile, you’re almost never going to hear anyone complain about Pass Without Trace, yet it’s so strong of a spell that it’s worth Wish casting for characters who don’t have access to it. Hypnotic Pattern and Web can completely shut down fights with good coordination. Find Familiar and Unseen Servant can be used for scouting (sorry rogues), reviving downed players with health potions, and so much more. The best spells in the game often encourage teamwork and work as force multipliers for the entire party, making them well-designed from that perspective and hard to justify removing completely. The God Wizard concept sort of speaks to that, really.
I strongly hope that WOTC reevaluates their "6-8 encounters per day" balancing and either just reduces spellcasters slot progression, or makes an adjustable progression based on how many encounters the dm wants to run.
@@jimbob929 agreed. More realistically is 1-3 encounters per day, with less for larger groups with more action economy (since combat generally takes so much longer). In my personal experience I learned also that even when out of spell slots, all the casters still have more cantrips than martial classes tend to have martial features.
I have been toying around with a “Martial Stances” mechanic. It functions similar to a spellcaster’s cantrips, in that it scales at certain levels and it would allow martial characters to enter a stance when they roll initiative that gives them a variety of bonuses depending on the stance they chose. Like there is a precision stance that adds to the attack roll, a swift stance that grants an additional bonus action at high levels, and a power stance that allows you to cleave through one enemy and deal half damage to a creature within 5 feet of the target.
Look at the Martial classes in the PHB for 4e D&D (and the tomes on martial classes from the same.) Look at the effects on At Will attacks, it's a treasure trove of things to have a 'stance' or 'technique' do.
Give martials techniques like in anime. Each technique does something special. You could even attach it to a stamina bar. My favorite example of this is the main character from "Chivalry of a Failed Knight" Basically, this guy only has enough magic to conjure a basic katana and power himself up a little bit. He is still able to beat all of his foes through a mixture of sword techniques, and his trump card; a daily ability that stems from his magical ability, and increases his base stats 10 fold for a single minute. IIRC, he has 7 sword techniques that let him do all kinds of stuff like create an after image of himself, reflect the force of attacks, counter attack, pierce armor, delayed damage. In addition, he can mimic any fighting style after seeing it once. Using this, while unable to see them, he knows the location of invisible weapons or traps. Even though he seems really OP, that is only the case in a 1v1 fight. When a fight drags on for too long, or there are too many opponents, he struggles greatly. This character is able to compete against the strongest mages in the world (in his universe) despite having next to no magical ability at all. I played him in a homebrew campaign with my friends, and it was really cool.
Ah yea, blade steal that was actually perfect vision. Long story short: by understanding the opponent, he can see how they fight and can dodge before the attack is finished. (Dude caught an invisble arrow because he finally got serious, he even dodged an attack that wasnt visible and would cut the air). Ittou shura: condensing all of he magic power from 10 mins into a single minute, which he pushed even further and with a physical punishment pushed all of that into a split second for a single attack. The dude was OP but also very weak.
His powers are Blink, Deflection, Strike with Armor Piercing and/or Penetrating and Ongoing, Power Mimicry, Detection. He can take certain Cons or Flaws such as Charges, Unreliable, or Limited Power to simulate the stamina effects you mentioned. Crazy how easy it is to represent an effective martial character when you pick a system that doesn't suck shit.
You're damn right! I want to be an anime character! I want to side step so damn fast that it just LOOKS like I cast Mirror Image Tell me why I can't break Forecage with a punch, or use Judgement Cut from DMC5 but the Cleric can summon Pelor to jump an innkeeper for charging too much for a mug of ale. Casters can even bring themselves back from DEATH. Druids have Resurrection, Clerics have Revivify and even the Wizard - who's not supposed to get healing spells at all - can come straight back with Contingency or Clone!
maybe at higher levels, but yeah, "extraordinary" talents could be a martial equivalent of spells, and higher-end ones could be closer to the feats seen in myth. Maybe a high-level barbarian could generate shockwaves when his javelins strike true, or a mighty fighter could get a dragon aground by hitting one with a harpoon and tugging him in land. A rogue could stab someone in the heart without the victim noticing or be able to dodge projectiles and advancing, like leaping over them. Monks strike me as the flash-steppy kind and are the most likely to get the most leeway with spell-like effects, depending on their archetype
My memory might be hazy and I never played a lot of 4th edition, but I think the introduction of skills evened the balance a bit (not touching the other balance topics). Being able to attack while having some neat utility with it was cool idea. Especially the warlord skills usually gave utility/buffs to the party members that were nearby or at line of sight. As much as 4th edition is hated, I think it still tried. And I think it ties a bit to the "give martial arts supernatural abilities" somewhat. Just expand on it.
4e balanced things out so well that all Martial parties were viable. Heck, possibly the optimal support class in the game was the Warlord. A good friend of mine that played Fighters through 3.5 and loved The Book of Nine Swords, looked at the at will powers of Fighters in just the PHB 1 and just about cried. Because he had OPTIONS in combat, and was constantly being a CC nightmare in 4e games. No busted combos, not much (if any) optimization, just things like forcing people to move, screwing their movement over, soaking damage via THP from at will rider effects or screwing defenses with things like 'ratteling' on attacks. He actually went Warlord for a campaign just to show our group's rogue player how comedically disgusting the combo was he had found on his own.
I think the main flaw of 4e was that it really just looks tedious to run at a table, with so many mechanics dragging out combat more than it needs to be. I legit think that a party based CRPG video game based on 4e rules would be a lot of fun.
But remember guys! When 4th ED made sure that martial classes worked, it was wrong! No, I don't care if they did it poorly or not. The complaint is never that it was poorly done, it is that it was even done!
Yeah, the D&D playerbase has long been overrun by people who want spellcasters to be overpowered and martials to be underpowered. However, with the mass popularity of 5e compared to the earlier editions, the attitudes seem to have shifted a fair bit. There seem to be a fair bit of pushing towards buffing martials from a lot of content creators, who do have disproportionate influence through their fans and the discourse they create.
In some sort of way, 3.5 edition has responded to this same issue by just adding more alternatives to everyclass. Also, one thing 3.5 also did well with powerscaling is this : By level 5 every caster class overpowered any martial class, plain and simple. But at level 12 a lot of spells could be tossed away by another spell or effect. Invisibility became useless in battle because it became expected that every foe would have something like a See invisibility or True Seeing effect on it at this point, but not everyone had enough spot to beat the +30 hide of the rogue, therefore keeping the class relevant for sneak attacks and hiding. Similar thing for saves where you could make the equivalence of a Strenght/Constitution check instead of a Intelligence/Wisdom or Charisma check with the right feats, keeping the fighter safe against most of mind spells. Casters classes could cast 1 or 2 spells per turn, but every martial classes could get up to four attacks per turn (instead of just the Fighter class in 5e) without any help from magic items or feats or special powers. Speaking of spells, one big error of 5e in my opinion has been to separate the base 3 saves (Reflex, Vigor and Will) from 3.5 to 6 saves (one for each stats) and then design most of the one shot spells to need mind ability saving throw to resist, therefore leading to even more lack of balances between classes. It sure wasn't balance enough and casters still were overpower to the extreme, but I think 5e could get some inspirations from previous editions to keep track of balance between classes.
You made great points here, and what I want to bring attention to is that in response to the poor shape martials are in with their reliance on feats, all the feats they rely on will be nerfed into the dirt in One DnD. The crutch veritably kicked out from beneath them. Should be great.
I feel like the Battle Master moves should be something all full martials gets, instead of only 1 subclass of 1 martial gets Of course this list is not complete enough to compete with spells yet but with some additions and modifications, you can end up giving martials a number of options every level that can be extremely strong and useful both in and out of combat like spells with the only difference that they run of Strength, Dexterity, and maybe Constitution, instead of Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma Btw Charisma and Wisdom casters are so much more unfair than Intelligence casters cuz Wisdom gives you access to Perception, aka the single best skill you can ever have, and Charisma gives you a genuinely good shot at smooth talking your way out of every situation with exception of brainless monsters and beasts
And a niche of the fighter would be that they can use more and more battle maneuvers until they can do one with basically every attack, being the most technical martial combatant in an up-and-up fight.
One thing about magic items, casters don't get magic items that are just as strong They get magic items that are way fucking stronger Because a Marshall's magic item gives them a little bit of numerical bonus and a caster magic item lets them have five more spell slots with high level spells associated And the caster item is exclusive to casters because of atonement requirements
Much love for the PF2e point. Even within the 2e community people are constantly talking about how bad casters feel, but I think it's just because they're coming from 5e where casters can do...well, everything, as explained in this video. I have tried and tried to create characters in 5e based solely around martial classes, and always come up short of some gish warlock or artificer. Makes me sad because I don't think slapping spellcasting on everything is the right choice, but often it feels like it's needed to be at all effective.
The people complaining about Casters feeling weaker are usually newer players who, like you said, got into PF2E from 5e. Casters in PF2E are the supports, with debuffs, buffs, healing and the occasional aoe blasting (there are builds that maximize blasting and even a newly released class for that), but Martials are the main damage dealers while still being able to support the team through mundane healing or debuffs. Casters still get the benefit of a variety of spells and the ability to have a variety of damage types to use against enemies, since damage type weaknesses are actually a thing to give a shit about in PF2E.
Recently tried PF2e for the first time. Got handed a 5th level pregen fighter since everyone else was a spellcaster. Was like "oh well, I can handle the boredom since I'm learning". Then I saw the feature list on them was more than 1 page. I had 2-3 times the skill mods I normally did in 5e. My skills reflected the character's background. My weapon damage had multiple dice AND I could attack multiple times. AND I could still crit on a 3rd attack. I had multiple damage types. I had more reactions than just hitting a thing. And it ended up being the most fun fighter I had ever played. And, again, this was just a pregen.
You made a lot of good points here. I've been DMing for 4 years now, and I knew 5e had balance problems, but I thought they were mostly on the Dungeon Master's side of things, what with CR not working properly and such. This has made me heavily reconsider my previous opinions. I want to believe it's not as bad as it looks, but it's really hard to argue with the math. If it is that bad, I hope it's not unsalvageable. I love 5e and I have a lot of great memories with it. I think a fundamental imbalance on the players' end is the only thing that could persuade me to consider learning another system to replace 5e as my go-to. And even though I am willing to learn any number of new systems for the sake of giving my players a good experience, 5e is just so ubiquitous, and it can be hard to get people into other systems. I really hope that either this problem isn't as big as it looks or that it's something that I can still handle.
Two things I'd add is that damage based Cantrips now exist for every full caster; some of which deal as much or more damage than any given weapon. Running out of spells as a caster doesn't mean bonking something with your staff now; it means using firebolt. And this adds into my second point; in older editions, way back to c/x casting spells always remained a risk; as a caster had to declare that they were going to cast a spell at the top of the round before initiative was determined for that round; and if they got interrupted for any reason; they would lose that spell slot. A caster could spend resources without any benefit. And our modern editions (excluding 4e) have been built on a system that had that risk built in; without bringing the risk. And while it's fully understandable why they changed stuff; they didn't bring casters reward down along with their risk. So now casters have at will spells that let them compete with Martials damage output; and will only ever waste spell slots by playing badly.
Meanwhile, spellcasters can reshape reality and a lot of players complain about Counterspell. Like, motherfucker, you can cast a 3rd level spell multiple times a day that just makes a huge *area* around you do a ton of damage and slow enemies, and the martial can just... poke with a stick pretty damn hard. You don't get to complain about counterspell.
Honestly, to me the best way to buff martials is to implement a Ki point system to every class (just dont make the options trash like monk) Make it so the martial can buff themselves during combat. Let them spend points to give themselves an adrenaline boost and haste themselves, damage boost, speed boost, anything. Introduce more magic items that disable enemy spells. I came up with a magic item called "The Followers Gauntlets" where a martial can use a reaction to forcibly keep a telportation portal open by strength check against the enemies spell save DC. Stuff like that. Make it so that mundane items can be carried and do the same things as magic spells. Grenades that act like lower powered Fireballs with a fixed DC.
@@ReptillianStrike I've always felt like that's a necessary part of the powerful physical hero fantasy: to be able to overcome magical effects through sheer strength. if you look at the trailer for the new He-Man show, it actually shows him doing a bunch of things that I think every high level martial should be able to do - like parrying giant fireballs with a sword, leaping hundreds of feet across a battlefield in seconds, and using earthquake attacks by hitting the ground with supernatural strength. I am of the opinion that supernatural strength should firmly break suspension of disbelief, just as much as a wizard that can reign fire from the sky.
I am under the mindset that a level 20 Fighter or other Martial PC should basically be, regardless of subclass, at a minimum, effectively Toji Zenin from Jujutsu Kaisen. Because I've had this same point for a while, in order to a max level fighter to be comparable to a max level mage that can warp reality on a small scale, these people have to be blatantly superhuman.
Recently I’ve been using an adapted weapons system which I labeled “mastery weapons” this allows martials to pick up special feature for their weapons like extra damage, more range, easier access to status effect like grapples, shoves and prone alone with some homebrew options like damage armor, breaking concentration and applied a bleeding effect. When casters are still better this has somewhat evened the balance.
I started running a campaign recently that tackled this issue pretty well in my opinion. I added an entire combat art systems semi based on hunter arts from monster hunter, but it ended up being more like combat arts from fire emblem. I reworked proficiency to work in grades or ranks. Being higher rank with a weapon unlocks more advanced arts and or upgraded versions of early arts. Those who wield great swords get a whirlwind early on which gets upgraded to whirlwind + at greatsword rank C which gives it extra range and causes the attack to deal more damage the more targets it hits. I balanced these arts around adding durability to all weapons which scared my players at first but honestly hasn’t been bad. Durability is only drained when arts are used normal attacks drain 0. A weapon that reaches zero durability can still be used to attack with and suffers no damage penalty outside of being unable to land critical hits and if the the user crit fails with a weapon at zero it will break. I should also say weapons are easily repairable and have high base durability any blacksmith or player with the proper tools and proficiencies can repair or upgrade weapons. The punishments of having weapons be at zero were in hopes that folks would carry many weapons and have reasons to switch between them (I also limited player inventory on weapons to reasonable level. Meaning they just have to have an idea of where each weapon is stored like on their back or at theirs side or dangling from a backpack. The only way it is actually limiting is I don’t let people carry five of the same weapon. Two is fine, I just wanted people to use different weapons to play test more of the arts and the leveling system for proficiencies) During the phase of me building this system one of my players during a open floor kind of conversation said this felt like a buff to martials and asked what spell casters got which at the time I just yes and nothing but I did end up giving spell casters new spells and they always had the ability to use arts which some of which had a prerequisite of requiring spell casting and some quartstaff ones were specially built for spell casters like a cool one that breaks the quarterstaff draining the energy from it to cast a spells of 1st or 2nd level from your known spells list. I also let each player create a signature art. Which could be a brand new thing or an art that is locked to a weapon that their character can use on a different weapon which was fun. This whole thing also lead to me buffing some weapons by either giving them cool arts which is what I did for whips or adding new qualities to weapons like daggers in this game deal extra damage from behind and need a lower value to crit from behind. So long as the campaign I’m play testing this with goes well I plan on started to use this at all my future tables.
The simplest analytical point is the best, honestly. Fighters get THREE meaningful options at level the first, defining pretty much their pigeonholed role, capacities for the rest of their career. Wizards get NINE, at the least. This shit should have been fixed from D&DNEXT onwards. And it absolutely wasn't. Fuck.
I like the idea of giving martials supernatural powers; I honestly don't mind if DnD becomes like a shonen anime. One of the weird things about DnD 5th edition is the shear amount of power scaling in the classes and disparity with the theme of adventuring; its basically giving players the strength to kill Gods but not necessarily becoming Gods themselves. At that point, you might as well play a different system like Godbound, where insane power scaling IS the name of the game, and you actually become a God with all the responsibility, adventuring, and shonen-anime bullshit that it entails.
Playing in a homebrew demon slayer game, the way the dm and his team handled making the breathing styles and scaling them to level makes the martial classes we all are playing (casters weren’t allowed for obvious reasons) very fun and versatile. And it isn’t just giving us spells and “flavoring” it as “breathing styles”. Couldn’t help but think of that while watching this video. Ultimately I don’t care how weak martial classes are compared to casters, there is no way I’m ever going to stop playing echo knight, it’s just too fkn cool.
I think keeping martials mundane would work in old school dnd games which were balanced for such things as you mentioned, but 5e is simply a very different kind of game. I do wish there was a more mundane or low fantasy version of 5e though. The flashy abilities feel less magical when they are everywhere.
There is the Gritty Realism resting rules. Combine that with some Class bans and a story that avoids magic and you could get some fun stuff in. That or find and learn a different, low-fantasy system. On the plus side, those usually have their own world already pre-built.
@@justas423 Yeah, although it still seems easier to use a system that is built for that kind of setting from the ground up, just to have more resources that work with a low fantasy setting. That said, for those who are set on using 5e that is still a half decent option.
It really feels like the 4 martial/non-caster classes exist in a different world from the other classes. What are Paladins and Rangers as implemented in 5e if not just high fantasy versions of Fighters and Rogues?
As a Dm, and a raging min-maxer/power gamer, i have long since noticed the power of a pure caster and took note in my dming. Grappling, Shoving, restraining and sneaky attacks/traps are what i used often when handling my party. Unless they succeed an ability check that they usually don't have proficiency in their gonna get hit, and being grappled and or getting sneaked attacked/secretly poison can do so much for me. I also implement gritty realism for even more days to go without a long rest that usual casters needs so much, and for the warlock i especially have their patron come into play with special demands now and then followed by a Wis/Int Save to resist the command if they so choose(The command scales with every successful resisted save so eventually they'll crack) Also employ smart monster leader to "Target specific people if their doing something particularly important" Which usually goes for the caster first due to aoe damage reasons and usually cuz they seem the weakest physically so grappling and stabbing usually gets them immediately. Also i employ tactics like covering the casters mouth with enemy actions, restraining their hands etc etc I also make sure to keep at range, 200-300ft away where most spells cant reach, and use that to the monsters advantage and custom change most monsters resistance and immunity so people cant look up stats and resistance, enforcing a check to figure out a weakness/vulnerability first I also have it so monsters/opposing casters NOT yell out their spell name before hand so the casters have no clue what a spell is and before i describe the effects ill have them choose their reaction spells if they want to (as a trade off however I also use counter spell super rarely or almost never) All this leads to a certain uncertainty in spell casting that doesn't mess with the base class
In DnD though every class is a combat class, the defining feature of levels is being better at fighting. Yes spellcasters get access to all sorts of spells which can be useful for solving problems outside of battle, but are still ultimately about combat. I think the biggest difference is that some spells can trivialize an encounter (forcecage, fly, invisibility...)
There are also 2 whole other aspects to a story though, exploration and social encounters. Social encounters can be navigated by anyone, but someone with a bit of Charm or a Seeming or similar will have an edge, especially in espionage. Exploration is trivialized by spells like teleport, goodberry, find the path, and others. So martials can perform there, but generally not as well as a caster, while also not being quite as good at the combat side of things. I still think one of the most elegant solutions is making spells take more to cast. Not costly components, at least not necessarily, but in actions. PF2e handles this really well imo
I will say also the many spells (low level ones) trivialize the other "pillars" of 5e. Mainly survival/exploration. Tiny hut,most ranger abilitys,druids,creat food and water,find object, scrying and massage,pass whit out a trace and many many more just SOLVE the problem. It's not HELPS you solve it
Yeah the biggest thing I've felt martial classes need is just more options. A basic spellcaster with 2 attack cantrips immediately has 2 offensive options that they can use at any point. They usually have a wide range as well as some kind of secondary effect like forcing the hit creature to slow down or have disadvantage on an attack or the like. This is already so much more interesting than what most Martials are capable of when 90% of their combat potential comes down to "I run up and hit it with my sword." Imo, the reason the Battlemaster Fighter is the best martial subclass isn't because of the increased damage or support abilities or whatever. It's because it actually gives the fighter more *options* to use in combat. Suddenly now every attack becomes a choice of whether you want to spend a die for some extra beneficial effect. Now sure it isn't perfect, I personally have always felt like they should get more resources to work with considering that a Fighter could blow through all of their dice in a single turn and an Action surge, but it's something. Also I feel like Short Rests should be shorter. As in like half an hour or so or even less (I think starfinder has 10 minute short rests). Short Rest Classes imo should be able to reliably restock all of their resources between every fight, and having to stop for a whole hour is just a really long time that tends to put most people off of doing them even in a short-rest heavy party. Whereas I think that resting for about 10 minutes after a big fight would make more sense and could happen more reliably. But yeah I think that we essentially need Martial Spellcasting. I think it could be done if we worked off of the battlemaster subclass and basically just turned it into a Base Class Feature for all Martials. You could even have different "spell lists" for each Martial class by having say Barbarians only get access to the simpler and more offensive powers while say Rogues get access to the more control oriented and tricksey powers. And Fighters can be the Wizards of Martials and get access to everything. Now Obviously I'd want to expand the number of Maneuvers dramatically, probably mixing in the choices you get from the Arcane Archer and Matt's Gunslinger subclasses as well and coming up with more on top of that. But I think it could work. Gaining a new Maneuver every level to always give those classes something interesting to gain in addition to whatever their subclass is. And I mean hell we could still have the Battlemaster Subclass, just have it double down and get even more maneuvers and resources to spend them on. I'd probably also create Maneuvers that you can only pick after a certain level, similar to levelled spells. That way we could include some truly absurdly powerful stuff. If a wizard can bring down meteors with a level 9 spell, then a Fighter should be able to cut a mountain in half with a swing of their sword. Have a barbarian bring down their hammer and send an entire group of enemies flying from the impact. Get some good AoE abilities in there. If a Wizard can cast fireball by level 5 then a level 5 fighter should be able to cause a similar level of destruction. And like this is the cool thing, making martials cooler doesn't make casters any less cool. A Barbarian being able to pick up and throw a giant across the map doesn't negate the coolness of a wizard being able to bend the world around them to their will. It just lets the party all do more cool things together.
One idea I had was to make martial damage with weapons more based on the level of the martial class (like a 10th level fighter with a dagger deals 2D8 instead of 1D4) but I think your features idea is actually better. Just a looooot of work for a homebrew.
Never thought I'd see a video on this topic that's this popular come up in my recommended feed! I quit my own D&D blog and the 5e optimization scene about a year ago, but it's still great to see this issue be more recognized! Also so happy to see Form of Dread get the proper attention it deserves (if you're reading this, hi Haen!)
I think there are a lot of ways to improve martial, specifically I was interested in two: improving weapon systems and giving every martial a piece of battlemaster fighter. I didn't playtested them yet, but I still plan to try those in the future. Weapons remastered, revised is intriguing homebrew by Fungal Brews on Gm binder. It just adds so much to weapons like new alternative actions, status effects, and passive bonuses that make all weapons unique, and potentially can give martials an edge in power while giving them some new choices to use different weapons in different situations. It`s also pretty funny that we already have a solid number of spell-like effects with battlemaster maneuvers. They are useful while almost never overpowered, all can be nice fodder for any flavor of a warrior without taking any attention, and Tasha gave us some non-combat maneuvers. Just brainstorming here: all martials (maybe even fighters) can get 2 Super D`s and 2 maneuvers at the 1~3 levels. SD`s scale with PB: +2=2d4; +3=3d6; +4=4d8; +5=5d10 and +6=6d12. One of the first maneuvers can be dictated by the class (Barb - goading attack, monk - disarming strike, rogue - precision attack) while the rest are free, and they learn 1 new maneuver at every PB increase. Battlemasters can either be just amalgamated with the Champion, to finally make that archetype useful, or can just remain the same by having more maneuvers and faster scaling SD`s compared to other martials. Is it balanced? Better! It can be balanced! Just needs playtesting. The main problem I can see right now is that it`s a lot of different resources, so for new players it could be harder to keep in mind. Especially with Monk`s Ki and Rogue`s archetypes like Arcane trickster and Soulblade.
Love this idea. The weapons need to be revamped and ideally customizable along with the martial class rework. The whole point is they are fighting with sticks and sharpened metal, and last I checked getting chopped in the head by a sharpened sword is at least as lethal as being exposed to fire and other spells. The 1D8 to 1D12 weapon damage only levels of power HAS to change.
@@mrosskne No not really. Unique weapons give alternative action options and conditions in the fights, to spice up the main gameplay. While maneuvers could be used for many things, especially if we add new non combat maneuvers like in Tasha's.
One thread which will always live rent free in my head was one I read about the crossbows in Pathfinder 1 and a prestige class associated with it. Specifically how Crossbows had no utility besides a backup weapon for a Wizard and why the whole prestige class for martials to specialize in it was just a trap that did nothing but lock the player into an intentionally underpowered playstyle.
A dev came in and explained that it was physically impossible for a human to multiattack with a crossbow or shoot "Harder", thus they didn't give it any ability to attack more than once per turn or scale damage with stats. He posted a video of a sharpshooter doing rapid fire target shots and stated that, if this was what a specialist with optimal equipment capped out at, letting martials accomplish better with a crossbow would be ludicrous.
Someone replied "Alright. What UA-cam video did you use to decide the upper limits of a Wish spell?"
For some reason, that guy never got a reply.
This is going to sound silly, but I have a theory on why martial classes suck.
It is literally just the nerds versus the jocks situation but in tabletop form.
I have to give this to the developer. Magic is allowed to bend or shape reality because it's... well... magic. A mundane (nonmagical) act cannot bend or shape reality. It's the sad truth. In the early DnD novels, the spellcasters of each group were the undisputed most powerful members.
@thewonderfullymadejaraid7015
all I hear is a whole lotta yap why give illusion of choice if you won't let me choose how I want to play if you wanted me to play magic class make the only classes magical don't pretend like I could be some arbiter of justice using my bare hands if all I get is a sub Optimal character.
It's fantasy isn't it so if you can be merlin I should be able to be belwoulf or Hercules or kratos or asura any guy who can solve problems with strength and will sometimes with a little cunning,
The point of a game is fun I Want fun
@@kringle7804 I'm not against against martials becoming superhuman. I'm against them being able to alter the physics of the world around them. Homelander is supremely superhuman, but he is still bound by the pyshics of the world around him. He can't pick up a plane in the comical Superman style because the pinpoint pressure would cause him to just go straight through the plane. It doesn't matter how superhuman a fighter is, he still can't alter the constants of the physical world around him. It doesn't matter how supreme his ability is, he can't force a mundane crossbow past its inherent physical limitations. Please be more respectful to people who have different opinions from yours.
@@thewonderfullymadejaraid7015 let's take a step back if we look at the og commet the devs took a video of a professional firing a crossbow the issue with that is the only reason it takes so long to fire is the poundage of the crossbow eventually if your strong enough you could fire almost rapidly if need be,
So due to the fictional setting crossbows should be able to fire more then once depending on strength and they should be able to hit harder depending on poundage of said crossbow
"You just want to give martials anime powers"
"YES THAT IS MY ENTIRE POINT MUNDANE PEOPLE ARENT DOING THE THINGS ADVENTURERS DO"
respect+ for the honesty mate
well you know.
step one
wati till almost midnight, intensify polymorph castng until permanent, rinse and repeat.
one hundred permanent polymorph stacks later.
Oh cool, you got vaporize, but wait your polymorph is gone. uh oh, you are at full health.
you can't even get nocked out, as you go to next plymorph when incapacitated.
What's that, got paralized, oh where did the poison go/
Oh right, wherever the polymorph went.
100% it needs to be like full metal alchemist basically where the magic and martial arts can actually stack against one another, avatar is another good example.
@@brawlyaura5799 For real, 4e was the best edition for martials by far.
Some people want that "just good at sword" fantasy.
If you want more fwoosh in your swing there is always multiclassing.
(I do agree that martial are underwhelming if you don't optimize the heck out of them and that's especially bad for new players)
@@brawlyaura5799 Nah. 4e had a TON of other problems that had nothing to do with class design. 4e was the first time WoTC tried to get rid of the OGL, and its why what they tried to pull earlier this year was so utterly moronic. Paizo's Pathfinder getting a chance to get a foot in the door was entirely due to this flub, and a bit more than 10 years later, they made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE all over again!
This is what happens when you change out the C-Suite and don;t bother to hire people who have a clue.
It also doesn't help that 5e essentially got rid of Feats, at least as they existed in 3.0 and 3.5. They could at least close the gap a little bit.
3.5 actually did precisely what's been suggested and created the Book of Nine Swords. A lot of people complained about it, but it really was the correct answer, mostly because the complainers had no real clue what they were talking about!
Thanks to 3e, supernatural is a loaded word. Some abilities should be "extraordinary," but monks should absolutely have "supernatural" features.
This, this, this, a thousand times this! Simply presenting some more "out there" physical abilities under a tag different from "supernatural" (which has come to mean "magical in origin because of said bias), it'd be easier to digest for the pearl clutching sort, making everyone happy. I agree on the monks, but that should be a choice of the player (offering both supernatural and extraordinary or "mythical" options)
@@mistery8363 I agree on options for monks, it fits the class.
For me the only value those words have is the answer to the question "can I use this in a dead magic plane"?
STRIKE
Touch • Baseline Rank (Might) or (Martial Arts) • 1 Hero Point per rank
You have some kind of damaging close combat attack like claws, energized fists, or a unique melee weapon. You can use this Power to both perform and defend yourself against close combat attacks. You must specify the kind of damage inflicted when you buy this Power (unless you apply the Weapons Con (discussed below). Occasionally, a more descriptive term may be used when the Power inflicts physical damage. For example, Strike (Bite) or Strike (Claws) may be used in place of Strike (Physical). This is purely for flavor and has no mechanical effect.
I like the split of supernatural being "magical bullshit" and extraordinary being "nonmagical bullshit"
Why do people say martials should *have* to play by immersive low fantasy rules if casters don't? In a lot of low-fantasy magic is definitely powerful, but tends to have a lot of very exacting rules, restrictions, and drawbacks to it to make that power feel earned in the first place.
There’s already somatic, verbal, and material requirements to spells, plus your spell slots and level and background. You could add more material requirements or something, or reduce spell slots, but that could quickly make martials better if you only get to cast a couple times and they can bonk every turn
@@muscularclassrepresentativ5663 For me, the main oddity was that spells have the same speed as melee attacks. That is, one move lasts 6 seconds. And all a fighter can do is one blow with a sword. Professionals can do 6 kicks in 6 seconds.
If they really want realism, then let the warriors have a realistic number of hits.
I mean the reasons why they did that is to avoid mage player getting bored during combat, if their spells needed two turn to be cast it means they only play every 2 turn order , if a turn order last 20 minute they basically play once every 40 minute, while martial would play twice within the same time frame.
One think that could be done is adding more gameplay to casting a spell, like maybe you need to generate a temporary ressources, or reach a requirement to cast a spell, this pretty common in board game and card game, that way casting a spell is still a multiturn adventure, but you play every turn order.
But trying to homebrew this on DnD, mean doing a complete rework of casters in general. @@СинийЕгипетскийКот
@@СинийЕгипетскийКот a pro can do a lot more than 6 kicks in 6 seconds, i can easily do 10 with one leg in 6 seconds
@@СинийЕгипетскийКот Honestly, pros can do 12 strokes in that amount of time. It's not that hard.
The fact that some casters honestly make for better martials than actual martials is hilarious to me
A high 20s AC caster that comes off the ground at level 2 instead of level 3 is absolutely bonkers to me
You ever try to hit an bladesonv wizard? You can't they can get about 23 ac at level one
@@tijn0770 They can't even be a bladesinger at level one since the subclass starts at level 2.
@@cheezycrusty oh mistake sorry 23 az at level 2 yeah
@@tijn0770 @Tijn 07 OK I'll take the bait.
At level 2 a wizard will have 16 dex and 16 int with point buy, and a leather armor.
They have 14 AC.
Twice per day (so 2 encounters out of the 6 to 8 recommended in the dmg) they can use their bladesong, so I'll take the 3 bonus to AC it gives and average it out to 1 AC for the whole day. (if i'm being generous)
Three times per day they can cast shield (I won't judge the person that choses to do that, but I definitely believe that it's extremely inneficient at this level) which gives us an uptime of 1/8 if you consider 6 fights that last 4 turns. So shield ups your average AC in a day at that level by 5/8=0.625
With bladesong and shield I get to 14+1+0.625=15.625 AC average on a full day.
Your initial statement was "you can't hit a lvl2 bladesinger".
I just showed that except for three rounds per day, they definitely don't do what you claimed.
A good why to explain this system. All of the Casters gain the ability to channel their innate magic in some way, so because Martials can't channel their energy outwards, it begins stockpiling within the character and gain supernatural feats. Totally agree this would help.
Agreed
One fix I made is that there's a list of feats martial characters are able to obtain when they get an ASI, in addition to the normal ASI or feat.
Some may say it's unfair, but when your party members can kill an army by pelvic thrusting it's fine if the guy who fights good can fight a little better
@@sev1120 I had a completely different idea in mind. Essentially a spell system for Martial classes that allows them to do normally impossible tricks. The idea is that whatever Magic exists can be channeled through spells OR through Martial Technique, though both are somewhat mutually exclusive, so the Martial system and Caster system can not exchange slots.
For example, the Rouge and Monk might get "Blink Movement" which would allow them to use a bonus action(in combat) to move without being spotted, think like a ninja moving so fast they just blur pass, or even just appear elsewhere. While a Fighter might gain the ability to just autopass a saving throw for spells once per long rest.
If you want an idea, it would basically be just looking up what characters like Batman, Captain America, or any other 'powerless' hero or villain achieve. Then using that as a baseline for the system.
The French webseries "Noob" has a nifty explanation in their fictional MMO's lore. Basically, people naturally have cells that receive and store mana (mana is only generated by the gods of the setting, people don't have inner/natural mana). And they works exactly like classic muscle cells.
So a warrior for exemple is spending his time training and hitting things have his physical, brawny muscles developping more and more, but at the same time his magical cells are are atrophied and weakened by lack of use.
A wizard on the other had will train in tapping into as much mana as possible, mastering how to use it more effectively, etc. And as a result his magical cells are multiplying in number and quality, while his mundane muscles get weaker.
A hybrid like a paladin will balance his training in martial and magic, but because he tries to catch two rabbits at once and can't train as much into one or the other like the wizard or warrior. He is physically stronger than the wizard but have less mana and spell power, and vice versa for the warrior.
But just like a wizard still have some muscles despite not using them, even the most non-magical inclined fighter has some traces of magic in him, which open the door to some not quite mundane abilities for those classes, like, the barbarian rage is also powered by those little magic remnants, which explains some of the weird stuff like accelerated healing they have in that state.
literally just use Prowlers and Paragons. dnd is a shit system.
I feel like the best way to handle the whole "mundane martials" issue is to take a page from mythology heroes, as you said. Beowulf isn't explicitly magical, but he is very much superhuman. He does stuff real people can't do because... idk he's strong. I feel like that kind of mythical hero who definitely is magical, but doesn't appear so, is the way to go here.
Yeah that and things the the Illiad are excellent sources, guys who are so strong they go toe to toe with gods, with no real explanation.
@@cirkleobserver3217 Just gonna say, Achilles being practically invincible except for his heel, and eventually dying of a poisoned arrow to said heel *reeks* of being a fighter with like, 47 AC or some BS but then finally an assassin rogue crits him on a surprise round.
@@cirkleobserver3217 There isn't one because their world view didn't need one.
They knew that someone could be "as strong as five men" it was just kinda rare, so why not 25 it'd just be rarer. 100? well that must be incredibly rare. 1,000? A man worthy of legends but without a concept of a cap on human ability...WHY NOT?
That's the core of mythic martials, there is no cap on how far mundane ability can go, just WHAT IT CAN DO. Your martial can't hurl fireballs (humans can't do that, so that's magic.), but he can 100% chuck mountains (humans can pick up heavy things, this is just capless).
the thing is that this is already the case. the guy complains about martials being too realistic while comparing them to a dragon in terms of strength
@@incendiious Yes while they hit as hard as a dragon and have a lot of hp, now apply martial abilities to ANYWHERE else.
Do your martials swim for three weeks while conserving their strength? Run on clouds? Shatter mountains? All of these are things martial characters do in mythology.
High magic setting:
Give martials anime powers
Low magic setting:
Limit magical capabilities?
D&D just doesn't really work as a ruleset for a low magic setting. But if you want a low magic setting with D&D rules, your best bet is limiting the campaign to lvl 1-4.
I like Warhammer Fantasy's option of "if your spellcaster botches his spell he might just fucking explode & die instantly."
@@KingPiccolOwned Good ol self detonating bright wizards
@@KingPiccolOwned it happens quite commonly even in DnD lore lol
all wizards get the wildmagic feature but only the negatives (slightly nerfed to help you survive)
while wildmagic caster istelf leans into that chaos (high risk, but also the reward exists)
Make mages half casters, already half casters 1/3 casters, and get rid of subclasses that give spells (arcane trickster, etc). Basically slow magic progression.
I think it's so strange that martials have terrible stamina. Wizards get so many spells every level, fighters don't even get a second action surge until level 17. Imagine a wizard with one spell slot.
"fighters dont even get a second action surge" because... they get extra attack?
@@largeman2316 And casters get extra cantrip damage, what's your point?
@@weaponizedpizza8825 I think a second action surge at late levels is fine, fighters can do plenty without a second action surge. I agree with some stuff in the vid, i do think martials need a serious buff, but i dont think a second action surge is really necessary later, and i say that as someone who plays a whit ton of fighter
Warlock
Agreed, remember how everyone whines about Warlock not having more spell slots?@@Просто_Иван
I continue to say that the best and probably only way to improve ttrpg martials is to treat them exactly like spellcasters (via "stances" and "combat moves").
That’s definitely a viable route, but idk, I like having differences between martials and spellcasters. I have to believe there is a different way.
@@jackalltrades1293 There isn't! But hope is important.
@@jackalltrades1293 In a way that difference might be simply the magic one of them have. Think of all the rarely used spells like jump, steel wind strike, expeditious retreat and so on. These things could have been developed to emulate what the high level martials could do without magic. Imagine playing a fighter and being able to run and jump better than a scrawny warlock who had to make a deal for their power and can somehow still keep pace with your years of training.
@@doxkowalski915 I can see stuff like that ya, so long as it doesn’t work exactly like spells do. So like making them passive abilities and whatnot. As long as martials, casters and half casters have a clear difference in their design philosophy I’m fine with it, and all for giving martials that good shit.
@@jackalltrades1293 And that already provides a worldbuilding concept and a basis for potential conflict between the two types. We have physically frail ordinary humans able to reshape reality, and superhumans who can tank a dragon bite and then bite back while leaping after the retreating beast.
The funny thing is that when people build Martials, the best Martials are those that end up dipping into Spellcaster classes or feats.
And very often they build on half-caster foundations, like the Gloom Stalker Ranger, rather than non-caster classes. Standard optimization for a crossbow build (not necessarily the absolutely most minmaxed) is V-human (or custom lineage) Gloom Stalker 5/Assassin 3/Battlemaster 3 with Archery style, Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert. This is about as solid as you get as a martial dmg dealer without multiclassing into a dedicated spellcaster class and it *still* uses spellcasting as a Ranger.
@@TheTdroid what you said, and also let us look at the majority of the new, official subclasses published for martials... how many of them seem to have magic/magical-like abilities that they gain as a result of their subclass choice?
I disagree. I’m in a 3-15 level campaign at level 12 and so far my battle master/totem master has struck the fear of God into our enemies.
@@harmonlanager2670
So, you have to be level 12 before you strike fear into your enemies? When Fireball is a LV3 spell?
@@harmonlanager2670curious what the rest of your party is doing then
If you have any full casters in your oarty, I can tell you they're playing their classes wrong, are just being very nice to you or you're very oblivious if you don't notice them overshadowing you
One of the most infuriating things about this entire debate is when older D&D players hear these points, chuckle and say something to the effect of "Well, that's just how crazy spellcasters can be when you know what your doing!" As if this is some kind of super secret hidden perk of knowing the game mechanics.
Its the exact same smug shit eating energy you see in someone who wins RTS's by shamelessly spaming cheese builds and then laughs about it.
Yeah. I don't know why, but it seems that so-called veterans of D&D are allergic to actually balancing the game. They want wizards to be broken and overpowered compared to martials for some reason. Since we're freely allowed to multiclass, we're never going to get a balanced system, but we should at least be able to expect balance singleclass characters.
Magic will always be stronger than hitting people with stuff
@@MrNoot39449 Not if the people hiting things with stuff are doing it magicaly.
@@GrimgoreIronhide but the point of martias is that you don't do magic, you just really strong and hit stuff. No magic.
@@temmehtremmep8742 Nah the point of martials is to hit stuff, and not cast spells...but hitting stuff really hard, while being really hard to hit...
Might I suggest a homebrew creator named Laser Llama? They've made amazing alternatives to the martial classes that changes some small things, but also gives all martials a thing called "Exploit Dice". Basically it's Battle Maneuvers but base class, way more options, and each different martial class gets their own list to choose from, just like spells.
Wait I'm so glad I wasn't the only person to think of this! Thanks, now I have something to compare my own homebrew to!
I will concur it's an excellent homebrew. He does it for all the martials and it just works better.
That looks good
@@АнтонДемин-ю4з It is very good! Highly recommend a check
That's a great example as opposed to the stupid ideas some people are suggesting xD
Also, casters get hirelings earlier, cheaper, and in greater number than anyone else because it's listed as one of those many options they can take. They're called 'animal companion', 'find familiar', 'animate dead', 'conjure woodland beings', etc.
And several spells that assist in constructing a Stronghold, including spells that just straight up give you one.
Nah, if hirelings to you are 3 buddies that carry your torches you're doing it wrong. A fifth level wizard gets a tower and a fifth level fighter gets an army.
@@merlintym1928 there can I look this up?. 3rd edition or homebrew
@@derljackson5365
MCDM Strongholds and Followers.
The book is rather expensive but the basic idea is:
Fighters: Keeps
Casters: Towers
Priests: Temples
Thieves: Buisness and Spycraft.
A wizard could build a keep, but the fighter will raise more soldiers faster, and be able to train them better. Besides, they'd rather refine, enhance and edit their spells in their tower. They'll get an alchemist or sage and thats good enough to keep them happy but when the mighty host comes barreling from the hinterlands they're gonna need soldiers to hold the field of battle and nobody does war better than warriors. Priests attend, worship, commune with and summon higher powers, wizards mangle the nature of matter to taste, but rogues bathe in silver and secrets, and barbarians gather their savage horde.
Economic, political, and military power rival and even dwarf the mystical and divine.
Full rules in the book, but once a fighter gets his keep, he also gets 3 units of soldiers. There are random tables for whether its infantry, archers, calvary, or more exotic fantasy stuff, how heavily armored they are, how much experience they have. Stuff like that. Its not so complicated but as long as you have rules for armies and big battles to use, and fighters are better at getting those armies, and sole wizards can't stop those armies(rules of warfare make casters obsolete at scale), fighters have a tangible mechanical advantage over casters in terms of politics.
In certain campaigns and settings, a wealthy rogue running a thieves guild can be similarly powerful, but mileage can vary. Requires alot more work to make intrigue stronger than a fireball, as opposed to making a big army stronger than a fireball.
Hope helps :)
time to use all my spell slots on animate undead and start an army consisting of 9600 skeletns as level 20 wizard
A *boring* but *efficient* way to buff martials are to make "non-magical" weapon upgrades of standard weapons. Why do so many deal a mere piddly 1D8? A standard rapier is 1D8, but a Refined Rapier could be 2D8, and a Duelist's Rapier 3D8 per hit. Weapons could be moddable with equipment martials find, and none of them count as magic. If this was built into the 5E system, martials would be guaranteed to excel in dealing damage to single targets in a much more significant way, allowing at least the satisfaction of single-target alpha strikes to compensate for the lack of options. Then when you throw in legendary magical weapons on top of that, they would be powerful enough to compare with casting a mid-to-high level spell every turn without the awful, trash spell slot system.
There is a great homebrew book Valda's Spore of Secrets that adds a craftsman class along with a robust weapon upgrade system. You can use it to customize weapons in the world which would make having a Dwarven longsword a big deal because it can do x better than an ordinary one, and z worse than one forged from steel or something. Really recommend having a look.
I've recently been learning pf2e as I'm planning on making the switch from 5e. And one of the magic item enchantments you can get is striking enchantments, which do exactly what you described. They add damage dice
Starfinder has that for its weapons. Dunno about PF1e and 2e, I'll admit.
Now that is a cool idea!! I don't find that boring at all, especially if the players go on adventures for or craft such items themselves, or with a mentor!
@@brysonorosa632 Glad you like it. When I called it "boring," I meant that it effectively makes martials stronger without giving them any neat new options, and options definitely should also be part of the solution. But even just a raw damage buff by itself mitigates so much of the power disparity between casters and martials. Add some abilities on the weapons or build more abilities into the martial classes and then they're set.
I haven't played much of DnD 5e, or any ttrpg anyhow. But after looking through the books for 5e for a bit, I feel like the entire game design is stacked against the martials.
1) Multiattack doesn't stack. So if you try too multiclass, which you most likely are doing, you end up having dead levels because they don't stack.
2) The subclass features all conflict with your turns. Example: Rune Knight's runes all require either a bonus action, or a reaction. But then you can't use Giant's Might. Or you can use Giant's Might, but won't be able to use your runes. Or if you've multiclassed with Barbarian, you can't Rage when you use runes. Or you can't use Flurry of Blows if you've done it with Monk. Caster's don't have to worry about a bonus action or reaction because their actions are all streamlined and useable with any action.
3) Caster's main offensive stat ends up as an even better defensive stat. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves all have incredibly debilitating effects if you fail. And since any caster would have one of those stats maxed, they're less likely to be under those effects. But martials can't do that, or else they'll lose out on damage, hp, or utility.
4) And my biggest point, is this. Why is it, that for my martial character to be even a fraction as useful as a caster, I have to build them with a very specific build. What if my character isn't an archer, or doesn't utilize two handed weapons, or polearms. That means that for me to be able to do the one thing my class is supposed to do, I have to sacrifice creativity, customization, and my own choices to be able to do the thing I am even able to do.
That point, of how martials have to sacrifice player expression and creativity, is to me why martials need to be changed. It goes against the whole point of DnD if I have to make that choice or fall behind.
Yeah. If you want a martial you can build in various different ways, you need to go half-caster for the spells and supernatural abilities. Not only are Pala and Ranger neck in neck with Fighters on the martial side all the way to lvl 10 just from their base class, but their subclasses and spellcasting lets them do so much more, includiing keeping up with Fighters dmg most of the time into higher lvl as well.
If you look at the most versatile and powerful characters who are first and foremost martials, they're all half-casters. Gloom Stalker, Drake Warden, Oath of Ancients/Vengeance etc. And because they are half-casters, they often get outright supernatural features other martials don't. Aura of Protection is one of the best defensive passives in the game. Umbral Sight is amazing for being an assassin type character, offering great offensive and defensive benefits. Drake Wardens get a frikkin' dragon mount!
And even with half-casters, if you want to avoid the hand crossbow / glaive choice, you have to multiclass for specific features. You want a dual wielder? Have fun with your Ranger 5->Rogue, because that's the version that kinda works, and even then you need the DM to give you badass weapons to keep up with a crossbow expert.
I’m not an optimizer at all and neither are my players. But watching this made me realize that in my the current game I’m running, my decision to let the fighter a retainer and the rogue a lycanthropic buff - which I’d initially planned to balance out by giving the casters little bonuses too - was actually an inadvertently mechanically wise move! I wonder if other DMs tend to unconsciously help their martials out.
Feel free to buff casters in ways that specifically buffs their enjoyed spells that are mechanically weak
@@fadeleaf845 YES! I hate how bad ice spells are! The fact that only fire and a handful of other spells are good SUCKS! You just can’t do anything truly flavorful without absolutely sabotaging your character!
@@jemm113 I'm late, but Ray of Frost and Ice Binding Ice are great spell, they just don't get any other great after that 😅
I think how the anime Overlord handles martial/melee fighters is a perfect example of how to do it for dnd. Everyone can swing a sword or punch but certain classes have access to a wide moveset unique to that class, in addition to movesets universally shared by everyone who can stab stuff
A big point in that setting is that some of what 'Martial Arts' can do, there ARE no spells in the system to replicate. This on top of seemingly infinite stacking, including of the same effect (Ability Boost, Greater Ability Boost, etc) lets those artists put out utterly bonkers nonsense to hit stupidly out of their weight class. The protagonist's literally divine level raw stats convince the locals they have some wicked strong Martial Arts they use in battle when they fake being a fighter.
This suggests things like 'effective teleportation' travel speeds and 'level that building with the shockwave from my striking the ground' or 'shrug off a napalm bath' are well within known Martial Arts capacities and the closest thing to a limit on them seems to be how many sustained effects (or active effects if you like) a Martial Artist can strain their body to have running at once. Meaning those abilities are essentially toggles, not limited in use within a given time period. That kind of 'doesn't take a move or attack action' to swap effects around, sometimes turning things on only for a single strike, is a big damn deal.
Heck, a swordsman combined a quick draw attack and essentially 'Blindsense if it was a 9th level spell level of power' into an attack that is easily hypersonic, if not 'measurable fraction of light speed'. Given the mind shattering level disparity between the supernatural ability using monsters and spell casters in Overlord who take these abilities as legitimate threats and the fodder level Martial Artists producing them? Assuming a similar scaling, a high level Martial Artist would be less 'improbably skilled swordsman' and more 'wind of destruction' or 'humanoid typhoon'.
So 4e?
@@Sorain1 Yeah, that's why in my homebrew I have something called "temporary ability score" where (example) someone can self-cast "lesser dexterity" to increase their DEX by 2 for 1 minute. These spells being better for martial classes as it increases their DPR, unlike spell which do fixed damage, this way they can catch up. These spells can act like class features for martial classes (though are also available to be cast as spells). But what I typically do is I give 1 "lvl 1" spell slot per martial class level to cast those spells for simplicity. I was really inspired by overlord lol
@@Eemi_Seppala 4e is the best edition mechanically and I'm tired of pretending its not.
unfortunately many of those abilities still just deal damage which is the least effective way to engage with combat, so it's a terrible example.
Interesting comparison I thought of: While a 20th level Fighter is King Arthur, Tristan or Aragorn, a 20th level caster is Merlin, Morgan LeFey or Gandalf.
One side is entirely human in limitation, the other is so powerful that the story has to sideline them so they don't simply solve every problem.
I agree with the comment, but to be pedantic for a moment, Aragorn is explicitly called a ranger.
Except Arthur had Excalibur....
A level 20 fighter should be Beowulf or Heracles,not Arthur or aragorn
@@khristian625 But mechanically he would be a fighter.
don't see he conjuring anything or beeing a half caster in any way.
@@gabrielamaral978 the kingsfoil plant to slow a magic blade. The army of undead that follows him into battle. You don’t see a lot of magic in general in lotr.
NGL, making martial characters more anime sounds hella fun. Imagine moving so fast in between targets that you're essentially flashstepping, or attacking so many times it looks like you're casting Judgement Cut.
Or you know, you could just play Druid. A caster that can turn into a martial as a bonus action.
Or bladesinger. Or hexblade warlock. Or battle smith artificer.
Hexblade can get up to 3 attacks. Battle Smith can do the same at 9th level with haste. Bladesinger has ridiculous AC and the blade cantrips make you comparable in damage to a martial.
In my homebrew setting, I make it clear that there is a force in the cosmos that is drawn to feats of heroism and bravery. They call it the Dust of Divinity, but nobody really knows what it is or how it works. It's just some background element that explains in-universe how a raging barbarian can fall from the edge of space and survive the impact with the ground. Heroic warriors are literally superhuman, and that's just the way of things. This makes it reasonable to give out crazy anime powers if it suits the character. How does the fighter swing his axe so hard that that it creates a 60 foot cone of razor wind? I dunno, man. Must be the dust.
the ability to do straight up fate style excaliblasts would instantly turn fighter into my number one favorite class
i would love that but would that not be just the paladin's smite@@thesatelliteslickers907
Druid don't be the best class in the game challenge impossible
giving martials fighting stances and being able to swap midbattle and other options to dynamically affect combat would be fun. features like tunnel fighter were fun albeit strong. i really hope wotc fixes martials in one dnd, but i doubt it since it is WIZARDS of the coast after all...
Wish the would bring those fighting styles back. I always thought that most champion features should have been base fighter features. The fact you get 2 fighting styles should go to every fighter and if they did, you could have these really strong fighting styles available only at later levels
I wont to be this kind of guy. I really dont. But pathfinder 2e does it. I only played a few ones shots .but thats how its done in 2e
I once tried to think about something like this after playing DMC4, though I dropped the idea because I couldn't translate it well to a RPG I was playing at the time
Play a better system.
There was a 3rd party suppliment for Pathfinder 1e that I tried once, and given they are different systems, and it overcompensated for the martial. This was level 3 and one of my players was always full health, could teleport, and there was something else really annoying (it might have been an AOE that oneshot creatures that should be a challenge alone, I am not sure). Everyone saw it was busted and even the player decided that it was a bit too much. I guarantee he would have been still outclasses at later levels but you have to be careful at those delicate lower levels.
This is one of the BIGGEST reasons 4e will always be my favorite D&D.
None of this Martial = mundane bullcrap limiting their abilities to being "realistic". It was a source of POWER every bit as extraordinary as Arcane, Divine, etc.
What if martial arts were like how they are portrated in Baki:
Inhumanly strong hyper-disciplined fighting machines who can do shit like make someone fall over with their pinky finger, see biological weak points like a recent wound or disease, stop a shotgun blast by hardening their pecs and send people flying 100+ feet with a one-inch-punch.
Anyone remember Tide of Iron? Good times
@@HaispawnerThat wouldn't even be enough IMO, you'd have to turn that to 11.
Cause or stop earthquakes with a stomp? more like cause earthquakes with a stomp, creating fizzures under enemies, reimagine their bones to turn their limbs into whips, walk through glass, punch air? What about just dislocating your bones entirely for extra range. Poison hand? What about poison blood and poison breath? Fill the room with toxic gas just by hyperventilating. Punch wind at people! Air slashes! Reactions that allow you to position behind an enemy and deal damage in a "nothin personnel kid" moment!
Leaping up into the air to attack a flying target with a falling sword slash! Being able to boomerang your weapon just naturally if it hits someone! Being able to protect the whole party from dragons breath with a shield or weapon parry! Being able to parry anything!
prowlers and paragons is better
@@tellmeninetails5819 Exactly
Honest to Goodness, it feels like we need "Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords" now more than ever, a 3.5 supplement that did exactly what you would want: martial characters with multitudinous Stances and Maneuvers that function as Martial "Spellcasting" but with flashy stunts and, more importantly, tons of options (even if just for three classes made for the book)
I hate it, but I hate it because half of the content of weaboo fightan magic is so horrendously worded that they actually make those classes broken AF.
If they can fix the wording of it however, it would be perfect for fixing martial issues without rendering non martial useless by comparison.
@@Rebellions dreamscarred press updated the book of nine swords for Pathfinder 1st edition and they did an excellent job fixing the problems.
@@apexnova2947 okay, question number 2. Does Diamond Mind still operate on multipliers?
That is the one school I ban the shit out of even when I *do* allow that book in 3.5
My worlds just are not motivated enough for Vergil Roleplay.
@@Rebellions I honestly couldn't say, because the manuvers and "schools" have been primarily renamed, and theres more then before. I don't ban anything cuz I have just accepted that my players are gonna be powerful and my goal is to allow them to make what they want to make, and I have never had a martial break the game like a caster.
@@Rebellions Nothing goes on multipliers in Path of War from what I remember (Which is what Apex Nova was talking about) and it's instead a bunch of flat bonuses, bonus dice, and extra abilities like being able to counter attack to force an enemy's strike to miss or an acrobatics roll to dodge a blow, etc etc, that kinda stuff. It is nothing like Nine Swords was other than the Stance and Maneuver system as they even got rid of weapon dependence for schools outside of stances or maneuvers that specifically call for a school's weapon type. So I could take Scarlet Throne which is normally used with one handed blades and instead use a mace or a spear.
3.5's Tome of Battle gave fighters supernatural abilities in the form of combat stances and maneuvers. Although it also had prestige classes that let you make gish builds able to use spells and combat maneuvers.
The vast majority of those abilities are extraordinary, not supernatural, outside of the desert wind and shadow hand disciplines. A lot of it was certainly beyond anything possible IRL but it did not draw on any kind of magical force to create its effect.
The variety was also pretty oversold. The vast majority of maneuvers were "hit it a little different" and do extra damage or bypass a defense often both in higher levels.
Don't get me wrong. I *love* Tome of Battle and I still play 3e to this day. It's just not nearly as clean a fix as is often touted, even if it does help a lot.
I think people should look to mythical characters like Hercules or Lu Bu. Unimaginable feats of strength, cunning, and courage. Have fighters become immune to fear and charm, give barbarians the ability to throw dragons, etc. Either that or have spellcasting actually be hard to learn.
All of them still get owned by Force Cage.
i would limit the spells they get to use, all that power needs to pay an equivalent price, either cut their spell pool in half or maybe have some wild magic going off after 3 spells with chaotic results?
I feel like the martial being terrible makes a lot of sense. Martials are supposed to be weak, because magic is the only way people can improve, so while martials reach their peak, magicians constantly improve over and over
This also makes sense because we never heard of a important DnD character being martial but we heard them being magic users in some way
@@djmewtwo6981 why are martials supposed to be weak?
@@mrosskne because they don’t have a reason to be strong. Magic is manipulating a cosmic force, martials just punch hard, there’s no way to compare between them. Martials are by default, flawed. Instead of martials we could get combat mages
All martial should get something like the Maneuvers. Each class has its own list of maneuvers and each subclass gets access to special maneuvers from other lists.
That's my rebalance idea but I ain't doing the legwork on it.
But it would make things very cool imo
If they gave a pool of abilities martial classes could also take like a warlock’s evocations, that could also be an interesting route as well imo
Fun fact maneuvers were originally supposed to be something for all fighters and removed all of battlemaster took the 3rd level feature and stuck it on 5th level fighter and so far it definitely closes off the gap between casters and fighters by a little bit so now any fighter has battlefield control buffs debuffs and maneuverability and now they still suck but with access to magical weapons they're close in power to the spirits bard in the party however they're the most consistent damage dealer in the party
@@lucasramey6427 I played the first dnd next play test and yeah, everyone had maneuvers. The only thing to fight in that play test was an alligator.
But that is actually where I got my idea.
It's an improvement over the power system of 4e that felt too bland. As the OP says in the vdieo, go ahead and give them thematic super abilities.
A fight still would never have wish, but running across walls, blocking spells with swords, throwing shields and they ricochet around corners
I would kinda just rather go the 3.5/pathfinder route.
Path of war was a cool thing.
As one of the contributors to Tabletop Builds, thank you for the shout outs and links! The quality of the video was high. It's hard to cover all the detail in 15 minutes, but you provided a well-paced and entertaining summary.
I was led here by pack tactics and honestly this just solidifies my solution of doubling all martial damage and making the battle master fighter a core mechanic in all martials.
Based. Combat maneuvers should not be limited to one subclass
Just one problem - multiclassing.
Anything you give to the fighter, you're giving to the caster who multi'd.
Nerf the damn casters.
@@gts1676what pisses me of is that armor doesn’t increase your chance of not being able to cast your spell now. Removing spell mishap basically allow ridiculous multiclassing that allow caster to wear heavy armor with no repercussion.
@@gts1676just make "pure-exclusive" feats that are as OP as munchkin multiclassing
Wizards already lowkey have this feature considering how strong their higher lvl spells are - make it a hard choice to sacrifice class progression speed
Just copy pathfinders homework, pathfinder martial are great.
As a longtime DM who started with Pathfinder 1E, I found myself subconsciously powering up the martials in my game. Making the horizon walker ranger wise and powerful, making the fighter a vampire with additional damage to user and target, handing the rogue powerful magic.
I think I was able to make martials just as important as casters, but it took real effort and I doubt it was as fun for them. I miss Pathfinder’s crazy bullshit.
as someone who went the other way, I just... can't go back, 5e just has too many problems & pathfinder so many options that I can't go back to my pisspoor fighter who can't even mount up, and cut something in half with a lance the *long* way
Pathfinder also benefits from full prep making casters less flexible and full casters having a hard time dealing damage. There's a huge disparity in damage potential between a caster and a martial in Pathfinder and unbounded accuracy means the Fighter quickly gets to the point of auto-hitting while also being the only person who's AC has a chance of doing anything.
@@The_Murder_Party ehh i feel bad when i use lances in pathfinder. 1k damage crits are mean
@@aurtosebaelheim5942 yeah, simplifying the scaling makes it easy for casters to match martials.
Vancian spellcasting (all that preparing at the start of the day) is far more interesting to me, and makes a lot of spells a deliberate choice that feels nicer to use. Most people don't like it as much as I do, though, lol
Can i message you on a platform for advice to help my martial? They are a new player and are pretty bummed out they don't get a lot of cool stuff at all, like next level they get advantage on initiative, and that's it, I tried buffing the class but I don't think its enough
Something I'd like to add is that this isn't a problem in other RPG's.
In Final Fantasy the Black Mage is a class that channels the power of the void to create fireballs and lightning bolts to destroy their enemies and the Dragoon channels the power of a dragon god to fly around and destroy their enemies, The Summoner summons literal GODS to help them in battle and the Monk just goes ham with their fists and there's no difference between those classes viability. Because SE understands that it's just as cool to see your character flip around and do some wild anime shenanigans with their spear as it is to use the void to erase your enemies.
In D&D a Sorcerer can deal 280 damage avg. in 1 action (3.5 avg. d6 roll*8d6 dmg*10 targets) with a base level fireball, a Berserker Barbarian can get mad and do one extra attack on one target, take a level of exhaustion, and cripple their character. The Sorcerer can also re-roll their damage dice up to five times at lvl 5 if they want. This much imbalance exists because?????????
Martials are way lamer and way weaker for no reason, and other RPG's have been getting this right for decades.
DnD 5e players: God, the Martial vs Caster disparity is unbelievably unbalanced in favor of casters.
Pathfinder 2e Players: Is this some sort of broken joke I'm too balanced to understand?
How is pf2 balanced
Casters are still stronger than martials in Pathfinder 2nd edition once you get past level 5ish and especially past level 7.
The main way in which they avoid this being too obvious is by role division - casters are controllers and leaders, while martials are defenders and strikers. Because people overvalue single target damage, and because your party really suffers if you don't have the roles covered, this makes it look like martials are balanced with casters when in actuality casters are still stronger overall. There are some casters that can lean into the martial roles (the Summoner and the Magus) but because they are so limited in spell slots, they don't feel like they're casters to a lot of people (even though they are).
@@TitaniumDragonso basically casters are still a bit stronger but martials have a good solid niche to fill
With the release of the Warrior classes for OneD&D, this looks like it is going to be more true than ever. RIP martials
Are you referring to create spell and modify spell?
@@keybladebard4089 For one, yes. The second is giving Sorcerer unrestricted access to the Arcane spell list.
Aaand the fact that I am not overly impressed with the additions given to warriors. And the fact that it now looks it is still a half-caster+fullcaster meta, because someone thought it was a good idea to give the half-casters Weapon Mastery as well.
One D&D is a pretty big slap in the face for anyone who thought martial classes would get some good balancing going for them. Yeah, they make subclasses like Eldritch Knight and Champion better, but they buffed the Wizard by moving their most bonkers feature three levels lower.
"Give martials anime superpowers"
Sir, you first had my curiosity, now you have my attention
3.5e, Book of Nine Swords.
no that would ruin them
@@Lanaestra Book of Weaboo Fightin' Magic
Yeah, that is what I have been thinking of throughout this discussion.
@@jacobgoodrich6984
So how do martials compete?
@@jacobgoodrich6984 how so?
Even ignoring most of the points in the vid, besides rogue, all pure martial can do almost nothing outside of combat. Every single spellcaster has options outside of combat.
For that reason alone, making them significantly better at combat can help balance them out with full and half casters.
One of the changes I gave to the champion fighter was giving them more chances to make opportunity attacks AND gave them additional attacks of opportunities based on proficiency bonus. To also increase consistency at later levels they can throw weapons with the throwing property as an attack of opportunity if an enemy attacks an ally. So long as it's within 30 feet. I felt like more attacks = more chances to crit with the champion so I felt that the idea would help it out quite a bit
Oh also the opportunity attacks chances and opportunities aren't on a cool down. Its per turn.
Standing up from prone provokes opportunity attacks again for all classes.
@@WhyYouMadBoi Don't believe they do. Not by RAW anyways, it does take half movement speed to stand up tho without feats
@@kelmirosue3251 yeah I was saying this should be a buff because half movement in melee range isn't a downside.
@@WhyYouMadBoi Well my question to you is: How does this fit the champion fighters theme? Also: How can an opportunity attack even make someone prone in the first place?
@@kelmirosue3251 No if they are prone already you can use a attack action to instead shove or use shield master bonus action to shove them prone. This leads to the enemy either standing up proking opportunity attacks or staying down and taking advantage swings.
I never said reaction to knock them prone and I said its to all creatures even PCs.
To fix martials, I would suggest the "Alternate Classes" By LaserLlama
They created alternate versions of the Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, and Rouge. And to a lesser extent Ranger, Sorcerer, and Artificer. For his Alternate Martials, with the exeption of the Monk, they took the Superiorety Dice from the Battle Master Fighter and turned them into a core class feature for all three, dubbing them Martial, Savage, and Devious exploits. Some of them give extra damage, while others mimic spells like Haste, Thunderwave, Tenser's Transfermation, Slow, and even Steel Wind Strike. For the Fighter alone there is like 40 Exploits they can learn. I use them in my game and my players are having a great time.
Great Video BTW
Glad to hear you're enjoying the brews!
One of the main reasons I like PF2e's martis is that some of their feats just give its martials straight up superpowers. Barbarians can create earthquakes and punch magic into nothing, Fighters can break space and time to teleport and strike 80 feet away with a melee attack, and titan wrestler lets me suplex dragons.
But probably the best part is that, as far as I can see, there is no bs caster subclass that is straight up better martial. There is no moon druids or bladesingers, and I am quite happy about that.
I desperately wish I could run/play pf2. The way the action economy alone favors melee and nerfs ranged fighters and spellcasters -compared to 5e-.
Magus is there, but it's still not a full caster.
That’s terrible.
@@shawnfisher9976🤓
Pf2e is what i went to after 5e because of how overpwered things are in 5e and while the game is not for everyone i would say if your look for more of a game I would recommend 2e but if your going for more roleplay i would stick with 5e.
Something that I keep suggesting my DM friends is to read up on the generic object portion of the DMG, even if by a little, considering in giving martials siege damage and having figthers and barbarians slicing castle walls in half. as martials level up they should start looking like walking natural disasters
4e let you do that as Barbarian. Don't like rages? Rage Strike instead. Built an entire character around the idea of 'Fey step to your face: Rage Strike the entire tower in half.' it shocked me just how brutal the spike damage could be at Heroic tier.
I hate how people think that high level casters have justified strength because magic but high level martial is still just a skilled guy with a sword
High level martial should be like hercules, gilgamesh, conan or mikula selyanovich
If you dont know who mikula was, it was the guy that had a bag with the weight of the entire earth just in his pocket and challenged svyatogor to a lifting contest with the bag which svyatogor failed
And if you dont know who svyatogor was, it was the dude as tall as mountain that wasnt even woken up by ilya muromets strikes and when he walked the ground itself litteraly shaked
Guts from berserk and batman ate good examples of normal humans achieving super human feats. Both are enhanced by gadgets. I agree fighters and the other classes should be able to perform literal Herculean or beowulf like feats. Guts swings a 300 pound hunk of raw iron in the shape of a sword with one hand and Batman is the greatest detective to ever live. Thinking of fighters like this will make them more interesting
IIRC, Guts also has the benefit of his sword becoming slightly magical purely as a side-effect of how many supernatural creatures (particularly demons) he's slain with it.
@@DragonKingZero But the thing to keep in mind is that Guts' dragonslayer became magical *after* inflating his demon killcount into insane levels.
So his greatsword was magical not in spite of him being monstrously powerful, but *because* of it.
Gaining super strength/agility/dexterity would make sense to compete against casters. A super martial could probably dodge spells and reach the wizard
I think the reasons listed in this video are why Battle Master was the first martial class that actually interested me, because it has a smidgen more choices to make and features to use with the maneuvers you get. And those maneuvers give you only a fraction of what spell abilities can do, so I think it'd be cool to see ALL martials get their own sets of maneuvers to choose from to give them options to customize their characters as well as more battlefield control abilities that all casters already have access to superior versions of.
Man do I have news for you
Oh, so like, everithing Laserllama does?
3e already had like 100 maneuvers. Idk what happened
My favorite part was the end where you (easily) destroy the whole "grounded fantasy" argument.
The books literally say by level 5 you are the apex of what a mortal human can be. 20 in an attribute means you are in the 1%. You should never meet another mortal with 20 strength or intelligence save a few rare exceptions like a college arch mage; and even then them only being 18 or 19 is justifiable. Level 3 is the end of the "grounded fantasy" phase of DnD. People who want power to stay low to the ground till later need to stick to 2e; and I'm saying this as a primarily 2e player.
@@Leivve You say that like high-level 2e characters aren't demi-gods who are literally untouchable by the vast majority of creatures.
@@firewolfandrewb Yes, that's why he said "till later". Try reading.
@@Leivve can you tell me where it says this I really want to show this to my dm, because he brings up the “DnD is suppose to be realistic” crap at every turn.
@@speeddevil4040 Ask him to cite you a page reference that says that dnd is supposed to be realistic.
This excellent video summarizes everything single problem I have in DnD 5e about Martials, just a couple points I wanted to add.
- With every new sourcebook, new spells, and magic items get added! Guess how many new core, nonmagical weapons got added...
Zero!
In 5e's NINE years, WOTC hasn't added a SINGLE new core weapon for martial classes. Yet hundreds of new magic spells and items.
- Caster's Cantrips scale better than even the Fighter's extra attack, getting their fourth "extra attack", three levels earlier than the Fighter. Without needing to dedicate 20 levels into an inferior class. A level 12 character could pick up a cantrip via a feat and be just as if not more effective than a martial artist trained for their whole life, or a Druid who practiced the same spell for years.
- Most Caster subclasses and features direct them into being SAD (usually towards their spellcasting ability), making them easier to allocate ASIs for and to have room for feats and multiclassing. Martials, for some odd reason, have a tendency of being MAD (Look at the Battlemaster maneuvers for proof.) with subclasses often needing investment in too many ability scores to make well-rounded /effective characters.
Awesome video Ahero, this video reminds me why I switched to PF2e.
They haven't powercrept martials since the PHB, which is insane. Combinations like Archery+XBE+SS and GWM+PAM+Sentinel, and subclasses like Totem Warrior and Battlemaster, are *still* the main options for martial builds, outside of multiclassing. Most of the martial powercreep has happened with half-casters with additions like Gloom Stalker and Hexblade. Which is a big problem when 1) half-casters were already better than martials, and 2) there have been so many new spells added to the game of varying power.
Someone trying to optimize a DPR Fighter in 2014 would play a Battlemaster+Archery+XBE+SS. Someone trying to optimize a DPR Fighter in 2023 is *still* playing Battlemaster+Archery+XBE+SS. Even balance aside, martials are basically stagnant on a fundamental character building level.
People usually dislike powercreep in principle, which I understand, but 5e martials are an example of what happens where there is too little of it. Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue and Monk were bad in 2014. They are even worse now, because the rest of the system has advanced without them.
They were called "extraordinary features" in 3.5
Su: Supernatural affect that mimics magic.
Ex: Extraordinary affect that mimics magic (but isn't magic)
It's frightening how many things are just still there in 3.5. That just didn't get brought over.
^^^ the reason I've moved to pathfinder XD my stabby bois get to actually do things in that system, and it's *awesome* like I still lose to casters on most cases, but I if you need one dude killed? you don't call the wizard, you call the cavilier, and that single change I adore. (of course, if you just need something out of commission, you do still call the wizard, because CC is always busted, and force cage is actively busted, but my lance does a very satisfying amount of damage.)
@@The_Murder_Party Lmao did you just say Martials are good in Pathfinder? Ahahahahahahaha
@@citizensnips3850 I said they where *better* in pathfinder. A 5th edition martial serves no purpose, a pathfinder one does actual damage, and is capable of doing things other then just standing around waiting for the wizard to decide to end the combat encounter.
@thetzeentchianrepresentati5547 I know what you said, I'm saying you're full of it to think martials in pathfinder are better than in 5e. In pathfinder a martial cannot stand against a caster after a certain point.
@@citizensnips3850 In 5e, that point is level 5. In pathfinder my caviler out damaged our casters for his entire career, now that game ended at level eight, but he had just picked up a *very* fancy lance, so these numbers are a bit skewed, but I expect that around 240 damage would *continue* to out damage our casters against single targets well into the late game, *possibly* loosing out around level 15. The only games I've gotten past level 14 are the pathfinder CRPGS, and the martials where doing *very* respectable damage there, being out-damaged by a caster mostly because of a combination of fancy equipment, and hellfire rays. (something like +6d6 fire and +2d6 acid per ray, and like +10 to hit with ranged touch attacks from equipment.) In the tabletop game, we're far from optimized (the DM won't give us any gold,) but the caster just... can't dish out the damage the paladin can.
So, I'm curious where your experience for that statement is coming from, because I've done the math, and a like 5th level druid in 5e out damages a 11th level optimized gloomstalker/fighter *attacking from stealth* in their one turn of nova. I have the math to back that up somewhere in here, but I'll need to trawl back through youtube comments to get it.
I still don't understand why for example strength is made the way it is. Like, yay, you can carry 15 pounds of weight per point of strength. At 10 Str, that's 150 pounds, which is about what the average human can do. But, at 20 STR, that's 300 pounds. And bear in mind, 20 on a stat is supposed to be superhuman. So, a SUPERHUMAN can only lift about as much as a very buff dude in the gym. A barbarian with the might of the titans at level 20 can lift 360 pounds....Like, what the fuck. The strongmen can lift literally over a thousand pounds in real life, but a LITERAL PRIMAL CHAMPION can only lift 360? And scaling with size is also extremely stupid. Like....you can become huge - literally 20-25 feet tall musclebound goliath, and you can only lift 1200 pounds? Paul Anderson had a record of 1200LBS squat 40 years ago....what the fuck. That's just one example of why martials are weak. A DM literally has to go against the rules to make them even a bit more functional.
You fail to consider that that's the limit they can carry while not being hindered in any way. Carrying 300lbs for 16 hours is absolutely wild and claiming that its not is disingenuous at best.
With this being said, I've also long advocated for the idea of level 5+ martials being quite literally superhuman and think that they should do more with what they have.
@Zachary Seddon That is not the limit they can carry without being hindered in any way. That is LITERALLY the limit they can carry. And the Optional Rule: Encumbrance specifies further restrictions on weight and capacity, making it granular and even more restrictive.
Also, a the rules state that you can travel only up to 8 hours without consequence anyway, regardless of encumbrance. There is no rule governing how weight applies to your character other than that you can't past your weight limit, unless the DM decides to give you some check or something. The rules are so simple that they stop making sense.
For me, there is a relatively simple solution to this specific problem - make STR score above 10 give 50 weight limit instead of 15. And make anything above 20 give 100 instead of 50. That way, you actually have an explanation, for example, of how a dragon would be capable of lifting boulders that would in D&D terms be literally out of their weightlifting category (a fairly small boulder can weigh multiple thousands of pounds, which LITERALLY NO CREATURE in D&D should be able to move, let alone lift).
They also don't say if the lift/drag/pull/push is one handed or two. This is how I made my characters lifting 300 lbs in one hand.
As a strength coach and former powerlifting record holder I 1000% agree!
Barbarians should have MCU levels of strength by 20th level.
Another thing I feel needs to be mentioned, but any strength based martial basically has to invest in a stat that has extremely limited utility outside combat. Outside the occasional athletics check, you’re just better off focusing Dex. No DM asks you how strong your hands are or how much can you benchpress, but they are more likely to ask how nimble you are, how fast you are, or have you make dexterity based saves. Strength kinda just sucks as a stat.
A part of this whole thing that really annoys me is that newer dms and players will berate you for using PA, GWM or CA because they're "broken", but they're absolutely required for martials to even "mimic a fraction of [casters] power"
Yup
CA?
@@kori228 I think he meant CE for Crossbow Expert
I banned polearm master + sentinel at lvl 4 in one of my campaigns (along with a growing list of build options). Not because of the caster v martial balance thing, but because we had a min/maxer playing with an average group who wanted to focus on roleplay. The presence of the min/maxer made it literally impossible to balance combat for the party, since everything was either too easy or bordering on a TPK.
@@TheTdroid maybe instead of gutting class options you can have a real life discussion with your player, or set up encounters in a way that aren't being shredded by one of the most mediocre synergies in 5e.
There needs to be a 5e equivalent to the Tome of Battle from 3.5. I have never felt more on par with my casting party mates as a martial than when I was playing as a Warblade.
Even at their best, with extraordinary features and the like, when compared to casters, martials in 3.5e still felt like the "look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power". Martials had more stuff they could do in 3.5e compared to 5e, but paradoxically, they were still victims of the worst case of caster supremacy of any edition.
4e was the only time that martials werent garbage compared to casters, and people complained. A lot. And many of the complaints werent even about specifically how the balancing was done, but just that it was done at all.
a lvl 20 barbarian should feel like u roleplaying kratos
a 20th level barbarian is Conan. But Conan is technically a fighter/thief multiclass (both in his rules, yes he has a statblock for AD&D) and in lore.
Great video, man! Pack Tactics sent me on over here. The math is undeniable. In practice, though, I have found that a lot of tables play spellcasters so sub-optimally that martials don’t *feel* weaker. I have a group where the wizard won’t take almost any of the true S-tier spells and just opts for straight damage and the bard keeps hitting things with a rapier or using a crossbow. Like…they are having fun, so I am happy for them to do that. But these completely suboptimal choices has the added bonus effect of balancing the game ironically. I *suspect* that a lot of tables are like this, and hence there is this feeling you see on some replies to a Treantmonk vid about how powerful the monk is etc etc.
You shouldn't have to play sub-optimally to have a fun game.
@@mrosskne that wasn't his point, merely an observation
@@darkdwarf007 You don't understand my point.
@@mrosskne@mrosskne you are evaluating the game design state not the table choices?
@@hugofontes5708 You're just throwing words together that you don't actually understand instead of trying to communicate.
"In practice, though, I have found that a lot of tables play spellcasters so sub-optimally that martials don’t feel weaker."
In a good game, it wouldn't be possible to ruin the game for others by playing intelligently. So you wouldn't need to play sub-optimally.
WotC: we are gonna make Martial shine on OneDnD
Players: good
WotC: we are removing critical hits from spells
Players: oh, well, if is to make Martial shine, i guess is...
WotC: but also any additional damage made affar from the weapon damage is out of the equation, no more double smite or double sneak attack
Players: but... thats a nerf for martial, not for spellcasters
WotC: but nothing, we know what we are doing, is "balanced", this buffs martial!
Players: no, this actually
WotC: oh, and acrobatics and athletics are useless for grapple
Players: stop, why are you doing this?
WotC: for balance, of course, hahahahaha
They're just turning every caster into wizard but worse, and every martial into fighter but worse
Time for Pathfinder, then. 😮💨
Great video! Love the changes and love the fact that adding loads of martial decision points would not only rebalance and specialize martials, but also make them a considerably less bland experience to play. It only takes a few combats of "BA rage, action attack" until the bad guys fall over before I start flirting with a multi-class dip into something more interesting and tactically stimulating.
This is one of my biggest concerns as well. Why play a fighter when the fantasy falls so flat in practice? The fighter fantasy is about improvisation and ingenuity, but the lack of maneuvers, stances, and mechanical options makes it almost impossible to translate.
Play a better system.
@@mrosskne For real. Any recommendations?
@@edo2337 Prowlers and Paragons.
Since magic is interwoven into everything in most dnd settings, its completely fine to give martials supernatural abilities as a base mechanic. Just because theyre simple doesnt mean they have to be weak. There are plenty of ways to power a martial class and maintain their threat level alongside the meteor throwers. Improving their action economy, buffing the damage they do, giving them abilities or passives, whats strange is that wotc seems to put so much thought into what certain classes aren't allowed to do while others are allowed to do anything they can think of
Once upon a time, all the classes were balanced in dnd. It was called 4e and everyone hated it
Except the people that still Play it because it's their favourite edition of D&D, and chances are If you are a very technical minded Player that enjoys playing tactically you will gravitate to atleast be interested in 4e.
Let's get real: the issue with 4e was NOT player balance.
4e was too far away from D&D to be well recieved.
Of course all the classes were balanced; they were all the same class wearing different groucho moustache disguises.
Yeah why I love 5E games that borrow heavily on 4E
I'm a big fan of giving martials more control, distraction, etc. abilities on homebrews, and giving them tanking aspects unavailable to other classes. What boggles my mind is how often people scream "overpowered" for a martial class when it's intentionally designed to give that class more utility (and as such, stronger than the baseline for the class), even when this resulting utility is weaker than what even a suboptimal caster would have at the same level. (did an experiment with some fighter subclass concepts recently for this)
This is one of the reasons that I think that a lot of the default subclasses for martials from the basic rules should just be class features.
A fighter should get improved critical, better physicality, more fighting styles, and Regen. This still wouldn't close the gap, but it would help.
A rogue should get better mobility, shenanigans with quick items, and the ability to use any items.
A barb should get another attack while raging without exhaustion, and the ability to resist charmed and feared (raging or no)
Monks should absolutely get the open hand maneuvers regardless of subclass, in addition to quivering palm and the other open hand features.
Rangers should get all of the special hunter manuever options.
Again, this isn't necessarily going to close the gap, but it helps to start.
Yeah, would be nice if the stuff from Champion, and maybe even Battlemaster were just built into the main fighter class, and then your subclass can be Rune Knight or Psy Warrior, or whatever.
While I do agree, the problem is wizards chose to typically only have ONE class/subclass feature. I don't know why they went this way when a caster effectively gets multiple class features per level.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 warlocks get a subclass and eldritch invocations and that was so popular that they released a feat that gave you an additional invocation instead of or in additional to multi classing into warlock
Monks also should get a lot more Ki. Like I’m talking about either additional Ki like: Wisdom mod = Additional Ki or More Ki 2x your monk level. So a max level monk would be 40 ki total. And if not that and just sticking with the wisdom mod, change their capstone feature for the base class (because it sucks massive cock) to be instead choosing one monk ability from Flurry of Blows, Patient defense or Step of the wind to no longer cost Ki to use but you can only choose one of these abilities to not use Ki.
@Fraction Facta I think what he meant was giving them some of the abilities from the subclass as default and then replacing the subclass abilities that were given with something else. For example, I've seen people say the crit boost from Champion fighter should be standard in the fighter kit. In which place, that feature would be replaced with something else. Thus giving the chassis more abilities and then having the abilities from the subclass on top of that.
They don't seem to understand that none of the classes are normal people.
A fighter is not like any regular soldier, they can do much more than regular people. They are those people who cut down trees with a single swing. Those who take the hit of a dragon on their shield and barely flinch.
Shields are also a thing that should be a lot better.
I might flat out give literally every fighter battle master maneuvers in addition to their other class features, plus more sparing lists for other martial classes.
i think the most interesting way to scale up fighters while keeping them relatively mundane is to offer much more variety in weapons and tactics that let them deal with enemies in more engaging ways.
Dungeon coach gives battle master to every martial class sans supiorty die
I've heard yams just go out and give every single pure martial superiority dice and maneuvers at the same rate that battle masters gets them. Apparently it doesn't break anything at all.
Early in the playtest of "D&D Next," that was the assumption. The Superiority Dice were a core part of the Fighter class, and subclasses gave you more options to use them. I still think about how cool that was. I love Fighters, and for a brief moment I thought that they were going to make the class more interesting.
I let Fighters get their extra attacks earlier. First extra attack at 3rd level, and second extra attack at fifth, with the third extra attack at 12th. It ensures that they actually get to make use of their trademark feature over the course of a campaign for the levels at which I know that I will be running. (I personally never plan to run anything over 14th or 15th level and never run below 3rd level). It also ensures that they are always one step ahead of the other martials in terms of their ability to "extra attack".
I also allow fighters to obtain the "Superior Technique" Fighting Style from Tasha's for free at first level, with the change that their Superiority dice for that particular maneuver scales with their proficiency bonus. It allows each of the Fighters the ability to have their own "Special Move" of sorts, that they can use multiple times a day which to me, feels very much in character.
I am comfortable doing this because I know how much their scaling is dependent on my own DM-ing decisions in the form of giving them different magic weapons. I highly recommend to other DMs that they give this a try. I have had little to no issues accounting for it on my end and my players LOVE it. I've had multiple players come to me and explain that they would "Never play a Fighter over another martial, but in your game I would".
i really wanted the extraordinary, supernatural and spell-like descriptors from pathfinder on 5e.
adding some extraordinary abilities for fighters is just *chef's kiss*
The supernatural abilities remind me of Warhammer chaos warriors. Essentially demon worshipping vikings that get various magic items and powers from their gods in exchange for undying loyalty and effective service. Like the god Khorne can give you a collar that can effectively counterspell at will or make you strong enough to rip a giant’s arm off and beat it to death with it. I’ve always wanted to play a character like that
High level martials should definitely be in the ballpark of Chaos Champions. Absolutely superhuman powerhouses with supernatural abilities.
Congrats, you've described an evil paladin.
The Spheres of Might system (an add-on for Pathfinder 1e, and DnD 5e) does this. It gives martial characters features that either allow them to do more interesting things in combat, or to have some non-combat utility. The fact that a third-party add-on is needed to do this is sad, but you aren't the first to see the problem.
Can you link this to me?
I played on a 5e game server that averaged 18-25-ish people on simultaneously at the daily peak. As getting brought to events was akin to getting picked for teams (and pvp was allowed), it ended up turning *very* competitive and was thus _merciless_ about build optimization. There was _one_ high-level martial at the end, and they were inferior to casters well below their level outside of their _one_ niche. Many individual spells are far more dangerous than attacks and dealing damage for overcoming challenges and manipulating circumstances (suggestion, command, invisibility, flight, dream, polymorph, etc), and by virtue of getting so many, casters can often fulfil _multiple_ roles while also fulfilling a martial's well enough (and often _better_ than them with less investment).
The existence of learnable arcane magic (wizards) questions the in-universe reason for strictly non-magical characters. Any nation that managed to build up and maintain wizards in an organized military structure would almost certainly replace conventional non-magical men-at-arms. The tools of men-at-arms always adapt with technology; it would be asinine to refuse to integrate the setting's most versatile and powerful technology. Barring barrier to entry, magic would become _one_ of a military and individual men-at-arms' tools.
Related to that, I think one _potential_ solution would be significantly advanced ability trees related around various weapons, tactics, or superhuman maneuvers, much like you discuss, and many of them (until late levels, anyways) could play into how these weapons real niches (eg maces and hammers generally inflict less damage yet bypass armor, greatswords were excellent at fighting multiple opponents, etc) and thus not break the 'not-supernatural' fantasy. Importantly, though, they would need to gain enough abilities to have more than one role or strategy, like casters. Whether they need to be _as_ versatile (versus better at a smaller range) or whether these abilities need to work on exactly the same sort of resource expenditure is another question. While having a different resource expenditure style could contribute to distinct styles of play, that increases how asymmetric the game balance is, and is thus harder to balance properly.
I think there are a handful of martial builds that are superior within a niche, and thus have some validity in gameplay; however, they are not nearly as valuable as casters in general. Bearbarian rogue is a _massive_ damage soak, whereas a Cavalier-paladin of the proper oath (while paladin is a caster, the abilities of concern are not spells) is one of the few ways to forcibly redirect attacks towards yourself (with penalties to boot). On the other hand, much of the time, you would be better off bringing another caster, regardless.
Well mainly because technically in D&D iq is calculated by int which is int score times 10. A wizard apprintice has 14 int which is 140 IQ points which is genius level. You literally need to be a genius or above to learn magic. There isn't many geniuses IRL and there wouldn't be many in D&D so yeah. Sorcerers are extremely rare and good luck trying to become anything more than a level 1 warlock before being stoned to death.
@@WhyYouMadBoi 1) How accurately the distribution of ability scores is not necessarily a perfect correlation with the real-world IQ Bell Curve, and ASI by level (when AS are balanced around ASI) are completely unrealistic. Also, 'genius' generally means 160 or higher.
2) While this depends on how exactly spellwork is done in-setting, unless it required some active mental work requiring above-average cognition to actually operate the spell, the operations could be performed through rote memorization developed by an intelligent mage. Even if it does require advanced mental functions, how well IQ represents this (this could just as well fall under Wisdom) is very debatable.
3) The minimum ability score requirements for casting spells that existed in earlier editions was not ported to 5e. 5e requires 13 or higher in the appropriate ability scores to _multiclass._ While a higher INT is still valuable (save DCs, bonus to attack rolls, additional spells known), it is not strictly necessary. This is to say naught on low-casters like the Eldritch Knight subclass or Magic Initiate.
4) Militaries (and especially 'adventurers', which are frequently outliers, exceptions, heroes or the like) are not representative of the general population. They differ significantly by numerous metrics, and it is not unreasonable to expect that they could attract and field sufficient individuals of the minimum intelligence threshold to create a military edge.
5) Sorcerers are indeed rare. While hypothetically a nation could put in place programs that might increase their numbers, I am not going to get into eugenics here.
7) Reactions to Warlocks are setting and culture-specific. While hostility is the default response in canonical D&D settings, that attitude is not a human (let alone dwarf/elf/orc/tiefling or other) universal. A given culture could just as well have Warlocks as their priestly class instead of Clerics.
@@NevisYsbryd 1) this has been in D&D since 2nd edition at the lastest it was in a dragon magazine. But this also doesn't mean shit with ASI at all. It does corrolate with 6 being the minimum amount needed for sentience in D&D which 50-60 iq points is mild mental redardation with it being 50 and below people need support for their entire life.
also 140 is labeled genius from the sources I'm looking at. Where's yours and I'll show mine.
2) We already said it is standard D&D setting aka forgotten realms aka abeir-Toril your homebrew setting doesn't mean shit here. In fact every offical setting in D&D work off of the weave even eberron and of course artificers aren't in abeir-toril
3) You're using 13 even though we are talking about as a whole and of course NPCs. NPCs can't have character classes unless its a special case as with Drizz't.
4)Militaries, you wanna talk that let's take an example. Waterdeep which got a population of 2 million has the Force Grey which is an elite force of spellcasters which is under Blackstaff Vajra Safahr. Only 5 members and not all of them are spellcasters same with the gray hands which is where they pull their members from. The only army in canon that had a big enough army with enough wizards was The Netherrese and that place blew up and now only 3 settlements are left and they ain't raising no army.
@@NevisYsbryd 5) Yeah and how are you going to get a dragonhoard big enough to make draconic sorcerers? How about enough dark energies to surge through, just sending children into the shadowfell? Don't get me started on wild magic.
6? 7?) Not really its D&D setting and of course warlocks all have a patron mark which shows that they are a warlock. Dwarves hates it, elves hates it, Orcs wouldn't mind much but then again they are zealot as fuck you worship gruumsh while grey might leave ya alone. Tieflings don't got a culture themselves. No one likes warlocks and its a fact the only ones that do are the evil races unless its a super cool summer court fey or obvious celestial body.
@@WhyYouMadBoi It is not in the 5e player's handbook or DMG. Dragon Magazine is optional, non-core content.
IQ does not increase with experience (well, fluid intelligence does not, crystallized does), and strength is not tied to one's expertise in class-related activities but to athletics. ASIs are an arbitrary game mechanic with little to no correlation with reality.
Nowhere was it stated as a given that we are using canonical official settings. *Many* tables use the official rules unaltered without using the official setting.
I brought up 13 because it is the only AS value that acts as a prerequisite besides a few feats, and then only for multiclassing.
Player versus npc classes is an arbitrary game mechanic that is often dispensed with for npcs with any abilities of note. Nor is casting categorically forbidden to commoners; 3.5 Unearthed Arcana included commoner classes, including one for spellcasting.
The official setting's writing and worldbuilding is far more about tropes than any remotely realistic or consistent logistics, socioeconomics, or military strategy. Another nation could just as well build up another mage empire akin to the Netherese (albeit barring divine intervention, which is very much on the table in Forgotten Realms).
I literally said I was not going to get into the specifics of national eugenics programs. The one thing I willl say is that sorcerers are not half-breeds; they spawn erratically down genetic lines for several generations. They would not need to make first-generation sorcerers but ensure that existing sorcerers produce many heirs to increase the statistical odds of producing a greater number of sorcerers. While that might reduce their number and power overtime as the magical bloodline is diluted, it is hypothetically possible.
Again, reactions to warlocks are culture-specific and setting-specific. While they are widely hostile in official D&D settings, tables are not restricted to using these settings and need not import the same cultural norms to their games.
The monk ki point thing is very important. Ki is less plentiful and does less than spell slots honestly I’ve considered making a blade singer wizard to recreate the avatar fantasy.
The "encounter stamina" fallacy is so vital, I appreciate you highlighting it here. In my play experience, it's also quite rare for a session to get enough encounters in before the casters are truly tapped out (and then the martials are usually screwed for healing by that point!). The alleged consistency of fighters et al doesn't help at all when the casters are able to recharge constantly.
If the game is high fantasy, then the martial classes deserve to be fantastical.
This is made worse when a lot of tables and DnD westmarches HATE short resting for some reason.
Fighter's second wind recharges on short rest, giving them a better shortrest than most classes, but this is irrelevent if your DM considers tryiing to use one of the game's core mechanics to be exploitation.
Idk man when I run my encounters the casters run out of spells by encounter 3 or 4. By the 5th or 6th, the martials are carrying. Sure, they've spent more hp as well, but if they weren't there, the caster would never have used their spells in the first place...
@@seeker296 If that's the case there are a few possibilities:
A) Your encounters are too hard
B) Your casters are doing most of the work, thus exhausting themselves
C) You players are being very unoptimal.
Not that it matters much, a caster using cantrips isn't bad at all.
@@stoneharvey1017this video is about an inherent unbalance in the game thay exists on paper and when someone comments that their experience at the table is different and more balanced than the video claims, your response is to tell them something must be not right with how they play. That's a bit ridiculous to claim that their encounters are too hard because they're achieving better balance among their players. You're basically arguing that if they're not experiencing the inherent unbalance that something must not be quite right at their table. "Of course casters are always better than martials and if they're not at your table, either you or your players aren't making the right decisions."
If your casters are running out of spell slots, that means your monsters are so strong that beating them actually requires using **that** many spells.
If they're this powerful, then the team would have long since been dead by this point if those players weren't playing casters. IE casters are still doing all the work.
Either that, or the casters are playing extremely unoptimal.
Even then though, his premise doesn't make much sense. Casters using cantrips are still plenty effective. So the martials shouldn't really be "carrying" all that much.
If those martials were just casters instead, the team would also still be stronger. More spells, means more encounters where you still have access to spells.
Those first two seconds were absolutely brutal to these classes. I don't know if you're the editor if it's someone else, but whomever is is absolutely brutal
As a GM this is one of the reasons I love PF2E vs 5E. Watching player power diverge so dramatically is frustrating. I know 5E caster players can chafe a bit at not being able to do single target damage on par with martials but seeing martial players faces light up when they realize how powerful they feel is a treat every time.
I really, really want to try PF2E at some point! None of my friends seem interested, though, so I’ll probably have to find other people to play with.
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 man , fight tooth and nail for it. they will love it once they play it
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 as someone who played 5e and tried pf2e highly reccomend make them try for a short campaing. The difference between systems is abysmal and for a plus the martials dont suck.
For example casters have it more difficult to make an attack roll with their spells that being said the damage is high but compared to a fighter who is gonna have more chance of scoring a critical hit (critical hits in pf2 you have to score an attack that is 10 points higher than the enemy ac example enemy has 12 ac player throws dice and gets a 22 final that a critical even if the dice wasnt a 20)
And then you breach beyond T2 and realize "holy fuck its even worse due to the 3 action economy (and not well thought out way how making a tome of battle/pow route with 60% of the options being noobtraps so you still become a single target pouncer, stealth archer or i-AoO-and-stop-the-enemy-if-close box no matter which way)" AND T1(+level 5) attempting to be a blaster caster is for most routes a burden.
@@ANDELE3025 what
A really interesting idea me and a couple mates came up with was the idea that the more a person's fame spread, the more influence and power they literally gained. Like if a Fighter once managed to deflect an enemy firebolt with their shield, then anyone who saw that happen would spread the word, and as time goes on, that story turns into the Fighter's shield parting a dragon's firebreath like a rock against a wave. That fame and recognition slowly empowers that fighter, since people are more likely to tell stories about gallant knights in armor and shields than they are to tell stories about that one guy who everyone hates because he holds a stick and has horns and a tail
Changes I would do:
-Let strength, constitution and dex be used in roleplay (use strength to break someone's spear to intimidate them for example)
-Make it so martials at high-ish levels get more damage with their weapons (a greatsword deal 2d6+(strmod*2) for example)
-Give them "special attacks" in exchange for number of attacks (use a sword to throw a cutting projectile with 30ft of range in exchange for 2 action attacks)
The “nerfing spellcasters” backlash stings the most, because a lot of the ideas I have to fix this imbalance hinge around exactly that. I had the concept in mind to make recovering spell slots require the spending of hit dice, with class rebalances and tweaks to the rest system to account for it… but generally speaking, players react harshly to nerfs of any kind. You’d have to give all classes some significant power boosts to offset that, I feel.
Even then, that kind of nerf still gives spellcasters even more choices to make. You could go the Pathfinder route of giving all martials access to maneuvers, with Battlemasters getting extra maneuvers and superiority dice… I also have ideas for making attunement drain resources rather than requiring attunement slots, which when combined with the above would give martials another edge in terms of both strength and choice.
I also have ideas for buffs to melee combat, but… hell, this is a hard problem to tackle.
At the very least, they can probably move or change the most problematic spells. Given how they are handling summoning spells now, I think it's safe to say Conjure Animals as it's written in 5e won't be seen in One DnD.
That said, I'm sure One DnD is going to still have a massive gap between martials and casters as long as WOTC remain ignorant to the issues.
You know how in 3e removing all the limits on spellcasters like maximum spells known caused huge problems?
yeah?
Let's make it so wizards preperation is like changing out sorc spells known, except BETTER IN EVERY WAY.
@@seacliff217 The “most problematic” spells aren’t problematic because they’re strong is the thing, they’re problematic because they expose the problems laid out in this video and/or are simply frustrating at tables. Conjure Animals power-wise is well-balanced relative to the rest of the Druid’s kit, but its most obvious use is for single-target damage, and so it makes martial players feel invalidated when it inevitably outperforms them. Not to mention how slow new players are with their turns with that particular spell.
Meanwhile, you’re almost never going to hear anyone complain about Pass Without Trace, yet it’s so strong of a spell that it’s worth Wish casting for characters who don’t have access to it. Hypnotic Pattern and Web can completely shut down fights with good coordination. Find Familiar and Unseen Servant can be used for scouting (sorry rogues), reviving downed players with health potions, and so much more. The best spells in the game often encourage teamwork and work as force multipliers for the entire party, making them well-designed from that perspective and hard to justify removing completely. The God Wizard concept sort of speaks to that, really.
I strongly hope that WOTC reevaluates their "6-8 encounters per day" balancing and either just reduces spellcasters slot progression, or makes an adjustable progression based on how many encounters the dm wants to run.
@@jimbob929 agreed. More realistically is 1-3 encounters per day, with less for larger groups with more action economy (since combat generally takes so much longer). In my personal experience I learned also that even when out of spell slots, all the casters still have more cantrips than martial classes tend to have martial features.
I have been toying around with a “Martial Stances” mechanic. It functions similar to a spellcaster’s cantrips, in that it scales at certain levels and it would allow martial characters to enter a stance when they roll initiative that gives them a variety of bonuses depending on the stance they chose. Like there is a precision stance that adds to the attack roll, a swift stance that grants an additional bonus action at high levels, and a power stance that allows you to cleave through one enemy and deal half damage to a creature within 5 feet of the target.
This is fantastic. I'm stealing it. :)
Look at the Martial classes in the PHB for 4e D&D (and the tomes on martial classes from the same.) Look at the effects on At Will attacks, it's a treasure trove of things to have a 'stance' or 'technique' do.
Pack Tactics sent me, and I'm happy about that. It's always great to find another creator who dives deep into how things actually work. 🤠👍
Word same here. This is Christmas 🎄 to me and I want to more videos from this channel. Incredibly impressed!
I miss AHero. So rare to get this combo of approachable and insightful.
Give martials techniques like in anime. Each technique does something special. You could even attach it to a stamina bar.
My favorite example of this is the main character from "Chivalry of a Failed Knight"
Basically, this guy only has enough magic to conjure a basic katana and power himself up a little bit. He is still able to beat all of his foes through a mixture of sword techniques, and his trump card; a daily ability that stems from his magical ability, and increases his base stats 10 fold for a single minute. IIRC, he has 7 sword techniques that let him do all kinds of stuff like create an after image of himself, reflect the force of attacks, counter attack, pierce armor, delayed damage.
In addition, he can mimic any fighting style after seeing it once. Using this, while unable to see them, he knows the location of invisible weapons or traps.
Even though he seems really OP, that is only the case in a 1v1 fight. When a fight drags on for too long, or there are too many opponents, he struggles greatly.
This character is able to compete against the strongest mages in the world (in his universe) despite having next to no magical ability at all.
I played him in a homebrew campaign with my friends, and it was really cool.
Ah yea, blade steal that was actually perfect vision. Long story short: by understanding the opponent, he can see how they fight and can dodge before the attack is finished. (Dude caught an invisble arrow because he finally got serious, he even dodged an attack that wasnt visible and would cut the air). Ittou shura: condensing all of he magic power from 10 mins into a single minute, which he pushed even further and with a physical punishment pushed all of that into a split second for a single attack.
The dude was OP but also very weak.
His powers are Blink, Deflection, Strike with Armor Piercing and/or Penetrating and Ongoing, Power Mimicry, Detection. He can take certain Cons or Flaws such as Charges, Unreliable, or Limited Power to simulate the stamina effects you mentioned.
Crazy how easy it is to represent an effective martial character when you pick a system that doesn't suck shit.
@@mrosskne I'm curious what system that was for.
@@Sorain1 prowlers and paragons.
@@raditzace Precognition and Evasion.
You're damn right! I want to be an anime character!
I want to side step so damn fast that it just LOOKS like I cast Mirror Image
Tell me why I can't break Forecage with a punch, or use Judgement Cut from DMC5 but the Cleric can summon Pelor to jump an innkeeper for charging too much for a mug of ale. Casters can even bring themselves back from DEATH. Druids have Resurrection, Clerics have Revivify and even the Wizard - who's not supposed to get healing spells at all - can come straight back with Contingency or Clone!
maybe at higher levels, but yeah, "extraordinary" talents could be a martial equivalent of spells, and higher-end ones could be closer to the feats seen in myth. Maybe a high-level barbarian could generate shockwaves when his javelins strike true, or a mighty fighter could get a dragon aground by hitting one with a harpoon and tugging him in land. A rogue could stab someone in the heart without the victim noticing or be able to dodge projectiles and advancing, like leaping over them. Monks strike me as the flash-steppy kind and are the most likely to get the most leeway with spell-like effects, depending on their archetype
My memory might be hazy and I never played a lot of 4th edition, but I think the introduction of skills evened the balance a bit (not touching the other balance topics). Being able to attack while having some neat utility with it was cool idea. Especially the warlord skills usually gave utility/buffs to the party members that were nearby or at line of sight.
As much as 4th edition is hated, I think it still tried. And I think it ties a bit to the "give martial arts supernatural abilities" somewhat. Just expand on it.
shhhhhhh you can't praise 4e some people get triggered
4e balanced things out so well that all Martial parties were viable. Heck, possibly the optimal support class in the game was the Warlord. A good friend of mine that played Fighters through 3.5 and loved The Book of Nine Swords, looked at the at will powers of Fighters in just the PHB 1 and just about cried. Because he had OPTIONS in combat, and was constantly being a CC nightmare in 4e games. No busted combos, not much (if any) optimization, just things like forcing people to move, screwing their movement over, soaking damage via THP from at will rider effects or screwing defenses with things like 'ratteling' on attacks. He actually went Warlord for a campaign just to show our group's rogue player how comedically disgusting the combo was he had found on his own.
I think the main flaw of 4e was that it really just looks tedious to run at a table, with so many mechanics dragging out combat more than it needs to be. I legit think that a party based CRPG video game based on 4e rules would be a lot of fun.
@@TheTdroid It's not really. 5e fights are short because they suck.
4e is hated for no reason
But remember guys! When 4th ED made sure that martial classes worked, it was wrong!
No, I don't care if they did it poorly or not. The complaint is never that it was poorly done, it is that it was even done!
Yeah, the D&D playerbase has long been overrun by people who want spellcasters to be overpowered and martials to be underpowered. However, with the mass popularity of 5e compared to the earlier editions, the attitudes seem to have shifted a fair bit. There seem to be a fair bit of pushing towards buffing martials from a lot of content creators, who do have disproportionate influence through their fans and the discourse they create.
In some sort of way, 3.5 edition has responded to this same issue by just adding more alternatives to everyclass. Also, one thing 3.5 also did well with powerscaling is this : By level 5 every caster class overpowered any martial class, plain and simple. But at level 12 a lot of spells could be tossed away by another spell or effect. Invisibility became useless in battle because it became expected that every foe would have something like a See invisibility or True Seeing effect on it at this point, but not everyone had enough spot to beat the +30 hide of the rogue, therefore keeping the class relevant for sneak attacks and hiding. Similar thing for saves where you could make the equivalence of a Strenght/Constitution check instead of a Intelligence/Wisdom or Charisma check with the right feats, keeping the fighter safe against most of mind spells. Casters classes could cast 1 or 2 spells per turn, but every martial classes could get up to four attacks per turn (instead of just the Fighter class in 5e) without any help from magic items or feats or special powers. Speaking of spells, one big error of 5e in my opinion has been to separate the base 3 saves (Reflex, Vigor and Will) from 3.5 to 6 saves (one for each stats) and then design most of the one shot spells to need mind ability saving throw to resist, therefore leading to even more lack of balances between classes. It sure wasn't balance enough and casters still were overpower to the extreme, but I think 5e could get some inspirations from previous editions to keep track of balance between classes.
I don't think the poster-child-edition for insane caster and martial imbalance should be looked at for lessons on the problem, ever.
Lmao. Attacks per round. You really didn't learn a single thing from the video, huh?
You made great points here, and what I want to bring attention to is that in response to the poor shape martials are in with their reliance on feats, all the feats they rely on will be nerfed into the dirt in One DnD. The crutch veritably kicked out from beneath them. Should be great.
Not just the crutches kicked out from beneath them but martial classes are then thrown down a flight of stairs.
I feel like the Battle Master moves should be something all full martials gets, instead of only 1 subclass of 1 martial gets
Of course this list is not complete enough to compete with spells yet but with some additions and modifications, you can end up giving martials a number of options every level that can be extremely strong and useful both in and out of combat like spells with the only difference that they run of Strength, Dexterity, and maybe Constitution, instead of Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma
Btw Charisma and Wisdom casters are so much more unfair than Intelligence casters cuz Wisdom gives you access to Perception, aka the single best skill you can ever have, and Charisma gives you a genuinely good shot at smooth talking your way out of every situation with exception of brainless monsters and beasts
People always compare to wizards, but them Clerics and Druids being absurd in the background
Investigation is decent but def doesn't compare to perception/insight. On the other hand your a wizard lol.
And a niche of the fighter would be that they can use more and more battle maneuvers until they can do one with basically every attack, being the most technical martial combatant in an up-and-up fight.
One thing about magic items, casters don't get magic items that are just as strong
They get magic items that are way fucking stronger
Because a Marshall's magic item gives them a little bit of numerical bonus and a caster magic item lets them have five more spell slots with high level spells associated
And the caster item is exclusive to casters because of atonement requirements
yup
insert wand/necklace/rod/staff of X
"Give the non-casters spell-like superpowers" is exactly where I thought this video was going.
Much love for the PF2e point. Even within the 2e community people are constantly talking about how bad casters feel, but I think it's just because they're coming from 5e where casters can do...well, everything, as explained in this video. I have tried and tried to create characters in 5e based solely around martial classes, and always come up short of some gish warlock or artificer. Makes me sad because I don't think slapping spellcasting on everything is the right choice, but often it feels like it's needed to be at all effective.
The people complaining about Casters feeling weaker are usually newer players who, like you said, got into PF2E from 5e. Casters in PF2E are the supports, with debuffs, buffs, healing and the occasional aoe blasting (there are builds that maximize blasting and even a newly released class for that), but Martials are the main damage dealers while still being able to support the team through mundane healing or debuffs.
Casters still get the benefit of a variety of spells and the ability to have a variety of damage types to use against enemies, since damage type weaknesses are actually a thing to give a shit about in PF2E.
P2e casters are actually pretty powerful, it's just that P2e helps the martials keep up 100 time better than 5e.
Recently tried PF2e for the first time. Got handed a 5th level pregen fighter since everyone else was a spellcaster. Was like "oh well, I can handle the boredom since I'm learning". Then I saw the feature list on them was more than 1 page. I had 2-3 times the skill mods I normally did in 5e. My skills reflected the character's background. My weapon damage had multiple dice AND I could attack multiple times. AND I could still crit on a 3rd attack. I had multiple damage types. I had more reactions than just hitting a thing. And it ended up being the most fun fighter I had ever played. And, again, this was just a pregen.
You made a lot of good points here. I've been DMing for 4 years now, and I knew 5e had balance problems, but I thought they were mostly on the Dungeon Master's side of things, what with CR not working properly and such. This has made me heavily reconsider my previous opinions. I want to believe it's not as bad as it looks, but it's really hard to argue with the math. If it is that bad, I hope it's not unsalvageable. I love 5e and I have a lot of great memories with it. I think a fundamental imbalance on the players' end is the only thing that could persuade me to consider learning another system to replace 5e as my go-to. And even though I am willing to learn any number of new systems for the sake of giving my players a good experience, 5e is just so ubiquitous, and it can be hard to get people into other systems. I really hope that either this problem isn't as big as it looks or that it's something that I can still handle.
I'm glad that I explored Pathfinder 2e's Martial Classes being on par with the casters both mechanically and narratively.
Two things I'd add is that damage based Cantrips now exist for every full caster; some of which deal as much or more damage than any given weapon. Running out of spells as a caster doesn't mean bonking something with your staff now; it means using firebolt.
And this adds into my second point; in older editions, way back to c/x casting spells always remained a risk; as a caster had to declare that they were going to cast a spell at the top of the round before initiative was determined for that round; and if they got interrupted for any reason; they would lose that spell slot. A caster could spend resources without any benefit.
And our modern editions (excluding 4e) have been built on a system that had that risk built in; without bringing the risk. And while it's fully understandable why they changed stuff; they didn't bring casters reward down along with their risk. So now casters have at will spells that let them compete with Martials damage output; and will only ever waste spell slots by playing badly.
Meanwhile, spellcasters can reshape reality and a lot of players complain about Counterspell. Like, motherfucker, you can cast a 3rd level spell multiple times a day that just makes a huge *area* around you do a ton of damage and slow enemies, and the martial can just... poke with a stick pretty damn hard. You don't get to complain about counterspell.
I like the idea of offering martials supernatural gifts a lot!
Honestly, to me the best way to buff martials is to implement a Ki point system to every class (just dont make the options trash like monk) Make it so the martial can buff themselves during combat. Let them spend points to give themselves an adrenaline boost and haste themselves, damage boost, speed boost, anything. Introduce more magic items that disable enemy spells. I came up with a magic item called "The Followers Gauntlets" where a martial can use a reaction to forcibly keep a telportation portal open by strength check against the enemies spell save DC. Stuff like that. Make it so that mundane items can be carried and do the same things as magic spells. Grenades that act like lower powered Fireballs with a fixed DC.
The spell points system would work really well for this more points than just your level.
I like the idea of being able to grab magic.
@@ReptillianStrike my wizard player was not a fan lol
@@ReptillianStrike I've always felt like that's a necessary part of the powerful physical hero fantasy: to be able to overcome magical effects through sheer strength. if you look at the trailer for the new He-Man show, it actually shows him doing a bunch of things that I think every high level martial should be able to do - like parrying giant fireballs with a sword, leaping hundreds of feet across a battlefield in seconds, and using earthquake attacks by hitting the ground with supernatural strength. I am of the opinion that supernatural strength should firmly break suspension of disbelief, just as much as a wizard that can reign fire from the sky.
Wow! Great video! Game mechanics discussions can be dry, but your editing is on point. It kept the video so entertaining. Great job!
I am under the mindset that a level 20 Fighter or other Martial PC should basically be, regardless of subclass, at a minimum, effectively Toji Zenin from Jujutsu Kaisen. Because I've had this same point for a while, in order to a max level fighter to be comparable to a max level mage that can warp reality on a small scale, these people have to be blatantly superhuman.
Recently I’ve been using an adapted weapons system which I labeled “mastery weapons” this allows martials to pick up special feature for their weapons like extra damage, more range, easier access to status effect like grapples, shoves and prone alone with some homebrew options like damage armor, breaking concentration and applied a bleeding effect. When casters are still better this has somewhat evened the balance.
I started running a campaign recently that tackled this issue pretty well in my opinion. I added an entire combat art systems semi based on hunter arts from monster hunter, but it ended up being more like combat arts from fire emblem. I reworked proficiency to work in grades or ranks. Being higher rank with a weapon unlocks more advanced arts and or upgraded versions of early arts. Those who wield great swords get a whirlwind early on which gets upgraded to whirlwind + at greatsword rank C which gives it extra range and causes the attack to deal more damage the more targets it hits. I balanced these arts around adding durability to all weapons which scared my players at first but honestly hasn’t been bad. Durability is only drained when arts are used normal attacks drain 0. A weapon that reaches zero durability can still be used to attack with and suffers no damage penalty outside of being unable to land critical hits and if the the user crit fails with a weapon at zero it will break. I should also say weapons are easily repairable and have high base durability any blacksmith or player with the proper tools and proficiencies can repair or upgrade weapons. The punishments of having weapons be at zero were in hopes that folks would carry many weapons and have reasons to switch between them (I also limited player inventory on weapons to reasonable level. Meaning they just have to have an idea of where each weapon is stored like on their back or at theirs side or dangling from a backpack. The only way it is actually limiting is I don’t let people carry five of the same weapon. Two is fine, I just wanted people to use different weapons to play test more of the arts and the leveling system for proficiencies) During the phase of me building this system one of my players during a open floor kind of conversation said this felt like a buff to martials and asked what spell casters got which at the time I just yes and nothing but I did end up giving spell casters new spells and they always had the ability to use arts which some of which had a prerequisite of requiring spell casting and some quartstaff ones were specially built for spell casters like a cool one that breaks the quarterstaff draining the energy from it to cast a spells of 1st or 2nd level from your known spells list. I also let each player create a signature art. Which could be a brand new thing or an art that is locked to a weapon that their character can use on a different weapon which was fun. This whole thing also lead to me buffing some weapons by either giving them cool arts which is what I did for whips or adding new qualities to weapons like daggers in this game deal extra damage from behind and need a lower value to crit from behind. So long as the campaign I’m play testing this with goes well I plan on started to use this at all my future tables.
The simplest analytical point is the best, honestly.
Fighters get THREE meaningful options at level the first, defining pretty much their pigeonholed role, capacities for the rest of their career. Wizards get NINE, at the least.
This shit should have been fixed from D&DNEXT onwards. And it absolutely wasn't. Fuck.
I like the idea of giving martials supernatural powers; I honestly don't mind if DnD becomes like a shonen anime. One of the weird things about DnD 5th edition is the shear amount of power scaling in the classes and disparity with the theme of adventuring; its basically giving players the strength to kill Gods but not necessarily becoming Gods themselves. At that point, you might as well play a different system like Godbound, where insane power scaling IS the name of the game, and you actually become a God with all the responsibility, adventuring, and shonen-anime bullshit that it entails.
Playing in a homebrew demon slayer game, the way the dm and his team handled making the breathing styles and scaling them to level makes the martial classes we all are playing (casters weren’t allowed for obvious reasons) very fun and versatile. And it isn’t just giving us spells and “flavoring” it as “breathing styles”. Couldn’t help but think of that while watching this video. Ultimately I don’t care how weak martial classes are compared to casters, there is no way I’m ever going to stop playing echo knight, it’s just too fkn cool.
Echo Knight is completely broken. Most Mercer subclasses are. It's why they're so fun!
I think keeping martials mundane would work in old school dnd games which were balanced for such things as you mentioned, but 5e is simply a very different kind of game.
I do wish there was a more mundane or low fantasy version of 5e though. The flashy abilities feel less magical when they are everywhere.
There is the Gritty Realism resting rules. Combine that with some Class bans and a story that avoids magic and you could get some fun stuff in.
That or find and learn a different, low-fantasy system. On the plus side, those usually have their own world already pre-built.
@@justas423 Yeah, although it still seems easier to use a system that is built for that kind of setting from the ground up, just to have more resources that work with a low fantasy setting.
That said, for those who are set on using 5e that is still a half decent option.
It's called E6.
It really feels like the 4 martial/non-caster classes exist in a different world from the other classes. What are Paladins and Rangers as implemented in 5e if not just high fantasy versions of Fighters and Rogues?
As a Dm, and a raging min-maxer/power gamer, i have long since noticed the power of a pure caster and took note in my dming.
Grappling, Shoving, restraining and sneaky attacks/traps are what i used often when handling my party. Unless they succeed an ability check that they usually don't have proficiency in their gonna get hit, and being grappled and or getting sneaked attacked/secretly poison can do so much for me.
I also implement gritty realism for even more days to go without a long rest that usual casters needs so much, and for the warlock i especially have their patron come into play with special demands now and then followed by a Wis/Int Save to resist the command if they so choose(The command scales with every successful resisted save so eventually they'll crack)
Also employ smart monster leader to "Target specific people if their doing something particularly important" Which usually goes for the caster first due to aoe damage reasons and usually cuz they seem the weakest physically so grappling and stabbing usually gets them immediately. Also i employ tactics like covering the casters mouth with enemy actions, restraining their hands etc etc
I also make sure to keep at range, 200-300ft away where most spells cant reach, and use that to the monsters advantage and custom change most monsters resistance and immunity so people cant look up stats and resistance, enforcing a check to figure out a weakness/vulnerability first
I also have it so monsters/opposing casters NOT yell out their spell name before hand so the casters have no clue what a spell is and before i describe the effects ill have them choose their reaction spells if they want to (as a trade off however I also use counter spell super rarely or almost never)
All this leads to a certain uncertainty in spell casting that doesn't mess with the base class
In DnD though every class is a combat class, the defining feature of levels is being better at fighting. Yes spellcasters get access to all sorts of spells which can be useful for solving problems outside of battle, but are still ultimately about combat.
I think the biggest difference is that some spells can trivialize an encounter (forcecage, fly, invisibility...)
There are also 2 whole other aspects to a story though, exploration and social encounters. Social encounters can be navigated by anyone, but someone with a bit of Charm or a Seeming or similar will have an edge, especially in espionage. Exploration is trivialized by spells like teleport, goodberry, find the path, and others.
So martials can perform there, but generally not as well as a caster, while also not being quite as good at the combat side of things.
I still think one of the most elegant solutions is making spells take more to cast. Not costly components, at least not necessarily, but in actions. PF2e handles this really well imo
@@Visteus ya but mechanics wise ..dnd is a combat game..no matter how you look on it. Most crunch and focus is on combat
I will say also the many spells (low level ones) trivialize the other "pillars" of 5e. Mainly survival/exploration. Tiny hut,most ranger abilitys,druids,creat food and water,find object, scrying and massage,pass whit out a trace and many many more just SOLVE the problem. It's not HELPS you solve it
The defining feature of gaining levels is getting new ways to participate in the game. Only caster classes get this.
@@yuvalgabay1023 No. You think dnd is a combat game because you have low imagination.
Yeah the biggest thing I've felt martial classes need is just more options. A basic spellcaster with 2 attack cantrips immediately has 2 offensive options that they can use at any point. They usually have a wide range as well as some kind of secondary effect like forcing the hit creature to slow down or have disadvantage on an attack or the like. This is already so much more interesting than what most Martials are capable of when 90% of their combat potential comes down to "I run up and hit it with my sword."
Imo, the reason the Battlemaster Fighter is the best martial subclass isn't because of the increased damage or support abilities or whatever. It's because it actually gives the fighter more *options* to use in combat. Suddenly now every attack becomes a choice of whether you want to spend a die for some extra beneficial effect. Now sure it isn't perfect, I personally have always felt like they should get more resources to work with considering that a Fighter could blow through all of their dice in a single turn and an Action surge, but it's something. Also I feel like Short Rests should be shorter. As in like half an hour or so or even less (I think starfinder has 10 minute short rests). Short Rest Classes imo should be able to reliably restock all of their resources between every fight, and having to stop for a whole hour is just a really long time that tends to put most people off of doing them even in a short-rest heavy party. Whereas I think that resting for about 10 minutes after a big fight would make more sense and could happen more reliably.
But yeah I think that we essentially need Martial Spellcasting. I think it could be done if we worked off of the battlemaster subclass and basically just turned it into a Base Class Feature for all Martials. You could even have different "spell lists" for each Martial class by having say Barbarians only get access to the simpler and more offensive powers while say Rogues get access to the more control oriented and tricksey powers. And Fighters can be the Wizards of Martials and get access to everything.
Now Obviously I'd want to expand the number of Maneuvers dramatically, probably mixing in the choices you get from the Arcane Archer and Matt's Gunslinger subclasses as well and coming up with more on top of that. But I think it could work. Gaining a new Maneuver every level to always give those classes something interesting to gain in addition to whatever their subclass is. And I mean hell we could still have the Battlemaster Subclass, just have it double down and get even more maneuvers and resources to spend them on.
I'd probably also create Maneuvers that you can only pick after a certain level, similar to levelled spells. That way we could include some truly absurdly powerful stuff. If a wizard can bring down meteors with a level 9 spell, then a Fighter should be able to cut a mountain in half with a swing of their sword. Have a barbarian bring down their hammer and send an entire group of enemies flying from the impact. Get some good AoE abilities in there. If a Wizard can cast fireball by level 5 then a level 5 fighter should be able to cause a similar level of destruction.
And like this is the cool thing, making martials cooler doesn't make casters any less cool. A Barbarian being able to pick up and throw a giant across the map doesn't negate the coolness of a wizard being able to bend the world around them to their will. It just lets the party all do more cool things together.
One idea I had was to make martial damage with weapons more based on the level of the martial class (like a 10th level fighter with a dagger deals 2D8 instead of 1D4) but I think your features idea is actually better. Just a looooot of work for a homebrew.
Never thought I'd see a video on this topic that's this popular come up in my recommended feed! I quit my own D&D blog and the 5e optimization scene about a year ago, but it's still great to see this issue be more recognized! Also so happy to see Form of Dread get the proper attention it deserves (if you're reading this, hi Haen!)
I think there are a lot of ways to improve martial, specifically I was interested in two: improving weapon systems and giving every martial a piece of battlemaster fighter. I didn't playtested them yet, but I still plan to try those in the future.
Weapons remastered, revised is intriguing homebrew by Fungal Brews on Gm binder. It just adds so much to weapons like new alternative actions, status effects, and passive bonuses that make all weapons unique, and potentially can give martials an edge in power while giving them some new choices to use different weapons in different situations.
It`s also pretty funny that we already have a solid number of spell-like effects with battlemaster maneuvers. They are useful while almost never overpowered, all can be nice fodder for any flavor of a warrior without taking any attention, and Tasha gave us some non-combat maneuvers.
Just brainstorming here: all martials (maybe even fighters) can get 2 Super D`s and 2 maneuvers at the 1~3 levels. SD`s scale with PB: +2=2d4; +3=3d6; +4=4d8; +5=5d10 and +6=6d12. One of the first maneuvers can be dictated by the class (Barb - goading attack, monk - disarming strike, rogue - precision attack) while the rest are free, and they learn 1 new maneuver at every PB increase. Battlemasters can either be just amalgamated with the Champion, to finally make that archetype useful, or can just remain the same by having more maneuvers and faster scaling SD`s compared to other martials.
Is it balanced? Better! It can be balanced! Just needs playtesting. The main problem I can see right now is that it`s a lot of different resources, so for new players it could be harder to keep in mind. Especially with Monk`s Ki and Rogue`s archetypes like Arcane trickster and Soulblade.
Love this idea. The weapons need to be revamped and ideally customizable along with the martial class rework. The whole point is they are fighting with sticks and sharpened metal, and last I checked getting chopped in the head by a sharpened sword is at least as lethal as being exposed to fire and other spells. The 1D8 to 1D12 weapon damage only levels of power HAS to change.
You're still thinking in terms of damage. You don't get it.
@@mrosskne No not really. Unique weapons give alternative action options and conditions in the fights, to spice up the main gameplay. While maneuvers could be used for many things, especially if we add new non combat maneuvers like in Tasha's.
@@МолчаливыйКлинок You still don't get it.
@@mrosskne Ok, can you please explain then?