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"But Kobold! If I can just make the caster run out of resource-" _Meanwhile, Sorlock that specializes in Eldritch Blast and Toll the Dead._ "...Uhhhh... Kobold? How many encounters will it take, to make him run out of Cantrips?" ;~;
Even healer healers builds like paladins or many types of cleric are just flat better at doing damage then a martial. It is sad when your hill dwarf cleric does more damage & has more HP with healing then the barbarian every round in the party. It is easy to use D12 weapon as many types of cleric or a 2D6 maul just like the barbarian.
@@arnijulian6241 Bonus points if the Paladin dipped Hexblade, or the Cleric picked up Shillelagh from somewhere. Even Wizards can become better Martials than most Martials, by taking three to five levels in Artificer (going either Battle Smith or Armorer, specifically). If casters can perform martial attacks with their caster stats, and can thus go from MAD to SAD for such purposes, then how can most non-casters keep up?
"The longer the day goes the stronger martial become" Good luck convincing a party of mostly spellcasters to go willingly into another combat without spell slots
In my experience once the casters are out of their "good spells", they force the entire party to stop and take a long rest and nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, will prevent it.
My DM reworked the fighter and broke down both the champion and maneuvers from the Battle Master to be included in the entire class. He also gave more Second Winds and rechargeable Action Surge which makes it feel A LOT better as a martial.
@@juliandedicatoria3728 yeah without going into full details he even reworked some maneuvers to be resourceless but cost something like a bonus action or 10 feet of movement for Lunging Attack.
Battle master fighter is a difficult one to really balance, because the maneuvers themselves are not balanced. Using brace and riposte to use the dice for extra attacks is almost getting extra turns in tier 1, which would be pretty nutty if it were unlimited use
Yes. Especially rage. Having a class need a resource to fulfill their fantasy and then not giving them enough of those to actually keep up with the adventuring days is laughable, and unlike with Spellcasters you can't really save the rages for important fights unless you litterally sit there and do nothing.
++ monk gets 5 ki points per short rest on lvl 5. Wizard has 16 worth of 1st level spellslots on 5th level (total of 9 slots) and they get 3 on back on a short rest. They can use scrolls as well and some of their spells will work for couple rounds. Ki would be a resource if you get them 2 per monk level at least and can spent your hit dice to restore them in combat.
It's worth noting that resourcelessness arguably hurts classes more in the long run, as it makes a class hard to develop for. If I'm writing a book and I want to give a caster some new cool ability, I just make a spell and assign it a spell level equivalent to how strong the ability is. Nice and Easy. However if I want to give a martial some cool new ability, my options are a magic weapons (which players cannot simple choose to have), a feat (meaning the player misses out on an asi) or an alternative class feature (which is hard to balance and is specific to a single class). Casters are just easier to develop for; which is why we get spells like steel wind strike. The most martially martial thing you can think of, and it's only available to bards and wizards.
A solution could be to expand on and lean into the maneuvers concept, which are already almost (weak) spells for Fighter. You could make them more widely available across martial classes, assign them levels to maintain balance, and have separate lists to keep choices manageable and keep classes distinct. The only problem is that martials are generally implemented as the low-complexity classes, and this obviously runs counter to that philosophy.
Well, arguably whirlwind attack is about as equally "most martially martial thing you can think of" but, only rangers get that one. Steel wind strike is kind of a magic swordsman fantasy vibe too (or eastern style katana kind of thing) more than a generally martial idea. You never really imagine, say, a dude in plate armor "vanishing like the wind" to strike 5 people simultaneously
@@kirinashia567 Unless you read manga. In manga armor is just a style choice and everyone flash steps around anyway lol. So yeah I do imagine it and its funny.
@@Merilirem Even in anime and manga, a lot of the time heavier armored people that aren't samurai usually get the crazy BIG attacks more than the speed ones. A good example is fate, all the heavy armor people got shit like Excalibur Beam Laser and shit. I mean the strong dudes aren't usually turtle slow, but attack-wise, it's not like they're all doing Tsubame Gaeshi
Martial being resourceless and casters being forced to use resources is a relic of earlier additions before cantrips. Back then there was some advantage to not needing resources, especially in early levels where you had only a few spell slots per day vs the fighter who was powerful all the time.
Honestly, if cantrips weren't so good, this problem would be a lot less severe. But because a cantrip can do similar damage to a martial who isn't using one of three weapons and burning a feat slot, and often have some other feature tied to it (sorta making it like a spammable maneuver) just really makes it hard to want to play a raw martial. Even WotC has given up on raw martial and gave them magical features because otherwise they'd have to rebalance like half the classes minimum.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 It really still would be, 5e has no real mechanism for health recovery compared to the sea of pots of pre-3e, wands of CLW of 3e, and healing surges of 4e. Hp are a resource. Also all the nerfs martials have gotten since 3e do not help, in numbers(going from being able to beat any equal level monster and solo literal armies....to not, making saving throws MUCH harder, etc.), but also conceptually a lot of abilities you could just have as a martial now need magic to justify them.
That's the biggest offender imho. Having a spammable attack that is on average on par with most other weapons really screws with martial. I miss the days when the wizard had to bring a crossbow because they would REALLY need that after they've run out of spells.
@@SimoLInk1698 I like it, attack magic was never the problem spell, so the fact the warlock has a magic cross? Screw it, I want casters to have fireball all day. The problem is because weapon damage is so painfully low in comparison and compared to monsters without two specific feats that don't apply to all weapons.
It didn't work then either. The early game fighter had to stop fighting when the cleric ran out of healing, which was based on spell slots. It still all came down to whether the spellcasters wanted to keep going.
The "Martials are okay being bad because they're resourceless" argument really gets to me when I just finished a high level campaign as a monk and you would not understand how fast Ki points disappear. It literally feels like you have to use them to breathe. 2 combats and I'm basically out of Ki if the combat is difficult enough, as I'm running around trying to Stunning Strike all the enemies I can.
Yes. compare the Monk to the Warlock with their Agonizing Eldritch Blast, and you'll see that although both recover their resources on a short rest, the Monk's at will ability is weapon attacks with pathetic range and damage, whereas Eldritch Blast scales like extra attack and is a d10 right at the start like a magical heavy crossbow with no loading property. and that is not counting the utility the Warlock brings to the table. The Monk's slightly enhanced defense does not make up for it.
I mean chi does literally mean breath so you do. Joke aside, yep, and even if you were resourceless, resource arguements have so many flaws like forcing the DM to run a certain pace.
@@MrDanderskoff I mean the whole X encounter(combat) adventuring day model that D&D has been built around since 3e. It forces a certain pace, the nerfed status of fighters was justified that they could "go all day". If you the DM don't include enough encounters welp it's your fault, the game was balanced around 6-8 fights use correctly. If you do it's a giant ass slog and most of them are probably trash fights.
4:05 you don't go after the Caster because they are more Squishy, but because they are support, field controllers, or heavy hitters. You get them out of the way first so you are not just banging thier tank that keeps just getting back up or changing into a T-Rex.
Yes. Tanks have this funny quirk called "All my friends are dead" syndrome. Best thing to focus fire on after everyone else has been focus fired to death.
Yeah in D&D tanking doesn’t really work, since taunt and other martial CC abilities are so rare and the ones that do exist are often terrible and/or take up so much of the action economy/class resources that you’d be better off just smacking. You can make characters that are hard to kill, but smart enemies will just ignore them and focus on the people who built around DPR and support.
My level 6 forge cleric has an AC of 23. The next best in the team is a monk with 17. I'm also playing a hill dwarf which allowed me to dump strength so I have a high CON score. I have the most HP and highest AC in our team BY FAR. If I go down, the rest of the party will already be dead.
@@NorX50 My Aberrant Mind Sorcerer with 18 CON, a Summon Spell, and Dissonant Whisper for both defense and offense 😎. Having good CON checks and good HP, a disposable bodyguard and a spell that makes enemies go away and take Attack of Opportunity, not to mention that half my spell list cost reduced by 25/30% off 😎 Also am Harengon so Proficiency in Initiative and Built in Misty Step is cool
@@robertfaer4522 Ya can't tank without abilities to take hits for your allies. In real life this just means they can't move past you to attack your allies who are behind you.
Here from consistent 6-8 encounters per adventuring day. This is completely correct. In a world where control spells can take out 60% of a fight with a single action, the classes that can't do that have a really rough time. It's gotten to the point where noone plays the classes worth effected by this (fighter, barb, monk, rogue) cause being so much less useful isn't fun.
This is where DM's should play into such abilities with their encounter designs. Basically use what Sly Flourish (Mike Shae), calls lightening rods. In other words put enemies or even groups of enemies into the encounter specifically to allow the players to use those control abilities in a satisfying way, but not be able to nullify the entire encounter. Granted, don't do this all the time, but when you want to challenge them. I don't mean to be flippant. We all know encounters are hard to balance in 5e. But that's one way to keep the challenge without directly countering your players abilities, which feels like crap for your players if you do it a lot.
Also martal classes do have resources. Monks have Ki, fighters have action surge and second wind. Though yes rouges can Trigger sneak without resources they are also totally dependent on their environment to do their thing, and some subclasses like thief, soul knife and trickster do have to use resources.
Also rogue is among the weakest classes, since sneak attack is inherently worse than extra attack. It only hits above it's weight class until other martials get extra attack.
Also Barbarian has limited rages until 20 and a wide margin for punishment after reckless attacks, second wind is limited, fighting spirit is limited, superiority dice, unwavering mark, and arcane shot are all limited. I think the reason Rogues get a pass is their subclasses typically change the dynamics of roleplay and exploration but combat features only tweak existing elements like a new circumstance for the conditions of sneak attack or changing the way you use the help action or reactions.
The other thing I noticed more recently, classes like the Cleric, they are so Tanky, that at one session, I was playing a Barbarian, and we had a monster outside the door, I wanted to volunteer to lure the monster away, and create an opening for the Party, since I was the "Tank" naturally. But at the end, the Cleric was the one who did it, because it had Misty step and a higher AC than the barbarian. And could heal itself. And the HP difference kinda becomes irrelevant after level 5 or 6 basically, every class at this point will have enough HP to survive a hit or two so the big advantage of Melee fighters is completely gone after that point.
I mean, at least for barbarian, even by level 5 or 6 you shouldn't be taking *majority elemental damage* , so you should be able to survive 2-4 hits if the others are surviving 1-2 hits... Also, I mean. Clerics are actually rather proficient at being melee. Like, probably the most proficient of the casters early on, even to bladesong or pact of the blade. Edit: Also kinda curious why they have more AC than you unless they just chose not to cast shield of faith on you, favoring themselves.
@@kirinashia567 probably from better stats and having good armor and a shield to go with it even before casting spells, it's very likely since most barbarian players who don't realize dex barb is king have to invest into str dex and con to do well so they typically dump dex even though it's probably their best asset besides con so they end up with like 16 ac because they want to use a greatsword
@@lucasramey6427 I mean, in the case of cleric, better stats don't really change your AC. You're probably using top end medium, or low end heavy armor and a shield, as a cleric. Unless you spend a chunk of money on armor, ofc.
@@kirinashia567 You...aren't playing a Cleric right. At level 1 it is entirely possible to START with 20 in AC and meh stats. Be a forge cleric and you are a huge threat in melee, a walking wall of defense, oh yeah and you can set EVERYTHING on fire with cantrips. Just let everything burn as you walk on by without a scratch. By level 4-5 you have enough gold for proper full plate, add in a tower shield and you have 50% cover against everything from the front and sides and 100% cover on demand...meaning you can completely destroy a lot of spellcaster options as you can shift behind your shield as a reaction to being targeted by spells (it falls into the counterspell window, read the DMG). Add a magic warhammer, and you can bonk things to death with 26 AC by lvl 4-5. If you are smart and actually do some blacksmithing yourself as a forge cleric? WELL THEN! You can permanently affix protection from evil onto your armor! If you don't understand what that means? 30 AC by lvl 6. If you get creative with your spell usage and forging, you can have a 40+ AC by 10. This isn't even a min-max playstyle, just some very basic choices one can make from a purely defense based mindset. Your character's stats are actually irrelevant to it, fun huh?! Dex is king? Oh hell no. 10 in dex on my clerics. Dex is for the weak. After all, when you are ambushed and flatfooted, unless you have a specific class feature, you don't get your dex to your AC. All you get is your armor. There are ways to force you into a 'flatfooted' state even in the middle of combat. If your DM isn't doing this against you enough to thrash the dex builds your DM isn't being creative enough. We had a player join us once who came from a "everything in dex" table. We shook our heads, our DM cackled with glee. The poor fool soon learned what a 'feint' action was in melee and how it shattered a dex build. His dex based fighter ended up on the ground repeatedly, then he begged us to let him remake the fighter. Low dex high con and str and suddenly he was tanking things like he wanted and HE was using feint actions against enemy rogues to proper effect. Dex is only meta/king in groups where the DM isn't using the tools they have to crush min-max builds in some of the most punishing ways they have. Make your players bleed hard and be at the edge of death constantly. Punish them for trying to min-max. Reward those who are playing flexibly and creatively.
@@Nempo13 what the fuck system are you playing??? 5e has no tower shield and you should have chain mail and a shield at level 1 for 18 ac unless you're casting shield of faith. And your DM is VERY nice if you have the money for proper full plate by level 5. Also, your DM punishing players min maxing either means you already have a problem at the table, or your DM is actually legit picking favorites, because min maxed builds are actually more flexible if you're doing it right... So your non punished flexible players are just being favored. Also, yes, you're right about 10 or less dex on clerics, I was talking about dex on barb. Clerics status never matter for AC except for the rule some DMs use for a strength requirement to wear heavier armor. Edit: most of the shit you're talking about was doable in 3.5e, but the video youre commenting on is not for 3.5 or Pathfinder, it's a 5e vid.
I gave my battlemaster “infinite” combat maneuvers during battle but only 1 maneuver during each action type. His impact during the battle was roughly the same as a caster. Your health is a very finite resource during an encounter with 10+ goblins and their elites. Everyone was empty after that boss encounter including the fighter
As a DM I tend to view this as something I can influence heavily through Magic items, Enemy type and tactics, and personally I tend to give my martials double their resources on their features (Ki especially). Sad that DMs have to fix the game balance themselves but ah well, we've all had worse in our favorite games
Not a fan of just doubling KI id rather just lower the Ki cost for some abilities or even make them free. Like step of the wind or patient defence just being free. Or you can spend a Ki and they cost no action.
Yeah monks got hosed when so many base abilities were tied directly to ki that the rogue get for literally free. Ki should have been reserved for subclass features and stuff from the base monk that used it should also have been augmented by subclasses. Fury of blows should work differently based on your path: kensai get more weapon attacks, open hand gets more total blows, sun gets ranged, elements get either elemental damage or have abilities that are activated on using fury. Could be kicking wind pressure or water whips for range/knockdown, fire or rock adds more damage, etc. We can talk about monk all day about how ki should work, stunning strike, etc. but we’d be here forever.
@@jemm113 Honestly a quick fix would be simple: Monks make a number of Unarmed Strikes when they use the Attack Action equal to Proficiency Bonus. And Step of The Wind is free as a bonus action (Disengage + Dash! Idk why the original one wasn’t like that wtf) or using Ki. That’s it, now the Monk can finally call themselves a martial that deals considerable damage and a true skirmisher. I have more concepts if anyone is interested btw!
We homebrewed that the Monk would regain Ki points equivalent to their proficiency bonus upon rolling initiative, that flurry of blows only cost Ki points if you made your attack action with a weapon instead of unarmed, and step of the wind only cost a Ki point if you chose to do BOTH disengage and dash at the same time with your bonus action. And we made patient defense a reaction that could be activated upon being hit to impose disadvantage, but before the damage was revealed and it would effect the rest of the round like the shield spell. Meaning that if the monk would have dodged all attacks anyways just using their base armor class, then they don’t need to use a ki point and a bonus action to defend. Allowed the monk to not use Ki on abilities that should be basic class features so they could use their points on the fun stuff like subclass features and stunning strike.
@@MechAdv Not a fan of the FOB change there. Its the only ability that makes sense to cost Ki. And giving them essentially the capstone from level 1 but upgraded seems way to strong. Other than that, I can agree with the changes. Id just make the step of the wind either a bonus action do the things, or a Ki point do them with no action cost.
My favorite characters were all warlocks. And I abused short rest for fantastic spells. For example, I had a Undead warlock who only needed 4 hour long rest. So after the rest I'd spend the last hour or two before we set out for the day to cast death ward on the party then short rest to be ready when everyone got up. I could also use Phantom steed so we had mounts which we didn't have to worry about with mountainous regions which we did run into. We also had a bag of holding which my warlock didn't need to breath so they stuffed her into the bag while traveling on the phantom steeds so she'd be ready for combat. I also use Summon Shadowspawn which lasts an hour allowing me to make full use of those limited spell slots for as long a duration as possible. Overall, I had used a lot of resource during the day and the party thanked me for it.
Yeah, you're not wrong. Dnd has even fixed this issue in the past. By making martials have activatable abilities to perform cool stunts and interesting attacks. The issue was, people at the time and many current game masters found that made martials "too anime". So, I'm just gonna put this out there: either give martials more abilities in the form of battlemaster maneuvers, or gut casters viciously. Preferably both.
"Too anime" lol. Casually fights a dragon and takes a fire breath attack to the face and doesn't die in standard dnd 5e. Its silly on peoples parts to think using magic isn't anime.
It's a good thing PF2e is becoming so popular, cause that's exactly what they did. They also leaned into the anime. Fighters get a feat called "Sever Space" where they cut an enemy from 80ft away and then teleport up to them. Barbarians get a feat called "Dragon's Rage Wings" that gives them dragon wings and a fly speed. Rogues get a feat called "Cloud Step" that lets them walk on air, up walls, or even across lava. And of course, monks literally have a feat called "Ki Blast" that lets them shoot a Ki Blast. PF2e leaned into the anime all the way.
I played 4e recently, and as someone who are coming from 5e, I'm amazed by how powerful the martial classes in that system. I had a lot of fun playing my fighter character.
Also, note that you didn't even talk about the ritual caster feature many spellcasters have, and the various ritual spells that help the party get a short or long rest in while in hostile territory.
Hey Kobold, I'd love to see a video with suggestions on how to fix this disparity. Totally agreed though, we typically end up with 1-2 encounters per day at my table.
"suggestions on how to fix this disparity" Try a different system. And this suggestion isn't even related to the current sh*tshow Hasbro/WotC are doing. This problem is a fundamental part of how 5e is designed and there is just no way to solve it without rebalancing the entire game - which is basically the same as creating a new game entirely.
Treantmonk's houserules are a good start. 1. The Shield spell no longer exists. 2. Casters cannot cast with heavier armour than they get from the class casting said spells (eg a Druid/Life Cleric can't cast Goodberry or Entangle in heavy armour, but they can cast Bless; no Wizard can cast in armour unless they get the proficiency from a Wizard subclass). Casters can still defend themselves with range, mobility, and the ability to Dodge without crippling their effectiveness despite these nerfs. 3. All characters can do the -5/+10 from SS and GWM with any weapon attack. Martials obviously benefit a lot more than most casters, and it removes a major feat tax for them while increasing the number of viable builds (sword-and-board actually becomes good). I'm a fan of going a bit further with my own replacement for Treantmonk's first houserule. Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs are no longer spells. All martials (ie Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, and Monk) gain an additional class feature at level 1 called something like Martial Tactics, which grants proficiency bonus/long rest "spell slots" they can only use to "cast" any of these "spells", which get renamed something like Defensive Stance, Elemental Mettle, and Distracting Ploy respectively, and which are now considered nonmagical. Using a Martial Tactic ends concentration on spells. Basically, give martials some more nice things in such a way that casters can't easily gain and use them with a dip. Another surprisingly viable option is handing out modern and even futuristic firearms to martials. Only the hunting rifle and the futuristic weapons actually deal more damage than the hand crossbow (and the hunting rifle is marginal). It doesn't really do anything to address the core issues, but anything that buffs martials and doesn't require houseruling is worth considering.
The issue here is that this disparity is baked on the base classes. Dael Kingsmill has a video were she basically rebuild the fighter class, and oh boy. It's a shit ton of work
One simple one we're trying at our table is a homebrew called "Revised Martial Equipment". It's a huuuuuuuuuge buff to martials that doesn't take the show away from casters (not that it's possible with the effects and area spells have which combine with martial stuff anyway). Martials have the tools to be interesting and useful, but overhauling equipment, a mechanic they interact with more than casters, makes a huge difference.
there's a reason the strongest martial classes (such as rune knight or battlemaster) all add extra resources to manage and pull from when needed whilst being in line with the character fantasy and adding some extra beef to the classes themselves.
And spells are why Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster are just flat-out the best fighter and rogue subclasses. And yeah, Echo Knight and Battlemaster are the only "pure" martial subclasses (as in, no spellcasting) that truly shine...because they have abilities that can significantly impact the flow of battle beyond BIG NAHMBUR (because spellcasters can also do BIG NAHMBUR on a whim). Which is a bad thing about D&D. Martials need to be able to do things without casters also being able to tread on their turf (as much as I love Hexblade, a full caster shouldn't be able to melee as good as, if not better than, a pure martial while also having shutdown spell.
@@Kylora2112 concentration is kind of a thing that's taken into consideration but honestly to make concentration checks and be on the front line as a caster. You need like 1.5 feats. Maybe a good constitution to start with and you're set. Dc10 isn't that hard to meet. And most times the dc is gonna be 10.
This is one of 2 main reasons why my table switched to SotDL last year Basically, in this system, casters progress by getting more resources & better spells, while martials progress by having their damage passively scale up So for any 5e homebreweres out there- you can try experimenting with giving pure martials a bump in weapon damage die (there's a dice progression chart somewhere) at the same increments when the casters get a cantrip power-up
thats the big thing i think is missing in 5e. i don't get why extra attack stops scaling after level 5 for everyone but fighter. its weird. its like 'enemies will be getting more and more HP and you'll be getting...a tiny bit more damage. In fact, that just made me think..if we were to generalize the fighers extra attack across all of the extra attack using martials...that'd take a good chunk out of the dispartiy.
To be honest everything is a resource. We talk about action economy all the time, because your actions are resources. They just renew every turn. Other resources renew on short or long rests. Some resources, such as charges on some magic items renew once per game day. Nothing is actually resourceless in this game, and nearly all resources cost only time to renew. This was an issue I disliked a lot back in AD&D 2 without cantrips in the game, but cantrips more than solves it. Casters clearly now have options that don't cost daily resources.
Keep in mind that, especially for melee characters, HP is a resource they trade to be able to do their job, so truly resourceless characters don't really exist. (Assuming one doesn't consider 1 action, 1 movement and 1 bonus action per turn being resources, of course)
That's kinda moot, the average of roughly 3 hp per level+con doesn't stack up in later game where enemies deal massive damage irregardless. At that point casters have access to protective spells in the form of shield or silvery barbs and the like so the ability to have a higher armor class doesn't exactly help either
@@gabrieljones7642 Clearly a balance issue. Though honestly it never made any sense for a normal warrior at any level to beat some of the enemies they encounter at higher levels. They should probably just give up and make everyone "magical' in some way.
@Merilirem my brother and I run campaigns alternating every week, we use laserllamas stuff in both and the martial feel a lot better with thier exploits
@Merilirem I feel like that completely defeats the point of playing a fighter, and misses why it's been the most popular class (despite its poor balance vs casters) for the entirety of 5e. You play a fighter for the fantasy of being a *fighter.* That Brass-balled bastard that shows up to fight a giant with a longsword, a shield and a whole lot of grit. You play because you want to be Cu Chulainn fighting off the army of Queen Medb by himself. Or maybe you play because you want to be King Arthur, slaying the dragon Vortigern and saving Gwynivere from its villainy. Or maybe you play because you want to be Miyamoto Musashi, a vagabond who challenges anyone who meets his eye to a duel to the death because he *needs* to prove that he's the strongest. There's a dozen other archetypes that you play a fighter to be, but the fact is: Fighters not having true magic? That's part of the fantasy. The issue is that, fundamentally, D&D was built off the back of Tolkienian fantasy, and Boromir and Gimli were the fighters. Strong, capable of taking on dozens by themselves, but still merely men. But who is the wizard based off of? Gandalf. A Maiar, and not just any Maiar, the Maiar of Iru Iluvitar (AKA the overgod of Middle Earth) himself. It's essentially the difference between a really good fighter, that could conceivably exist in real life and the Archangel Uriel, who could burn a city with naught but a flick of his wrist. I think, fundamentally, the fantasy is just imbalanced, and that imbalance has never been properly corrected.
I have attempted to create Barbarian overhaul with rage points earned with DMG received and to be spent on DMG and other abilities. The feel is great, it is a killing machine, feels like a real terrifying beast. This is something i would like to be while selecting a barbarian as my character class
Very interesting! I've also been trying to rework martials and nerf casters at my table so I'm interested in the specifics. Is it like each time they take damage they get a point they can use to gain the benefits of a rage for a round or even longer than that?
I remember one Fighter subclass that was deemed OP by everyone and then later dropped by WoTC that I really liked and felt like a the closest a Martial could have come to a Caster. That was the Brute Subclass. Permanent damage boosts to every attack and a permanent 1d6 to every saving throw and a 50-70% chance to get back up if you are rolling 3 or more death saves. It was awesome. Still my favorite subclass of all time.
@@jacobsarvathayaparan2337 they got a rage dice for every 10hp of DMG taken in a single round of combat. Rage dice started from d4 and on certain lvl they grew to d6, d8, d10. Character could not store more rage dice than their barbarian level, and they were lost if not used within 10 minutes. At begining they were used only for DMG (on a hit you can expend rage dice) like smites and to extend barbarian movement (roll times 5ft). On higher levels, you could restart your rage with rage points (for 2 dice) or heal after combat (hp x roll). I thought about some spelllike abilities like deafening roar, or frightening display, but I'm not so sure about those. Couldn't have an opportunity to test this overhaul well though but i think it put barbarian at the paladin level for battle usefulness. It balanced the totem barbarian with other barbarians as well, as they receive least DMG among all barb subclasses.
@Zulk RS I agree, Brute wasn't OP by 5e standards but it did unbalance the martials and WotC as always went the lazier route instead of using the opportunity to start some rebalancing
that sounds interesting! i always felt like rage didn’t do what i expected rage to do. it’s hard to imagine someone just immediately seeing a bunch of enemies and getting angry enough to gain those benefits, because every sort of rage mechanic in games i’ve played kicks in later in the fight (think god of war, where you build the rage meter by dealing and taking damage)
Insisting DMs have to “Drain the spellcaster of their spell slots” is literally just trickle down economics nonsense. It creates more encounters where the spellcaster gets to shine before the resourceless character takes the lead. And then the resourceless are doing _the same thing_ they’ve been doing for that entire time. Not exactly “shining” are they. This does not work, does not address the disparity, swamps your game with combats, and ties the DMs hands by deciding how many challenging fights must happen in spite of the story context. Nerf. Casters. And this issue pretty well illustrates the part of the problem that can’t be fixed by changing martials. You must have a hard limit on spell slots so casters have to pick when to shine and can’t shine all the time. Either that or they don’t get all their spells back on a long rest.
Martial: you ran out of spell slots, which means im stronger than you now. We will continue our mission without resting Caster: Would you rather take 10+ monsters on your own at once without my crowd control while i sit around being a dead weight? Martial: ummm..... Caster: yeah, i didnt think so
"If it makes you shut up about being more powerful than me in earlier fights of the day, yes." Chances are a martial saying the first line you provided, is doing so in response to a caster boasting about their power, or complaining about the martial's lack of it.
One of my common things to do in games is have genuine tutors in my games where martial people can decide during the in between of story beats to go seek out legendary trainers to learn things if late game and if early game just actual masters. I will admit, my difficulty is finding serious players nowadays, cause my dming style is very serious with a mix of low-grimdark, intrigue, and high octane moments. Those abilities are amazing, but it is absolutely fun to see the math slowly begin to even out between casters and martial during that time.
In pathfinder, casters typically have decent resourceless options and so don’t need to have overpowered spells to be on par with martials, and so the two class categories are actually very well balanced. Also, with non magical healing being often as good or better than magical healing, martials can keep their health up to keep tanking well into an adventuring day.
Non magical healing is good that my medic monk has taken over most healing in the game I’m in. Sure the cleric heals at range with magic in combat, but post combat I can reliably heal 4 target 2d8+45 which is nuts
My favorite way to buff martial is to make their resources rechargeable. Like downing an enemy gets you a supiority die/ ki point. If you crit you get another use of action surge or second wind. Idk how I would implement it well lol
good idea, but downing an enemy doesent come that often for a martial at high level unless they are fighting a big hoard...the bigger dpsses...so casters, do a lot more downing. I'd say give them a specific action for that. For example monk should get a ki charge action. How are you gonna make a dragon ball-ish class and not let them charge ki? Make them spend an action, but they get their hit dice roll worth of ki out of it(at level 10 2 hit dice, at level 15 3 hit dice and at level 20 4 hit dice). Battle master should maybe get a 'strategize' action, which should be something similar to ki charge and so on
That’s a neat idea. Perhaps at later levels the recharge action provides other advantages or have it affect existing abilities. Like battle master could strategize as part of second wind
I have never run completely out of spell slots in an adventuring day (mostly because our games go from level 5 onward but I digress), but I know for a fact that I've made mistakes and run out of Barbarian rages before. And Monk burns Ki like California burns trees. Thats half of the full martials that have very spendable resources, and if we include the half casters into this (Paladin and Ranger) then we have 2/3rds of all martials having resources that can run out very fast if you aren't careful. Fighter and Rogue both at least have subclasses that have specific resources tied to them. And all classes have 2 types of resources we spend all the time: HP like you said, and ACTIONS. Actions are pretty scarce resource despite getting a new batch of them every turn and all classes use the hell out of em. We sometimes even change battle plans mid combat just to buy ourselves or our allies an extra turn or two to get what they need to do done.
Honestly the lack of spells with multiple turns to cast is baffling to me. It would've been such an interesting dynamic for spellcasters to figure out if they can commit enough turns to cast a big impactful spell without losing concentration or if they should use a quick lower impact spell. You could even buff the effect of some of the spells too to compensate and fact that the spellcasters can be forced out of their spells would make casting them a big risk nonetheless rather than the default answer to whatever encounter the DM throws their way.
@@domo_nicc I think there are two major reasons why there are no multiple turn spells: The action economy is a b*tch, and its not very hard to get a nigh unbreakable concentration(especially with certain classes- cough, artificer, cough). Think about it: You can either just attack twice with a weaker spell or wait two turns for a stronger one... or you could just have your fighter attack 6 times in those two turns and get comparable damage. I'm honestly more surprised there aren't more unique ways of casting spells. Spells that scale with CON or use HP as a cost, spells that require some kinda crazy bs ritual to pull off in the middle of a fight, or heck, even just more interesting reaction spells. Or reaction mechanics in general (I'm actually working on my own game atm and expanding on the concept of interrupting a bit more). Spells that are effectively micro games between the player and dm would be kinda fun too.
@@sutoriimmortal2177 attacking twice with a weaker spell would consume more spell slots and so you are paying a different resource for that benefit. But yeah action economy is king so it would requiring a lot of rebalancing for spells affected and building for concentration would be even more important than it already is. Having martials be a more consistent and lower cost DPR sounds like a win in my book when casters offer so much more utility with their buffs/debuffs and OOC spells. The idea obviously needs more fine tuning but I really find 1 action for every combat spell misses out on creating more dynamic combat situations which DnD 5e is already missing.
@@domo_nicc Then there's just Paladin, the class that gets the benefits of martial sustained dpr AND the high nova damage of its 8 flavors of smite. lol But I get what you mean. 5e is definitely not a perfect game by any means and could use some tweaking for the sake of fun and balance. Heck just the other night I was theroy crafting some... quality of life improvements for Monk... yeah lets call em that. XD
In my CoS campaign I'm running I think I got the caster martial gap nice and close. Everyone got very early custom magic items I made. While the 2 casters got more utility leaning focuses, the martials got weapons that do more damage and provided a bit of survivability. All the magic items sort of key off the Dragon Wrath magic weapons for scaling and its working well. It's interesting what an extra d4 +2 damage and a few temp hp a turn does for an already optimized martial.
Caster: "ok, martians, i already won the important combat be splitting the important enemies. You can go now and do stupid bong things and lose more hp probably going melle." Martials: "I'm Resooooourcesleees" A few hours/encounter latter: Caster: "ok, martians, i already won the important combat be splitting the important enemies. You can go now and do stupid bong things and lose more hp probably going melle." Martials: falls 0 hp Caster: "OK, I should bring another casters friend to have more resources in the party. Next time I gonna call the druid and ther conjured animals friends or Dodge,the Cleric, they both outdamage the martial to."
yep, the balance team were clearly not present for even a second of this games production, me and my friend ended up making an entirely new system and its far superior, both for customization, balance, and its more satisfying and realistic
My current attempt to fix this: all classes other than full casters get a spell every other level starting at 3rd level, at the spell level equal to what a wizard can cast at that level. A 2nd at 3rd level, a 3rd at 5th level, etc. They can cast each of these spells once per long rest. Players who don’t want a magical fighter, re-flavor the ability of the spell to be non-magical. Lightning bolt for a barbarian at 5th level is just a heavy piercing spear throw, using Strength for the spell save DC. I have not tested it yet, what do you guys think?
sounds like a recipe for extreme silliness, in a way that i kinda love. Level 11+ fighters with Tenser's Transformation sounds absolutely terrifying, and I feel like there's a lot of shitpost potential at level 17+ for "non-magical wishes".
As someone who has played as a Monk all the way to Level 20 in a party of only spellcasters, I absolutely hate just how correct this video is. To make matters worse, there were two druids in the party who each loved to cast Conjure Animals and cause the turns to each take 25 minutes.
very good video. the only martial i play really is my dragonborn stromsoul babarian and i focused hard on getting as many resistances hp and ac as possible to increase the value of the hp resource. He is fairly high level and can easily outtank monsters like krakens. Of course he has his weaknesses in saving throws. He plays more like a support char that soaks damage and trys to break concentration on enemy casters or gets into the masses of small enemys so the other players don´t get checked as often on concentration.
My take isn't about amount of resources to spend, but the versatily casters usually have over non-casters. As the game progresses, casters gain spells that expand their utility , while non-caster tipically specializes in few things. Even if the resource is limited, the increase number of options make up for it. You can see for non-caster classes, the subclasses that expand the options the player can have are usually the best ones (like Echo Knight and Battlemaster for a Fighter)
It's so shocking to me to have martial players not take any power attacks. Cantrips come close to damage and eldrictch blast is literally better in every way compared to a non power attack martial. The fact OneDnD took this out just made the disparity even greater! They need to bring back power attack and make it universal to all melee weapons. 1 handed weapons would get less, like only profiency added, while 2 handed would get double that.
To be fair with OneDND, we've not seen what they're doing with Martials yet. (Also, a feat/feats chouldn't be basically required to make a martial viable)
This is made even worse with the fact that, unless you go variant human, your first feet is level four. The casters are most likely to run out of spells at level one-three, but there cantrips literally do the same damage as the martial 90% of the time (Hi toll of the dead, please stop being better then almost every martial at lvl 1). And let not forget that forgoing ability increase hurts martial more then casters (5% increase chance to hit where you do nothing if you miss, vs 5% chance a monster save and take haft damage from a spell (and this is worse case for Caster. Spells like Spike Growth exist with no saves)). And casters might not even need to pick up a feet at level four if there group does 1 or two combat a day, where martials do. And let not forget that Wizards had the audacity to put feats under the optional area in 5e. Sure, 95% of tables run with them, but for new players the fact that they optional drastically increase how likely they are to not pick one up.
Yeah, as someone who has played a barbarian it's very clear hit dice and hit points are your resource. Played a high level one shot with a ancestral barbarian and learned the hard way there is definitely such a thing as to much pull. Especially if the bbeg isn't limited to physical damage types. Made me wish I was boring old bear totem.
Adding on the HP argument… There is no reason to be a melee character, as in, there is no benefit from fighting in melee compared to ranged. The only true argument would be Tanking, but, sadly that requires DM Fiat and very specific abilities (Ignoring that the Paladin already has some spells designed for that, on top of being the best class!) as monsters are usually tanky themselves, and can eat through a aoo. Also the sad fact that ranged attackers can do same if not more damage than a melee one (that’s why the Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter Fighter is the crème de crème of all dpr martials!) and only the Fighter has abilities benefiting them for ranged! Monks need melee for Stunning Strike and other Ki Features, Barbarians need melee for rage, and Rogues usually need someone else in melee already or an optional feature.
I wonder how much of the distance between Martials and Casters would be mitigated if weapon damage was, say, doubled. 2d8 long swords (one handed) and 4d6 Greatswords seem pretty good. Casters would probably still be better due to the potency of leveled spells but if cantrips were left the same then that might help a bit. Of coarse, that would make fighting in melee considerably more dangerous. Double damage on weapons and double the number of hit dice? Idk, just spitballing here.
As a DM I've always noticed that a single martial class in a party makes a massive difference. simply because of reliable, constant single target damage output. Control spells are all great, but you can get to a point of taking litterally 5-6 rounds to kill a single beefy monster if you don't have a martial character (warlocks also function here with AG or hex blade types), if you play through SKT for example, you are very often faced with combats of 3-4 very tough monsters, we had a caster heavy party and were legitimately struggling to kill them before the full duration of spells expired, even if they failed every single repeat save. There are also a lot of magic weapons in pre written adventures that often double the power of a martial character, a good example is the sunsword in strahd, but there are a ton of them. + weapons that are bows or two handed also turbo boost the sharpshooter and GWM feats which is worth pointing out. As far as resources go, it depends on game style and also if everyone is playing optimally 100% of the time.... which I have yet to see a single group play like that, since people actually like casting spells or doing reckless things. I feel like it's worth noting that a rogue for instance aside from specifficaly hit dice and a few subclasses, is a restless class. Reliable talent can do what quite a lot of magic can do, but for free and with no cost benefit problems, same goes for in combat. They are limited in hit dice, but its much easier to buy healing then it is to buy spell slots, or if you have a life cleric or paladin in the party with certain channel divinities, effectively you have infinite healing anyway.
A big issue with casters is that all their issues are so bad or unfun that most people work around those issues via houserules or playpatterns. Out of spell slots? Time for long rest, we can't fight without our spells. Material components? Oh just subtract the gold and we pretend your wizard buys his components regularly, or just straight up ignore it. Too squishy early on? We start at lv3 so we don't have to deal with the bad earlygame design of 5E. Comparatively all the Martial issues are tied to realism binding them to the earth while wizards fly through the air reshaping reality. Their issues make sense and are "flavorful". Even the magic item distribution favors casters because most of the magic items that would help martials are just straight DPR boosts with little to no flavor.
Martial: ok that spell was pretty cool, but once you run out your onto cantrips, and I’ll be more powerful then you. Wizard or bard who just magic jar’d into a githyanki gish with 3 weapon attacks per turn each doing 30 damage .: oh, ummm,,,,,,, yeah. You bet .
thats a spell issue, not a generalized caster issue. there are a few very specific spells that are just way too powerful (albeit some of them only if the DM lets you really exploit them). the conjure spells are the most obvious contender. but yeah, magic jar is also one (again, assuming the DM allows it to be abused to its fullest).
@@Spiceodog what the absolute hell are you talking about? I honestly don't think I have ever seen that spell taken in a real game. Are you white rooming again?
Martials seem to be 'balanced' around being 'realistic' because they aren't using magic, but Casters obviously don't have this as a limitation. Now this makes some sense, even if it does impact the fun of the game sometimes (If you have a good DM, you should never ever *need* to play 100% Optimal to have fun.) The trouble with that logic is, Martials are still supposed to be Extraordinary/Superhuman, and well beyond the average 'guy with a sword'. Their abilities may not be magic, but they shouldn't be constrained by 'realistic' limits. They should still be able to pull off feats of extraordinary power if they're supposed to be around the same *Level* as a Caster with the same *Level* as theirs. I.e, a Level 20 Fighter and a Level 20 Wizard should be equally powerful, (as long as both are equally well built) even if the fighter isn't using 'magic', and is only using their physical capabilities. I should also mention that 'Just play so many encounters that your Casters run out of spell slots, can't do anything anymore and stop having fun' is such a stupid argument even if the casters do run out of Resources.
I had a frustrating session once, where the first combat was a bulky undead, that summoned squishy undead. I was a tanky Barbarian and played "Fleshy Hypnotic Pattern" off to the side (getting my face knocked in). At the end of the fight, after the casters eventually killed the bulky summoner, I asked for a short rest, having gone below 10hp. The others said "we've still got a bunch of spells and most of our health, you can't have a nap after every fight". At the end of the second fight, the group unanimously decided to take a long rest, as they'd used all their spell slots...
Of note for the attrition argument. I have been playing Tales of the Yawning Portal Adventurers League* for the first time for the past few months. I am a Bladesinger Tank/DPS build at 3rd level, and was excited to test my resource management skills. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed to find our giant dungeon crawling hadn't really done anything to prevent us the players from clearing a room, (or 2 or 3) until we ran low on resources, barricading the paths further in and short or long resting as much as we want, at the arbitrary cost of "1 day spent/long rest". The quest was to clear the orc horde in the dungeon, so no timer there, and the enemies in the unexplored rooms don't seem to do notable prep or congregate to drive out the invaders that have obviously been slaughtering everyone closer to the surface for the past few days, with no signs of stopping. Despite a full horde of the remaining 60 or so orcs swarming us from the lower depths all at once being their best chance of killing the adventurers before we do them in our room-by-room extermination batches of 8-12/day. If even the By-The-Book Adventures League doesn't run encounters/day the "way it was intended" to balance the martial vs caster disparity, then I guess martials are just out of luck outside of some fully optimized to borderline cheese martials or multiclasses and half casters and I just need to resign myself to the Full Casters being the base of party makeup. TLDR: Attrition only lasts until the end of a given combat unless you (The DM) actively limit or punish taking long rests. *(The one where if it's not RAW it doesn't fly, PERIOD.)
This is an interesting point. When I first played DnD in the 70’s, cantrip didn’t exist, and this argument was more meaningful. Giving casters a feature that doesn’t run out really does change the game balance.
Martial: I have more hitpoints Caster: armor of agytys, abjuration wizard, aid, and healing Martial: I got better ac Caster: shield of faith, shield, mage armor Martial: I got better consistent damage Caster: Lightning storm, flaming sphere, just nova them to death Martial: I got better shutdown/crowd control Caster: lol no you dont Martial: I got more sustain Caster: go watch this video
Weird that D&D solved this problem multiple times, yet WotC doesn't seem to care. Old D&D solved this by having Fighters and Rogues (at least the 2e ones) have so many stacked advantages: Faster leveling, better armor, more skills unique to them, big boi damage, multiple attacks, more hit points, better saving throws, a general lack of weaknesses outside of Rogues being kind of bad when they're in the front-lines. 4e solved this by just also giving Fighters and Rogues crazy spell-like effects, with their own once-per-day nukes and some silly tools that allowed them to hit harder or tank better, plus various utility spells of their own that allowed them to do some shenanigans on the level of an epic poem or an anime scene. I think the design problems don't really exist, because solutions exist. The problem is, the solutions have to be retroactively added because the designers dropped the ball. Better saving throws! Cool unique actions! Being able to actually shrug off hits instead of being dropped to half health from the attack that would have dropped the Wizard to 2HP with no recourse! You don't even have to overcomplicate these things for players who want simpler classes, just give larger healing pools, dramatic once-per-day or once-per-rest effects that feel good and powerful and obvious to use, saving throws that don't suck, etc.
The other thing you didn't mention that I think is quite important: Resources create the opportunity for difficult decisions, and having real decisions to make is the essence of a good encounter! There's a reason that martials in 5e have a reputation for watching their allies do all this cool stuff, only for their turn to come around and they say "I attack it, Ok that was my turn". While this is largely an encounter design issue, you can't guarantee every encounter is going to be a carefully crafted, complex thing, and having resources for the players to manage papers over this by at least giving the player *some* decisions to make, and some way to push a little harder and be the big playmaker in this encounter.
I definitely agree this is a problem with martial inability to use up useful resources, but another problem is that at base, spellcasting is far too good, even at low levels, and casters need nerfs.
And this is not even considering Martials are still dependent on Ki, Rages, Action Surges, Superiority Dice, etc, if they want to be more effective than a caster using its cantrips.
I just read the "squishy caster fallacy" That's terrifying. The Wizard has more AC and often better saves than the actual fighter, and doesn't give up that much to get it, either. Like I know people say that D&D 5E isn't the best system for all occasions, but honestly I'm starting to think it's not even the best system for d&d!
This area is where non-combat encounters become an important part of the "adventure day". A charm spell is limited but a eloquence bard with charisma will probably never need to. There is value in resourceless features but the measurement tools are harder to interpret.
Let's be real. Casters do more in non-combat aswell. They are the classes with high Intelligence and Charisma scores. And they have a ton of utility spells that are better then mundane actions. Flying is better than balancing over a beam. Charm is better than talking. Alarm is better than setting a trap. Magical Disguise is better than a Rogue.
@@lolroflundxd of course spells are better. They are magic. The difference is they are limited in repeatability. Each spell is a cost that should be limiting later uses for both combat and non-combat. If casting never becomes resource management the pacing has become broken akin to save scumming.
Wait, that's actually a cool idea think about it Kobold. Immagine if you got second wind(as tempHP) and action surge(now costing a bonus action) as many times as you want? Now you're Kicking ass and taking names! As a fighter you're finally able to do all the cool shit you ever wanted as the wizards bend the laws of spacetime.
@MoonsilverTV Honestly it's great for 5e, and it kicks crossbow expert spammers to the curb (finally) Just make it so two weapon fighting gives you an attack for free whenever you use your action to attack with your weapon and it's golden!
How about this the fighters second wind ability as a passive for all martials up to half hp (I think that's the champion capstone just make it genetic 4th-5th level feature or something
I think the main issue that shows the disparity is cantrip scaling. Those are also "resourceless" for casters and many get ways to upgrade them. The way they scale is along the lines of fighters extra attacks in terms of damage dice (sure, heavy weapons have more damage and add their strength modifier, but it is still comparable to eldritch blast), so without spell slots the casters are already almost on par and with them they can boost their damage and other abilities even further. Martials only get their subclass features and feats to increase theirs, but casters get those too. I think cantrips only gaining a second die at 11th would be fine powerwise as their spellslots would make up the remainder. And even worse with multiclassing because cantrips scale with the total level while Extra Attack won't stack for some reason. Just let extra attack stack if the total level is 11th and another time a 17th.
Martial characters have hp as their resource. Which means spells cost the caster's resources... and keeping the martials hp up costs the spellcaster's resources... Also cantrips, unless you have one of the few ways to put ability scores into the damage, are pathetic compared to weapons. Weapons automatically get ability score added to damage, can use off hand attack with no feat, can get augmented with magical weapons, and once you have a magic weapon (even a common one) you almost completely ignore monster resistance. Cantrips are elemental, so either have to meta game or trial and error resistances/ immunity. No ability to damage without class features, and until level 11 have the same amount of dice as martials get. Only eldritch blast with agonizing blast comes close to keeping up with weapon damage, and still no magic items or feats that can increase it.
I don't play a barbarian because they're 'resourcesless'. I don't play a barbarian because the resources they do bring don't keep up with the tables I play with. Same with all martial sadly.
Also my group regularly has multiple encounters per day, and we pretty often have to be really careful with where and how we use our spell slots. My druid pretty regularly ran completely out of spells, and we had times we had to retreat from combat to find a safe place to rest before heading back to fight more refreshed. Our group's most powerful character was arguably the Barbarian, not because she could do the largest amount of damage in one go, but because she regularly did good damage every turn and could last a lot longer in combat. A lot of this has to do with the way our DM ran the game, but it's still the norm for my group for sure.
Resourceless features can be great. I mean, Dread Ambusher and Umbral Sight are fantastic abilities that don't cost anything to use. Umbral Sight is possibly the best resourceless features in the game. Even something as simple as the bonus dmg from Hunter, Swarmkeeper or Fey Wanderer can be sleeper picks at tables with long adventure days since they will generate value turn after turn after turn. Gator: "But Tom! Those features are all Ranger features and Rangers have spellslots!" Uhm, yes, well... Aura of Protection and Improved Divine Smite are also good resourceless features... which are Paladin features... I guess the "resourceless" classes can't even really boast to have the best resourceless features. Who'd have thunk.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear a word after 00:01 seconds because I was distracted by the casters dying of 1d4 bad argument damage. Marital classes ARE strictly speaking more reliable and easier to use for a beginner, this is undeniable.
I don't like the "Squishy Caster Fallacy" article. Yeah, casters can reach high ACs through use of spells temporarily. And using defensive spells cuts down on your offensive capability. But martials have high AC. And martials have more hp.
Yea, the article should be titled “optimized multiclass builds aren’t squishy!” It’s got a ton of bad comparisons to make it’s case. e.g. it says casters can multiclass to get armor! Then on the next point it says martial CAN’T cast shield unless they multiclass. Casting shield on a base AC of 11 or 12, say a uni-class wizard, is pretty limited help (compared to casting it on a AC 18 multiclasser).
@@sorourke03 A martial dipping into a caster gets Shield twice per Long Rest (unless they dip Hexblade, then dependent on Short Rest numbers). A caster dipping for armor gets armor permanently.
And high AC does nothing against the incoming dragon breath (or other save based damage). Oh, Absorb Elements? Ok have fun with those 2-3 legendary action attacks coming your way while you can’t use Shield. Or it could just be a Green or Gem Dragon. And yes you can AE a Sapphire Dragon’s breath but you still get incapacitated if you fail the CON save, and casters are way more likely to fail a general CON save than, say, a fighter or barbarian.
In my ideal high fantasy medieval rpg, non spellczsting classes would have some cool features that not only make them effective at raw damage and tanking but also allows them some descriptive advantage like walking on walls, throwing improve weapons etc. Think martial arts movies and ttrpgs like Quin. It would give back the feeling of pkaying as some sort of super hero which would give them an edge to level the playing field with spell casters.
Honestly, Martial classes need these things to stay within their archetype but keep up with all the casters. -Need more natural health or higher APs or maybe even death saving features -Need to have more variety of attacks that causes debuffs/status effects (prone, bleed, stun, fear, advantage, slow, ect). -Need to have more taunts that fit the tank role and they need to do more damage at higher levels. They can't just be stuck with babysitting all the level 1 casters and then getting treated as useless later on.
The best way I’ve seen this problem solved is by extending short rests to a full night’s sleep and long rests to a week. Casters have to be careful with their spell slots because you might not *get* a long rest for a few sessions, Warlocks are a little cooler, and Martials… well, Martials still struggle with their usual issues, but now everyone struggles so it’s OK!
Meanwhile, action surge, ki points, second wind, superiority dice, psi dice, any class feature that's tied to having a number of uses per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus, warding maneuver and unwavering mark--many martials have resources, and many of them have to use more of them in a given combat to be as effective as a spellcaster who can turn or shut down an entire fight. If you're a martial out of your resources and must resort to just hitting dudes, shoving dudes, or grappling dudes? Your party's in _trouble._
I took an idea from Dark souls for Martial classes, and it's the "Weapon arts". Every Martial Weapon has a predetermined weapon art (For example, Long swords have double slash, you can activate the double slash after every ATTACK you land to make a second hit as part of this attack with disadvantage). They usually have a prerequisite (In this case, landing an attack) and also a pool of times (times = PB per long rest). Some special weapons can also have a special Weapon art (A player of mine has a Greatsword that as a Weapon arts forces to make a CON save or be poisoned). I also created "Hand-Wraps" as a weapon for monks (Don't give damage, just weapon arts). This gives the martial classes some type of Resource that is not as strong as magic at the start of the day, but with the longevity of the class itself, they will be stronger at the end of the day. I hope someone that reads this tries to implement this because my Barbarian and Fighter are the ones having the most fun out of the party. (Barbarian has a greataxe that lets it crit with a 17 as a WA if he lands the hit).
Martial Classes are resourceless the same way poor people are resourceless compared to rich people If a caster or rich person runs out of resources tomorrow will be better again If a martial or poor runs out of their limited options they can still get by because they're just more used to the s*ck that is an average day in their life Yes a fighter, after blowing their action surge, has nothing more to run out of compared to the casters Their only resources come back on a short rest, which is why a hexblade warlock is an objectively better fighter than a fighter, as they get magic *and still* recover their class resources on a short rest
I think that the core of martial design is actually pretty good in 5e, but I also think that a lot of people don't understand how they work. While it is true that martial mechanics involve less resource management compared to a Wizard, that doesn't mean that martials are "resourceless" Looking at something like a Fighter's base class, the only "resourceless" abilities they have are their extra attack features and fighting style. While these are decent features, they scale with cantrips in their efficacy. They are the foundation, not the summit, of a class
I feel like the fighter would be stronger if it had even less resources. That's why I made a new class, "the commoner" which is identical to the fighter except it doesn't get superiority dice action surge or second wind, and i will be taking no feedback about the "martial commoner divide" at this time or make any attempts to fix it in future UAs
The misconception come from the fact that game designers expect people to burn their spells extra fast to heal, rescue, buff or otherwise support the martials, meaning that their resources are at the expense of other classes. Furthermore, the "adventure day fixes everything" mentality assumes only a single caster in the group, while realistically, replacing the martials with more casters will boost survivability exponentially. The last thing I see people do to try and fix the disparity through DMing is heavily rely on antimagic fields and magic immune enemies (in many ways a concession that magic must defeat magic) in order to try and treat martials as a silver bullet to these encounters specifically. That more or less just means you let the Aurabot Paladin or the Gloomstalker put in some extra work really
I once saw a meme in which the Barbarian would say "I'm the only one who can go without resources!" to which the Cleric would reply "Hitpoints are a resource" and this is something that martials often forget.
I would agree but combat is not the only way you can force casters to use spell slots. Problem solving, exploration, travelling can be a form of resource drain Additionally I never design my encounters in the way that they can be solved with one shutdown spell
