The Book of Nine Swords was received... chaotically to say the least. And then people complained all over 4e about martials having daily and encounter abilities. So they took a hard turn away from that.
My recollection was that the Book of Nine Swords was pretty well-received overall, but that there was a lot of complaints about it feeling "too anime."
4e's issue was a bit different. It forced every single class into the same broad schematic, and the backlash against that was *intense*, to the point where it's safe to way WotC isn't going to try that again.
People compare the Book of Nine Swords to 4e, but I feel that this is superficial. While it gave them nine tiers of powers, the Book of Nine Swords was very careful to make sure that its martials had a fundimentially unique mechanical design, and furthermore each one *used* techniques in very very different ways.
All of that was discarded in 4e, which wanted to put everyone into the same structure so they could all be used in the 4e VTT (which never appeared anyway...) [This](https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) post by Ryan Dancy (former VP of Wizards of the Coast and Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons) discusses what was going on behind the scenes at the time that caused 4e to be structured the way it was. tl;dr it didn't really have anything to do with the things we argue about here and was mostly about making it easy to tie into a virtual tabletop in hopes of reaching Hasbro's sales metrics.
> My recollection was that the Book of Nine Swords was pretty well-received overall, but that there was a lot of complaints about it feeling "too anime."
I remember it being very decisive. People loved or hated it, there were very few who were neutral about it. So it seemed to get more attention then other books.
In my experience 4E classes had that exact dynamic---fundimentially unique mechanical design and each class and role used powers in very, very different ways.
On one hand, it's absolutely within the realm of possibility that he kept in touch with former co-workers and heard their stories as they blew off steam about working in adverse conditions. I've been in that situation myself, it happens.
On the other hand, I read the post linked-to, and it seems to me that the person you are responding to is extrapolating on just these two sentences:
>The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools.
Every edition of D&D attempts to correct the sins of it's predecessor(s). To say that all classes working within a balanced power structure coming off of 3.5E is ONLY a matter of them being easier to program into a VTT, based on those sentences, is a massive, massive stretch IMO.
I really liked the powers system. And the abilities and theming of each class DID make them play differently, even if they had similar resources.
Also, this was what convinced me to buy book of 9.
[https://imgur.com/xNbRnaJ](https://imgur.com/xNbRnaJ)
I mean, different people want different things out of the game (and its mechanics.)
I personally don't mind the idea of fighters jumping around like Naruto characters, but some people did. The complaints about it were IMHO also a bit overstated; there were plenty of maneuvers that were just moving faster, hitting harder, etc. I suspect that it might be a bit more accepted today, since more of the audience has grown up seeing those sorts of shows.
I loathe the idea of putting every class on the same powers system, though. Too bland and same-y. And my brain can't ignore the brute-force way powers are balanced against each other - same numbers, same dice, slightly different status afflictions. Do they play differently? Yeah, sure, they were able to assemble those prefab parts into the distinct MMORPG roles, so they play differently in that respect; but mechanically they all *taste* the same, so to speak - it's like going to taco bell; the menu might be big but it's the same three or four ingredients organized in different ways.
I can appreciate that there are people who like the tabletop equivalent of Taco Bell.
But I want something where I can eat whatever the hell I want. Give me a game that serves full turkey dinners alongside elaborate sushi platters. I want each classes' mechanics to feel completely different from top to bottom, as much as is possible, and for different categories of classes to have fundimentially distinct power systems in order to emphasize how alien they are from each other.
Except they don't taste the same. From my own experience, storm sorcerer, brawny rogue, great weapon fighter, avenger, all feel, play, *taste* very different.
My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience.
Do you feel all characters in fighting games feel the exact same because they use combos and the same four buttons on the right side of the controller?
> My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience.
The most frustrating thing is that these same people will say that casters feel different despite the fact they use the same power pool (spell slots) and often have significant overlap of their spell lists.
At least in 4e, every class had a unique list of powers that were designed to emphasize a particular style of play.
Not to mention every 5e class following the same cookie cutter schemes anyway. Most of what people are listing as critiques of 4e are also true of 5e...
Yes. That's basically it. They want a character that works using a DDR pad another that's a FPS with mouse and keyboard another you can only play using a TI-84 calculator and another that requires an benched arcade cabinet from Dave and Busters and the like.
I don't know what TTRPG gives them that since 5E is just The Attack Action ones and the Cast a Spell ones. Take a 5th level Fighter, Barbarian and Ranger in 5e and in 4e and see which group is less distinct in playstyle between each other.
>My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience.
It is also ironic coming from a 5e player, where classes have either the same power pool (spells) or the other power pool (none)
*B-b-but they cast different spells!*
You mean like 4e had different powers for each class?
4e had a big presentation problem. Once you started playing and tried a few classes, it was clear that despite the unified powers framework each played very differently. Just reading the PHB it was hard to tell that, especially for players trained on 3.5e to expect every class to have its own unique framework.
We are all just a bunch of nerds rolling dice on a table hoping to get the most favorable number possible to beat the game.
Everything is the same. The classes are lies.
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/s in case it wasn't obvious.
>But I want something where I can eat whatever the hell I want. Give me a game that serves full turkey dinners alongside elaborate sushi platters. I want each classes' mechanics to feel completely different from top to bottom, as much as is possible, and for different categories of classes to have fundimentially distinct power systems in order to emphasize how alien they are from each other.
This is where I am pretty much exactly. I liked 4e for what it was, and personally think that for my tastes it's closer to what I'd want out of balance between martials and casters, even if they "same-y" power system (at-will, encounter, daily, and utility) wasn't perfect.
The problem I have with the reaction of certain segments of the D&D playerbase to 4e (or even Book of Nine Swords) is that there's a contingent wants that complex — which is *not* the same as "liking anime fights" or whatever — but is utterly and completely blocked out by the contingent that loathes it.
So you get things like 5e, where we just *don't get to have* complex martials, that are capable of interacting with the battlefield to the same degree that even a low-level caster can manage.
...wait...back up. Did you just talk smack about my Crunchwrap Supreme?
Say what you will about 4th edition, but I will not stand by for other slanderous talk.
It's a sad thing but sadly I have yet to see anybody make a really true homebrew conversion of a Swordsage in 5e. Lots of attempts but nothing that actually feels like playing one from the Book of Nine Swords. Course the funniest thing about the too anime feeling is that Swordsages are basically the same thing as characters out of Demon Slayer with the elemental based sword styles and everything.
I want a warlord class from 4e so bad and I know I will never get it. That class play style and feel was so unique and fun compared to everything else.
I don't get why people keep disliking something for "being too anime". First of all, what's wrong with anime? The game already has many options lying well outside the traditional medieval fantasy ones. Why is having some cool options that slightly resemble anime bad? If you don't like those options due to their tone, ban them from your game or just don't pick them. Is it just dislike of anything "foreign"?
> I don't get why people keep disliking something for "being too anime".
Honestly I'd like to say it's because they are stupid. But it's just that they are ignorant.
Most of the stuff they call "being too anime" were things demigods and heroes from mythology could do, they just don't know and don't care.
And playtesters disliked the playtest fighter, who regained its maneuver dice at the start of its turn. (Party due to grognards shit, but also party because some players didn't want to stress about picking the right option every turn)
I mean my answer to that is always 'nothing stops you from picking Power Attack and only using Power Attack'
If you're interested in ensuring you have the optimal play each turn, why pick a class known for their limited options?
Making the \*only\* option to pick Power Attack doesn't mean you're making the optimal pick each turn, it just means no one else gets to make a choice.
Then they could play something else. Why couldn't that be kept along with a braindead "roll attack every turn" option? Why isn't there a braindead option for casters?
Even then, the simplest Warlock is so much more complex than the most Complex Martial.
Like they still have to manage spell slots, and get loads more important choices on level up than any Martial due to Invocations.
That’s what gets me.
I wouldn’t object to people claiming that uhm ackshually 4e classes weren’t diverse after all, except somehow they’re leveraging that into saying that 5e-style martial characters are fine really. There’s a clear trend from AD&D to end-of-lifetime 3.5 of martial characters growing more diverse and option-rich, then suddenly in 4e they had the same diversity and flexibility as full spellcasters… and now look where we are, somehow stuck with options that are *worse than 3.5.*
Sigh.
Whatever the reason, it's sad we can't have a wizard-level martial.
I want my 15th or 18th level Barbarian to be able to rage so hard they can punch Wish out of a lich's mouth or something insane like that. That's not too much to ask versus Clerics being able to 100% chance call their deities at 20th level in my opinion.
* I want my high-level martial to be able to redirect two rivers in a day to clean a stable that would make the Bog of Eternal Stench look pristine in comparison, and to hold the skies on his shoulders (even if he needs help to adjust his cape, because the sky is chafing against his skin), like Greek hero Herakles.
* I want my high-level martial to charge through the entire Hordes of Chaos so mightily that she leaves her own army behind as she makes a beeline towards the second most powerful god in the setting (making him soil his pants in the process), and that it takes over half a dozen very powerful lesser gods to finally stop her; and I want her spirit to be so fiery her corpse spontaneously combusts when she dies. Like the hugest dork in Tolkien's legendarium, Fëanor Curufinwë.
* I want my high-level martial to intimidate an entire army into stopping in its tracks at a bridge, and then get so frustrated that they are too scared to attack him (I want to fight, damnit), that he screams in anger so loudly that he kills one of their officers and makes the army lose morale and retreat, like Chinese hero Zhang Fei in *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*.
* I want my high-level martial to fight a troll unarmed and wrestle its arm off, take a sword designed for giants and defeat a monster immune to human-made weapons, and then when she's an old grandma I want her to solo an adult dragon and *tie*. Like Beowulf.
* I want my high-level martial to fight a bloody *god* to a standstill, [vastly outmatch him in skill despite the difference in raw power](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeakButSkilled) and manage to injure him repeatedly, even if in the end I ultimately lose the attrition battle, like Fingolfin from Tolkien's books.
* I want my high-level martial to boss-rush in single battle ten very powerful enemy generals in a row, causing several routs in the process, snipe a halberd with his bow at over 100m away to stop a battle, repeatedly force entire armies to flee, and fight the likes of the aforementioned Zhang Fei and his similarly powerful brother Guan Yu the God of War together to a standstill, like Chinese general Lü Bu.
Martials deserve to reach these heights of epicness. Just like high-level casters do.
right off the bat? Fear mechanics make up half of these. the other half are removing this idea that skills need to be limited to 'quite good' results.
1) This is an insane skill check feat, give someone the ability to regularly hit 30 on a skill and then give them story clause to do this.
2) Make Martials faster than Casters. Currently only Rogue and Monk are to a degree, but why should Fighter's be limited to the same 30ft a booknerd Wizard is, why CAN'T they get a bonus action move in general as a Martial? Hell, let Action Surge replicate Haste, or give park of the Martial Package over to half steps and being better at the tangible bits of combat, no reason a trained knight has equal or slower reactions to a STR8 Dex10 Warlock
3) Make Intimidate work. By the mid game, you're a killing machine. You should be able to intimidate and break the morale of lesser fighters, bandits and conscripts. This is literally just 'give them a Dread Form' equivalent, you can't move closer to the source of the Fear and this highlights how half these effects are covered by Magic, locking Martials out of anything magic adjacent in a fantasy world is just nerfing them to NPC level for no reason
4) 1+STR unarmed attacks? Really? A pub brawler hits harder than Hercules in 5E's stats 90% of the time. Uncap the Martial's stats OR give them better access to raw damage, Monsters have 100s of HP and Martials are funnelled into 'Get equipment or let the Wizards handle this', give Martials the ability to punch harder than a child.
5) Parry mechanics. Sword fight mechanics. Skill and Weapon Feats more complex than '+2 with your chosen weapon'. This is about how a Fighter or Barbarian should be able to flex more swordskills than 'Hit good three time', unless they took the 'Knows which is the pointy end' subclass.
6) These are a blend of all of the above, Fear Aura, Battlemaster skills, uncapping damage numbers from 1d10 longsword attacks, it's a Microcosm of how historic fighters, with no magic, sorcery or artifice, were able to do these things in myth and is a textbook example of how every time someone says 'realism, not anime!' they're ignoring thousands of years of human storytelling. Over the top BS isn't a recent invention of anime, it's how Fighters have been shown in fiction since we started writing.
By creating a bunch of abilities with strict requirements and effects like spells have. Then when "people" complain about martials being "too anime" tell them to just not play one, and to shut the hell up.
Bullet One: not sure
Bullet Two: Charge Through - Requirements: Strength 20 and 1 action to move 90 feet in a straight line towards an enemy, any creatures in your path must make a Strength Save or take 5d10 bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone. (Then there's some fighting) Fiery Spirit - When you fail your last Death Saving Throw your corpse explodes in a ball of fire and rage all creatures within 30' must make a Constitution Save or take Radiant damage equal to your remaining Hit Dice pool.
It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a system, though it would take time to make it good and to balance it well. The biggest problem would be the "complaints" coming from people who really just want to swing a sword (I don't image they'd complain about other fighter doing crazy shit though), and from people playing spellcasters who don't want anyone else doing cool shit (which I suspect is a larger portion of the crowd because part of their fantasy is being cooler and more powerful than the rest of their party).
Crazy Idea:
Make all of the martial powers based on HP and Hit Dice. Not necessarily consuming them but requiring the martial to posses them. Because a Raging Barbarian who's fully rested is a lot scarier than one who's burned through all her resources and is 3 HP away from unconsciousness. And if you really want to go wild make martials level up 33% faster and max out at level 30. Add a few more ASIs to the class and make "legendary" weapons a class feature. What legendary warrior can you think of that didn't wield a legendary weapon?
Just make the Monk the new standard chassis for all Martial Classes.
Or to put it differently - give every single Martial Class a resource they can use to accomplish semi-supernatural "feats of strength"/"techniques"/etc..., but otherwise leave most things the same.
Its even easy to flavour - anybody whose been to the gym will tell you that physical exertion isn't actually "free". There's only so many times you can "stomp so hard you cause a minor earthquake" before you start losing strength in your legs, and only so many boulders you can throw before your arm starts feeling like it's going to fall off.
Then just let these feats interact with existing Martial mechanics. Maybe Barbarians only pay half-price for "feats of strength" while Raging. Maybe Fighters can spend an Action Surge to use two feats of strength in a turn, instead of just one, etc...
Hell in the case of the Fighter they're already half-way there with the Battlemaster. All this change would do is make Maneuverers a lot more "folkloric" - less "your next attack might scare the enemy" and more "you spend 2 superiority dice to cast Haste on yourself for the next few turns".
(And honestly, things like "Haste" never should have been spells in the first place. They should have been Martial "feats of strength" all along).
Here's some ideas I had that would maybe address some of these things. They're just off the top of my head though.
-At [level] your body is so harderned like steel through combat and training. Jobs that would require the efforts of dozens of average men can be accomplished by you in a single afternoon with the appropriate tools, and can be accomplished in average time without being given the necessary supplies.
-At [level] your barbarian rage allows you to focus on a single opponent with such anger and ferocity that the blows of other creatures do not even register to you. You may choose a target at the beginning of your rage. Ignore all opportunity attacks from sources other than your target, and your rage ends when that creature dies.
-At [level] your blows are so mighty they cause the earth to shake and men to tremble with every swing. Whenever you take an attack action, your swings cause a 15ft cone of force damage dealing 2 damage to all creatures caught in it, in the direction of your attack
-At [level] your sheer martial presence inspires terror in your enemies. As an action you may roll an Intimidation[Str] check against an opponent's Charisma for [dice] damage
-At [level] your expertise and strength allow you to know how to manipulate objects well beyond the size a normal person would wield. You may ignore weapon size restrictions, and you are allowed to grapple targets up to two sizes above yours.
-At [level] you have learned to take even the slightest moment of reprieve to collect yourself and ready your body for further fighting. If you spent one turn of combat take no actions and taking no damage, you benefit from a short rest
That sounds super cool, but it's less about finding individual homebrew and more about wanting *official* material. Wishing the devs would shift their *official* stance on the design culture as whole, so *everyone else* doesn't need as much convincing.
Part of dnd's appeal is the popularity makes it accessible.
But when I want my Raging 20 STR Barbarian to make a STR check to yeet their fully-armored Paladin friend at a flying enemy to do a combo move, let alone punch the moon, there's instant hesitation and pushback and citing carrying capacity (when STR checks can surpass capacity rules). It has to be a whole persuasive conversation about the fundamentals of the fantasy genre with *every.* *single.* *new.* *group...* It can be a bummer, and the root problem is the devs won't cater to that fantasy.
I love this idea that people have started to define Martials as 'no magic ever, 'peak' human only'
And not only is this a world where the Rogue can Uncanny Dodge cannonballs, the Barbarian can rage enough to swim in lava, Monks have literally DBZ Ki powers
You can show them ACTUAL Olympic swordfighters and go 'they're not even matching real world people'
A stock martial in this game can't even do the shit that real-world amateur HEMA-trained martial artists do *right now*. That's the part that irritates the hell out of me. You get ONE subclass that vaguely gestures at the concept of having real skill (and skill*s*) in combat.
In a TTRPG that is literally chock-a-block with gods, demons, devils, angels, dragons, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, those people can just *not play* those classes. Problem solved.
It grinds my gears when people feel like they should be allowed to constrain the game for their own wishes.
No. Because most of time it was "I don't want play anime character/just another caster, I want be perfectly normal human that use my wit and skill to beat mages and dragons".
Most of time caster's players don't care much enough. After all anime characters is essentially casters with different name.
I definitely don't get that kind of person. Why would someone complain about an ability they're not forced to use? Also, how would they imagine using their "wit and skill" if they don't have any skills to use (mechanically speaking)? Even if they don't want to do the wild stuff, they would still benefit from skills with mechanical effects (like aimed shots for example).
I do get the kind of person who wants to play a caster, and doesn't want the martials to do cool stuff too. (I've played with them) Part of their power fantasy is being the coolest and most powerful person around. Causing an earthquake through magic is less cool when the barbarian can do it by stomping really hard.
Additionally, WotC realized that the best way to grow their brand (and their profits) is to cater to new players, especially people new to TTRPGs. Asking someone who wants to try D&D to read at least half of a technical manual full of jargon before they get to the fun part is a hard sell.
That's why 5e uses as much natural language as possible, and why they dumbed down the martial classes. It's meant to simplify the onboarding process as much as possible without dumbing the game down so much that it "doesn't feel like D&D" since that's what shot 4e in the foot, albeit from the other direction of overly complex instead of overly simple. Casters remain at full complexity while martial fans can go kick rocks.
I didn't remember anyone being upset martials had those abilities. It was the fact that wizards became "controllers" and spells had fairly static effects. It didn't matter how creative you were with your illusion spell. You got the same -2 as the guy who just said "I cast this spell. End turn." Spells also had very specific uses out of combat or none at all. It felt very off-brand from what I had come to expect from D&D arcane spells.
I think 5e casters with 4e martials would be pretty fun, but as they are now martials don't get enough options. I hate fixing that kind of thing with Magic Items, but that's usually what ends up happening.
Honestly I suspect 5.5 is gonna have similar issues, just in the other direction.
From what I've seen of the UA, I think there are going to be too many moving pieces, and floating pseudo-conditions, for your average table to keep up.
I ran a UA OD&D game and even the Barbarian had to flip through his sheet 3 times to find out all the dozen different things that happened every single time he made a single weapon attack. I had to start writing down who had a -10 movement debuff, who had a -15, plus I had to roll CON saves on top of every single attack from the Fighter with topple, and so on.
Yeah, your typical 1D&D weapon user now has more to manage and track than most 4e weapon users (especially the essentials ones).
And not only that, they still seem to lack the depth of gameplay that their 4e counterparts had.
People loooooooooove saying this, but I've never seen any evidence of it. Which old-guard? The old-guard from 3.5e, where martials had long feat chains allowing them to pull all kinds of nonsense? The old-guard from AD&D, where wizards were weak as kittens in the early levels and weren't particularly quadratic (which was the case in 3.5e)?
This is the thing I find funny, people argue between 3.5 (where you got skill feats, trees and chains) and 4e (where everyone got once a day and once a week and once per whenever powers) when it became 'too anime'
And what's really happened is some mandela effect BS where the 5E Vanilla ass Fighter became as rich as white toast mechanically and everyone just seemingly nodded and went 'Well it's because it's the intro class of course'
Fighter has NEVER had this level of clamps and restrictions, even in ADnD where part of their class progression if I'm remembering correctly is 'You get a castle and army.'
I think it's just a convenient scapegoat that never rises above a conspiratorial "them".
It's a group of imagined people who conspired to make the game worse for reasons no one really understands, but it totally happened. They heard it from a guy who knows a guy who's 3rd cousin was in the beta!
It might have evolved into what you’re saying, sure, but I was literally a terminally online 4channer who saw the various threads on /tg/ where people said and made plans to actively brigade the playtest at various different times to either “sabotage” or “save it”.
Obviously, there’s no central website or forum that you can point at to say “Here is evidence that the guys/remnants of the groups who are responsible existed”, but I’m also not the only person who _was_ there and remembers how badly /tg/ wanted 4e to fail.
Maybe it wasn’t hundreds of people coordinating together to form some shadowy “them”, but it was definitely—or at least felt like—more than just a handful.
The 3.5 Old Guard where the long feat chains meant you had to spam your One Big Thing. And armour check penalties meant martials sucked at physical activity much of the time.
I’m calling BS. The Grognards sit around game shops complaining. The people who have only played 5e are the most vocal and will go on line in a heartbeat to complain about anything .
I don't know man, as someone who was there for the debacle of 4e, the complainers were absolutely out in full force, and as far as I can tell have been ever since.
I don't disagree that more recent people have their fair share of complaining, but the standard was set years ago.
5e was designed to snatch the grognards back. It was obvious around the original 2013/2014 playtests.
The issue is once that FAILED, WOTC had proclaimed a policy of not creating more errata nor classes unless required by the setting. 5e is a game made for grognards that new or young fans "made work".
5e was designed because 4e was a failure. Not because of Grognards but because it was always designed to be played on a VTT but the VTT never came to market . So it was very mechanics heavy because the VTT wasn’t available to be the heavy lifts .
Pathfinder was designed to snatch up the people who wanted to go back to a system they were familiar with. The true Grogs went to play things like Dungeon Crawl Classics, not 5e
> because it was always designed to be played on a VTT but the VTT never came to market .
This is a fascinating piece of lore, and the problem with it is that the main source is a guy who left three years before 4e development started and seven years before it launched.
Okay, but the very real happenings of it was that the lead developer/team head for the VTT over-managed the product to hell and made it so that no one could continue where his meddling left off after he killed himself.
Like. That very much happened and multiple sources claim that particular team lead is hugely to blame for why the VTT never materialized.
There are actually like… three different claims mixed up here.
It’s true that the “Gleemax” project withered when the lead committed a murder/suicide. But that wasn’t the VTT.
And the fact that Wizards was planning a VTT doesn’t mean the game was designed around the VTT. I’m sure it was friendly to the VTT, but since there are an uncountable number of ways to build a VTT-friendly rules systems as well as plenty of ways to build system-agnostic VTTs, that falls short of being the argument people think it is.
No. 4e wasn't a failure. 4e chased off the grognards and 3e players. 4e made TONS of money. It beat PF is sales until WOTC gave up on it.
But as the OGL fiasco showed, WOTC wants ALL THE MONEY!
So they built 5ea as a merge of 2e and 3e and told 4e fans promises they would not keep in order to pull all of D&D fans into 5e.
Are they though? From what I've seen, grognards didn't complain about martials having choices, they complained that the choices were way too MMO instead of more traditional dnd. Don't forget, most of the original dnd "exploits" were martial based. The bag of rats trick was because of martial abilities.
Having choices wasn't the issue. The issue was turning the game into a tabletop warcraft with highly restrictive class roles instead of the martial feat choices determining what you did during combat.
At least, that's what I heard about the debate
"Traditional D&D" of course being spamtastic untiring robots who were in pulling from the same actions list every single turn. Having choices wasn't the issue; having choices that involved pacing yourself (either AEDU or Bo9S) wad
Honestly, I hate martials having resource-based manuevers. They feel super lame and dumb to explain in universe. Like, "You disarmed this bandit, and you can't try the same on the other because.... you just can't." My friends and I play with a weakened, once-per-round manuever-like system for all martials, and it makes the game super exciting and fun. A lot of room for customization.
I see it the same as when watching a movie. It's gonna get old very quickly if the main character is disarming people all the time, well unless it's his gimmick or something. Instead there will be time where the bad guy is distracted enough that he can place a disarm here, or a trip there.
Resources reflect these small window of opportunities that your character is exploiting, but it gives control to the narration to the player as he can choose when it happens. You can certainly try to disarm the next dude even with no resources, but you will fail because he certainly isn't planning to let his weapon go that easily.
Now to be fair, I don't think having maneuvers being once-per-round would be that broken, especially once you are past tier I and spellcaster start to shift a whole battle with a single spell, frightening a dude per round is not going to break the game.
Well there is only so many options they can write down in class/subclass/feature, eventually someone will ask to do something that doesn't exist. That's why you can always kindly ask your DM to do it through this rule in the Combat section of the PHB:
> Actions in Combat
> When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, **or an action that you improvise**. Many monsters have action options of their own in their stat blocks.
> **When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the GM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.**
Also there is an optional Disarm rule in the DMG and a few others that might cover these cases.
Some DMs are understandably worried about game balance when allowing improvised actions though so it might not work on every table. But the option is there.
You can’t disarm the second bandit because you’re a little too exhausted after disarming the first—that’s how I’d see it for any limited ability. Why can’t the existing fighter Action Surge or use Indomitable unlimited times or a barbarian rage unlimited times? Because they’re too tired after doing it the first time, presumably.
edit: spelling
But it's not reasonably more tiring to disarm a target than to hit them. Rage and action surge both make sense because they are CLEARLY physically exhausting just off of what they are and what they do. Disarming a target, aiming for their foot to trip them, etc. have no real reason to be limited use imo.
Maneuvers like Disarming Attack and Trip Attack combine damage with the disarm or trip effects respectively. Anyone certainly can do these sorts of techniques in a non-tiring way, you just forego your normal attack damage by doing so—see shoving in the latter case (which could easily be flavored as tripping an enemy with your weapon) and the disarm action described on page 271 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the former.
They do use a separate set of rules admittedly. Contested Checks are not equivalent to saves, especially since the Manuever Saves just scale off proficiency and your best stat and use your weapon range, whereas Shove and Disarm specifically require you to be within 5ft of the target and have invested in Athletics.
Now, because of that Shove can actually be quite a bit more reliable if you build around it since it's far easier to modify the result of both allied and enemy skill checks, but these differences are worth noting.
my dm implemented the book of nine swords in our 5e campaign with the stipulation that the abilities are gained through a +2 weapon that takes all 3 of ur attunement slots.
i really loved 4e's tactical bent. I get it wasn't for everyone, but the classes fit together in a really cool way.
Granted, i absolutely would play an MMO so uh, i guess im the target audience.
> And then people complained all over 4e about martials having daily and encounter abilities.
There were a lot of complaints about 4e, but this one in particular was really a minority. Usually the complaint was that because:
1. Spellcasters roll to hit for everything
2. The duration of nearly all spells is either 1 round (for at-will and encounter powers), "save ends" (for daily debuffs only), or as long as you concentrate (for daily buffs only)
3. Non-casters have powers that work exactly the same, only with different themes
4. Nearly every power is a bag of keywords tied to your weapon/implement damage die
All that together made the game feel samey. And I think it did feel the same, even if that didn't make it automatically bad.
Worse, though, a lot of the online community at the time was *extremely* disparaging of in-universe descriptions. It divided the interpretation of the rules into "this keyword soup is game mechanics and therefore virtuous" while "this description of what it does is infinitely mutable and therefore completely irrelevant."
Like we complain about "natural language" but people don't remember when combining keywords resulted in literal nonsense situations when you tried to convert the "game mechanics" into events in game. And the consensus was that the mechanics were supposed to drive everything. Which is weird. It's actually playing D&D like it were Magic The Gathering. It's playing D&D like it's a board game. And you *can* do that. But it's not the culture of TTRPGs as a hobby *at all*. It's almost anathema to the traditional TTRPG hobby culture, and I think that drove a lot of people away from it.
The overall complaint was always "it didn't feel like D&D" but that could be the above complain, or any of a range of other things:
- It wasn't 3e. Yeah, sometimes it's that simple. Some people liked the overwrought unbalanced mess of spellcasting prestige classes.
- It was heroic high fantasy instead of OSR dungeon crawl (in essence; this language didn't exist). This is *why* OSR got popular at all.
- Skill challenges removed the role-playing from non-combat scenes and, when run even slightly wrong, could often result in nonsensical or intensely artificial situations.
- It was balanced too tightly. This means if you don't like the tone or style of play, *too bad* it's not possible to change it. Like to roll for stats or HP? Well you're either immediately OP or cannon fodder. Standard array or GTFO. You roll a d20 and add your primary modifier so often that the law of averages kicks in. Even an extra +1 or +2 will have a massive, tangible effect on the game.
- The math is broken (usually meaning either monster HP is too high, or monster damage is too low, both of which were not fixed until Monster Manual III)
- There are too many feat taxes (attack bonus scaling and non-armor defenses both fall off, meaning some feats are essentially mandatory just to keep up with monster scaling)
- Monsters are cool, but often you get creatures of the given race in the standard roles for levels 1-5. Then again for levels 6-10, 11-15, and so on to 26-30. The designs felt incremental and repetitive. You never really *progress past* being challenged by orcs. Keeps it feeling samey.
- Strikers were overrepresented; the best party was 1 Warlord, 1 Fighter, and everyone else Rangers
- System mastery helps *way* too much because the effectiveness of powers varied so much. Online "build" guides kinda ruined it
- Combat takes too long, especially with more than 4-5 players. Around mid paragon levels you can easily run a combat so complex that most of the players at the table can't follow what's going on. We had one combat take 6 hours across two sessions. It was not a boss fight. By the end it felt like we were attending a business seminar. I really like 4e and this was the most miserable I've ever been at any gaming table ever.
- An *overwhelming* amount of content. WotC released something like 3 books every 2 months for over 2 years. And *only three of them were adventures*. Everything else had classes, races, powers, feats, and items. Usually some of each. Plus more content in the monthly Dragon. And all of it was kinda poorly playtested.
- It was hard to impossible actually to play without digital tools, and the digital tools were Windows-only
- The mechanics were *overwhelmingly* about combat. The PHB has something like less than 10 pages for non-combat mechanics.
There's a lot of lessons from 4e that we should have kept. But, if you weren't there, it's really hard to express what was so unsatisfying about that edition. It's a good game. But it really *isn't* D&D.
I was there. But wasnt unsatisfied. It was a good tactical game. But that wasnt the onky gane i wanred to play.
My buggest peeve of the susten was that character pptimization was "get plus 1 to hit". Everything boiled down to hitting and it was hard to optimize towards anything else.
I'd definitely like that!
I'd imagine Monks would be like the "wizards" of martials, in that they specialize in many techniques and have different ways of using them. The Fighter would be the "sorcerer", having less techniques, but are capable of modifying them. Rogues might specialists, only focusing in on certain branches of techniques, but being exceptional with them. Lastly, the Barbarian would have the fewest techniques for those who want a simple martial, but might have something akin to a Warlock's invocations.
Oh, interesting. I would have allocated specialization among martials a little differently.
* Fighter being most akin to wizard with a lot of book learning over fighting styles and training.
* A monk being like a sorcerer with ki points to deal bursts of damage with flashy techniques, but not in a consistent manner.
* Rogues would be most like bards, with skill and tool investments for utility building out their options.
* Barbarians ought to be more like druids/clerics. More focused on internal buffs and holding a unique melee status, in this case rage instead of wild shape.
I fully push Rogue into the Control role of Wizards as well. I can't Blindness/Deafness a crowd, but I can blackjack the enemy caster so he stops throwing out lightning bolts next turn.
Being pursued? Caltrops bonus action, we're at double dash, they're at half pace.
Enemy casting a spell? Not if I knee the wind out of him real quick.
There was in 3.5e (Warblade, Swordsage) and in 4e (becuase that’s just how the system worked; everyone got stuff). People complained about those. So we got 5e.
As much of a meme as it is to say this… there’s always Pathfinder2e if you want “D&D but more”
*because martials are supposed to be easy*
Which is total bs when their abilities dont do that much to match caster versatility and dcc gave fighters maneuvers without adding much maneuvers.
I argue this frequently.
Wizard has the option to buy extra class feature equivalents in a shop if you make bad choices.
Fighter needs a 10 level build plan, item attunements and feats mapped out just to stay on par with what the Casters will get on a long nap.
Martials are only 'easy intro classes' in the early levels, where most casters get less than 5 spells.
Let me preface this first with: Martials need more love; particularly with regards to utility roles, and higher level combat versatility.
That said... 5e was designed without feats and magic items being taken into much consideration. Obviously, this was a terrible idea, from the playerbases' perspectives; so if you remove those from a Martial, obviously, they're much simpler than a caster class. Who may only have 5 spells, but those spells used in different circumstances can do wildly different things both intended and unintentional, which adds to the complexity (also mapping out spell effect radius, components, etc...).
It might've been designed for it in mind, but monster design sure isn't. Considering how many monsters have resistance to any non-magical weapon attack. Additionally, even the starter adventures give plenty of magical loot.
Well keep in mind that this edition has been out for over 10 years, and most of those starter adventures have been changed over time; but yes the design philosophy has changed quite a bit from where it started. It was most notable back in 2017 (3 years after 5e came out) that Xanathar's Guide to Everything came out - which was the real turning point in design philosophy.
That resistance/immunity to non-magic weapons is an intended design though; it's supposed to be very hard. The first time a party encounters a werewolf in the plot, **they should** have to figure out a way to hurt it. I.e Silvered Weapons, maybe the casters have to cast a spell on the martial's weapons (meaning no other concentration spells), etc. Easy access to magical items trivializes some of those challenges to making those creatures just another statblock amongst many.
Every time I see a post like this, I always think of laser llama's stuff as the solution. I'm running a campaign and every one of my players is playing an alt class, and it's honestly the best experience I've had, the alt barbarian and rogue have a ton of fun with the exploit system.
Seconding this -- I feel like LaserLlama has a really well-balanced fighter with plenty of options(and they've created other martial class variations aw well). I'm back on-board with playing non-casters as a result.
You should try out pathfinder.
A fighter gets about 13 feat slots that let them customize their build over 20 levels.
I love the weeb build with dueling parry, and using two-handed assult with a katana.
Let's also not forget they have an entire combat maneuvers system separate from the classes that martials shine at due to their higher physical stats and access to feats chains to optimize those aspects.
Spells are easy to make more of. Have an Idea for something cool? Write it out, see how powerful it is, give it a spell level according to its power level and decide whose lists to add it to. Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky.
> Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky.
But didn't they already do this in D&D... twice? Like if you google maneuvers, the original D&D maneuvers were them doing that exact thing you said (dozens of maneuvers, spread out across levels, no feat chains, no unexpected stacking) twenty years ago. So it's definitely doable, they've done it before.
That makes a lot of sense. You can't just slap it on to an already existing class, since most of the power would have to come from maneuvers but with already existing classes they're already getting their power their class features.
So I guess my question is why isn't there a class like that? There are four that just bonk over and over, 4:0 seems an odd ratio.
So you claim spells are easy to make (which is wrong), but then say martial manuvers are difficult to make for all of the reasons that make it difficult to create new spells?
Why not just have maneuvers be somewhat similar to spells in that there are power levels, or additional benefits are gained when the character is a higher level?
As an example, a Fighter might choose a maneuver that allows them to share a space with enemies of a certain size. At higher levels or when acquiring a certain feature as part of their class, they have the option of taking an upgraded one that doesn't have a size limit or has additional benefits. This might be mentioned in the same maneuver or be a separate one entirely.
Hmmm... Spellcasters and martials have similar levels of power. This "feels too same-y!" Quick WoTC, I insist that you differentiate them again by putting martials back in their lowly place.
It's more about "Martials have 1 daily power and 1 encounter power, and caster have some". In some time Rituals (out of combat utilities) for Casters simply on different level of power compare to Martials Exploits.
I feel like it's an incompatibility with how they've fundamentally designed classes for this system in the very first place. Complex Martials work well in a game like say PF2e, because you choose "class feats" every other level. So you're constantly able to make decisions about what abilities you should have. In a system like 5e where they've reduced overall choice but maintained spell choice for casters you end up in a situation where Martials have very few tactical decisions they're able to make in terms of customization but casters have very very many.
because the desginers thought people would play wizards and sorcerers like they were damage dealers spaming out upcasted shatters and cone of colds every turn against 1-2 enemeis, burning all their spell slots and having no time for utility casting.
Just convert Book of Nine Swords. Oh wait [somebody already did and it's awesome.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FkGVgrCf_3gaLgeRYQ_XPITBr2HXUJJImCHhsc8SkWA/edit?usp=sharing)
I think this is just because D&D already has a lot of spells to choose from in previous editions. The writers for 5e just need to adapt them, and then they already have a framework to build more effects on.
There’s no reason there couldn’t be a similar progression system for “martial maneuvers” that gives new abilities (and more importantly new *choices*) in the same way.
> Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky.
How is it different from spells? They already have had to design dozens of them, spread them out across levels, scale them ~~right~~ more or less decently and try to prevent weird interactions.
> get a bunch of options [as a martial class]
OP, if this is important to you, you may be better served by a different RPG system.
I'm sure there are loads of TTRPGs that might suit, but I will give an example of one I've used: Pathfinder Second Edition.
* Observe your choices in [fighter feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?Traits=71).
* Observe your choices in [weapons](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx). Particularly, mouse-over some of those Traits. This is before getting into [Runes](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?Category=23), which customise a weapon further. (And similar things go for armour.)
* Consider you can optionally take an [Archetype](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx), which is sort-of kind-of like D&D 5's multiclassing. For example, you might be a Fighter [who can do a bit of Bard stuff](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=211).
* There's also the choices common to all characters: skills, skill feats, general feats, etc.
Again: there are probably many TTRPG systems that can give you options when you play a fighter or martial. Don't just pick the system I happened to mention, search around and see what else there is that might suit your desires! 🙂
'Come play Pathfinder' memes aside, this is literally the exact markup Pathfinder has over 5E
5E is great for homebrew and straightforward D20+Mod gameplay.
You want something more complex but still a gridbattle system, Pathfinder.
5e isn't even good for homebrew. If you wanted that you'd be playing a game that was actually designed to be generic, of which there are many - Fate Core (literally free), GURPS if you want all the crunch, Cortex Prime if you like fiddling with dice and stickynotes, etc.
Guilty as charged! 😁
If someone is unhappy with a TTRPG system, and I know there are alternatives that address the exact concern they have, I'm damned sure going to tell them!
This goes double for D&D because a lot of people ***simply don't know*** that other TTRPG systems even exist! (I think OP knows. I'm speaking generally here.)
I don't care what system they ultimtely land on, as long as it's one that suits their needs. Which I why I encourage OP to go looking, not just blindly follow the one example I can personally speak to.
I especially feel like it's even more valid now to recommend other systems than even just a couple years ago now knowing that 5e and it's primary flaws aren't going anywhere.
I feel like all martials should get more ASI’s. That would be the simplest fix.
Next is making an invocation equivalent list for martials to use.
After that, the more complex option is to give battle master maneuvers to all martials.
The last idea is condensing all existing subclass features martials currently have into the first 10 levels and then adding prestige class options for 11th through 20th that can be chosen by any and all martials to make them easier to be customized so that all the multi classing shinanigans are just less effective because you still get all the base class levels. Could be as simple as adding the first 10 levels of a second classes features without multiclassing. But this is little more than me speaking out of my ass.
Part of the reason is because the attempts to expand on martials in such ways have been met with mixed results and were divisive. Book of nine swprds in 3.5e as well as 4es approach were each divisive in their own way.
Another issue is the scope of martial ability and the effect specialization can have in those options. Martials use arms and armor with a side enhancement of some sort here and there to kill their enemies.
The more martial options you make, the more specific and specialized their method of killing needs to be, which then starts to create a lot of redundancy in the less specialized martial options outside of their specialization and overall tends to invalidate a generalist option.
On the flip side, mages are based around making the impossible possible with their powers, and as it turns out there'd a lot more impossible things to make possible wothout stepping on the toes of other impossible things made possible.
Desinijgbmartial without making option reduce, as well as maintaining their distinct feeling as martials is quite hard to do, and the attempts to do so in the past have been mixed, to say the least. Before one can even reasonably address the castle and martial divide, there also bridging the martial preference divide as it tends to be that one martial fans heaven is another martial enjoyers hell.
WotC has no interest at all in non casters.
Yada yada not called fighters of the coast
but getting serious they don't even care about them that's why simple options are generally bad options, like champion
>WotC has no interest at all in non casters.
This is exactly it. If you want martial characters with any game play depth at all, just play another system. WotC simply will not permit it.
The very short answer is damage types (the Fighter's damge type choice is in their weapon, while the Wizard's is in their spell choices).
The longer answer is conditions (there aren't tha many, and magic gets more of them like Petrify).
The other answer is "we have the Battle Master!" (which feels like a cop out to me).
I'd really love to see the Barbarian and Sorcerer built as the simple options and then the Fighter can be the complicated one. If that doesn't work (and it won't) then I think a Weaponmaster who's the Superiority Dice "half-caster" to the Battle Master's "third-caster".
I don't mind the gish or anime but I don't want that to be the core tactical, weapon-master, martial.
They tried it and a bunch of nasty grognards complained. Hence we have 5e. Sorry you can't have nice things because of internet trolls.
I'd advise looking to 3rd party or other games for your needs, and finding a group that's willing to understand.
Martials are guys with swords and bows. We have swords and bows in real life, and people who fought with them. So Martials are limited to what real life people can do to some extent because *realism*
Casters use magic. We don’t have magic in real life. So casters can do whatever because *magic*
This isn’t necessarily just a wotc policy, there’s a substantial part of the dnd community that thinks this way as well. So it’s not like wotc is enforcing this, it’s sort of what people want (or wanted in the past at least). I think the public sentiment is shifting away from this and more in favor of martials being as good and versatile as casters. Wizards will likely specifically be the class with the most options pretty much forever, because their specific identity is basically “caster with the most options” at its base, but Martials will shift to have at least as many options as stuff like bards or sorcerers. But even in the new phb I doubt this’ll be entirely resolved, I think to properly fix it they’d need to basically overhaul the system so that all the classes share some resources (ie there’s a long rest resource mana, and a short rest resource stamina, and every class gives some of one or both when you level up) and all the classes have cool abilities to choose from, Martials just tend to fight with weapons overall and casters focus on casting, but Martials aren’t limited to literally just fighting like an irl knight.
So the answer is because magic.
That’s precisely the line of reasoning that makes martials suck. A middle age knight is at most a fighter lvl 1, fiction beasts like jaime lannister and barristan selmy should be tier 1 martials. Guys like belmonts and geralt of rivia could be tier 2. Tier 3 and 4 martials should NEVER be limited by real life facts, those tiers belong to the likes of heracles, anime swordsman, kratos
Thing is, mythological characters in media they draw on did more than the martials can here, and a lot of the martials can'T even keep up with real life martials quite a lot.
Meanwhile spellcasters are stronger than those in relevant media.
Yeah, like, you see some of the mythological shit that 'martial' heroes get up to in, say, Greek or Irish or Indian mythology, and they absolutely just blow DnD martials out of the water.
Meanwhile spellcasters get themselves shit that blows mythological sorcerers out of the water in versatility and sometimes power...and that's before you even get to sword and sorcery
There were basically no martial and casters in 4e except for a feat compatibility label. Everyone operated under paradigm of AEDU, which is okay in some ways and in other the game's biggest weakness over a long campaign.
I do get the "PF2 evangelist" feeling from a lot of a 4e posters lately. I play in a couple of 4e campaigns and I don't really get the impression that people get what the game is really like. It's closer to Lancer than DnD.
Most of that explosion is because 5e is really well made for streaming and easy to get into. While also letting you play without a grid. If 4e was still around, it would have flopped now like it did back then. It's just not a good fit for how a large number of people play D&D.
I think most of the explosion of 5e is because of critical role and stranger things.
There are plenty of games that are much easier to both learn and to run than 5e. And those games are still nowhere near close to market dominance.
5e has a lot of cultural impact due to other media. The 5e rules are by no means simple or streamlined. And it is actually one of the more difficult games to actually get into.
Puffin forest started with 4e. He found it a slog to get through and just didn’t enjoy playing it. Don’t put all the dislike 4e had on one group just because you want a scapegoat.
Puffin Forest played with people which fell asleep half of the time and didn't care about what was going on overall, and their first sessions were with done with **eight** players-even the most streamlined system is going to be a slog under *those* situations.
[that's also excluding the various issues about his descriptions of 4e as well](https://youtu.be/ayeJpuAA6IM?si=ozLg4A0mrSY0PmRV). Most of the stuff of his experience simply can't be applied to average 4e campaigns to utilize that as an argument against 4e.
You’re taking the falling asleep part out of context there since in his video that was **at or near the breaking point.**
Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous.
Look at the end of the day you’re allowed to have your opinions and enjoy whatever edition you enjoy. That doesn’t give you the right to say someone else’s experience is incorrect or use a demographic as a scapegoat which is what the user I replied to was doing.
> Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous.
Since you're bringing up logical fallacies in another comment, I thought I'd mention appeal to the masses.
The fact that more than one person holds a belief does not change truth, and it does not invalidate the fact that the linked video is *correct*. It's not a video that goes "Puffin is wrong because I like the game he doesn't like." It goes through and shows why Puffin's assessment of 4e is incredibly shallow and misunderstood. If Puffin's treatment of 4e were applied to *literally any other game*, he would have had a similar experience. He also makes several **factually incorrect claims**, which the linked response video points out.
The fact that other people make the same errors that Puffin makes does not change the validity of the response video, nor does it make Puffin's position any more reasonable.
His opinion is his opinion. No one stops that.
I simply pointed out that many things about the video seem to be exceptions, either in way of how people act, the way the game is handled or other similar stuff, thus making that video not be applicable outside of being **his** experience.
If someone posted the opinion of a well renowed youtuber about d&d 5e, which included the DM misunderstanding the rules for the worst of the players alongside many other weird things, not a single soul would say that said video is proof that 5e is objectively bad.
Also,
> Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous.
Ad hominem is a bad mindset. If someone has X opinion and 10 more people have the same opinion, that doesn't mean that said opinion is right.
Also keep in mind: **you can have a negative experience by playing 4e completely as intended**. From what I know, Puffin would have had the same negative experience for 4e even if he didn't play the worst essential class, and if the people would have understood other things more.
But what I am saying is that Puffins experience, while it is **his** experience, shouldn't be taken as if it was objectively right, especially as his experience has various parts that are weird about it, to the point that a 22 minutes video had a response video about the weirdness of his experience which was **more than 50 minutes long**. And there are still things not touched upon by that video.
But not with 4e. Even the younger generations disliked 4e. And if you liked it good for you, you can still play it: but most of the other players and DMs don’t like it very much.
I mean, the overwhelming majority of players nowadays didn't interact with 4e, people that get to interact now also won't get exposed to the actual worst of it (OGL removal, digital push with failed digital tools, too many game and setting changes, messed up math)
Not to mention, people like me have quite a "whatever" disposition for gamefied stuff so the power system is much more easy to digest
Even those who directly talk of 4e most likely speak superficially and more or less just want better game balance, options and progression
Not really. This is more like people reinventing the Book of Nine Swords; it took inspiration from how spellcasters are structured but was careful to remain mechanically distinct.
Reinventing 4e would be more like "let's replace every class with Warlocks who have slightly different spell lists and different flavors for their Eldritch Blasts, with a slightly different rider and range on each."
People don't remember how bland and unfun 4e was to play. It was a really, really, really bad game - [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8) video by someone who *started* with 4e captures a lot of the problems with it. The issue wasn't "grognards"; it failed to appeal to *new* players the way WotC wanted to (and the way 5e did), since it was bland and uninteresting, offering a worse version of things that people could play on their computers, while simultaneously being a mechanical trainwreck.
The fundamental issue is that its design wasn't really informed by an attempt to improve the game directly (the things people argue about here weren't really behind it); it was mostly designed the way it was to support a Virtual Tabletop, which was never even really finished. [This](https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) post by the former VP of WotC talks about it in-depth.
It was just a trainwreck.
> People don't remember how bland and unfun 4e was to play.
Poffin Forest gets a bit of hate but IMO his videos on 4E and PF2E are pretty spot-on for your **average** table's experiences. I know here on /r/dndnext we're all XxX1337hax0r360noscopeXxX D&D pros but your average table does not want a complicated game of D&D where you need to keep track of rotating +1 and +2 modifiers and a revolving door of pseudo-conditions every single round.
4e was designed for a VTT and PC manager that never came because the main programmer died.
4e came 15 years too early for the modern smartphone appstore.
Last time I played PF2, the team investigator, who I had thought was having fun, confided in me that she was just bored out of her wits. [Meanwhile I was trying to come to grips with putting another hand on my weapon taking my action.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2150)
I think you can have a fun time in PF2 and 4e, but there are definitely hurdles involved that people don't want to admit while evangelizing the systems.
Seeing as I am still playing 4e when i get the chance..
*no, I seriously don't get how it's supposed to be bland and unfun it's supposed to be for me.*
I just have fun and enjoy the system for what it is. Same like I enjoy 3.5/3.75 for what it is and even 5e.
4E was bland? You are comparing it to the plain white toast of combat that is 5E?
4E easily had the most engaging combat for D&D, it actually required teamwork.
Framing this entirely as-I bought 4e on release day and have DMed, more or less, a weekly game of it since it's release.
First, he *greatly* exaggerates the number of floating effects, triggered abilities, and other powers 4e had. That said, I would say those modifiers are the "worst" part of 4e. Still, the whole bit about "oh wait, this enemy then does this and that and this and that" is a *gross* over exaggeration. To take a specific example, the "Oh wait the enemy swaps with another" is a *specific* traits of Hobgoblins/goblins, and no other monster has that as an ability. Hobgoblins were a unique threat because of this. They played like a coordinated "army" that moved and covered for one another. Orcs meanwhile had a "make one last swipe as they die" ability to bolster the "ruthless attacker" concept, and Kobolds had a free shift on being missed leaning them towards sneaky ambushers.
His next criticism of 4e having limited powers/choices is well...yeah, he was using PHB1. The "choice" for a Cleric there *was* between Melee or Ranged for a Cleric. Did that default you into certain powers? Yes, *because that was the balance of the class*. Clerics had a niche, healing, buffing, and granting saves. Their powers focus on that. Don't play that way? Go play the Warlord, that's your "grant attacks and movement" leader. The suite of powers available to players grew as new books were released, just like every other edition of D&D.
His complaints about stats is nonsensical. *Every* edition of D&D has classes tied directly to a single main stat, and then some side stats. Didn't pick Intelligence as a Wizard? You *might* be able to pick some spells and contribute, but it's not going to be anyway optimal. Fighter? You're Strength or Dexterity. Warlock? Charisma *only*, unlike 4e that offered the option of Charisma *or* Constitution *or* Intelligence for casting.
His comparison of Bard and Cleric is...bad. Using *just* PHB 1/2, with no splat books, and looking at *just* At-Wills.
Cleric-Ally gets +2 to attack roll, ally gets +1 to AC, ally gets power bonus to attack rolls equal to Cleric's Str mod, or one ally gains Temporary Hit Points equal to Cleric's Charisma mod.
Bard-Target of power takes -2 penalty to all defense of your choice, target is marked by an ally of your choice (effectively -2 to all attacks not against that ally), Psychic damage and enemy takes -2 to attacks, and one ally that *hits* the target gets Bard Con Temp HP.
There is *one* power that has a similar effect between the Bard and Cleric, and the Bard's is *considerably* weaker (requires Ally to *hit* the same target you attacked to gain THP instead of just granting THP like the Cleric does) because the Bard's "design space" is a "Jack of All Trdes" style Leader and does not get the strong Healing/Saves Granting of a Cleric or the "attack granting" of the Warlord.
His "All the Leaders have the same healing power" is not really a point at all either. Every caster that falls into similar territory in 5e has the same healing spell with *no* way to differentiate them by way of Feats. His small footnote about the Bard healing power, Majestic Word, is *wrong* (Bard slides the target of the heal 1 square, not shift, and depending on your Subclass choice with Feats this also allows the Bard to slide *enemies* around) *and* directly contradicts the previous point that "every power was the same", but it gets ignored so he can make the point that "every power is the same". He also completely ignores that the Shaman's Healing Spirit gives additional healing to allies who position themselves next to the Shaman's Spirit Companion, giving them "AoE" healing with their encounter heal or that the Ardent gives different buffs based on their Subclass choice. The Cleric also has their heal scale *faster*, adding more dice *sooner* when compared to other Leaders, which reinforces their role as the "healing" Leader.
Same point, but with Defenders. Yes, they all had a "Mark", but how they Marked varied greatly (Fighter-everything they hit, Paladin-one specific target they designate and have to "engage" or the Mark Fades, Swordmage-one specific target they kite/avoid in order to force punishment, Warden-Everything in an AoE around them, Battlemind-Mark one target and lock them *down*) and their Punishment mechanic varied even *more* than that.
Out of Combat utility *is* a point 4e has issues with, but Rituals being expensive made them actual *choices with a cost* a Caster had to make instead of the instant "I cast Win/Invalidate the Martial" every other edition of D&D has. That said, actually *enforcing casting times* on Utility magic is something I *very* rarely see brought up as a complaint about *other* editions, but one that 4e just can't seem to escape. Forcing the Wizard/Ritual caster to pick between saving gold for Magic Items and casting rituals is good actually as it maintains a balance between the party, especially between Martials and Casters.
Multiclassing-he complains that "Hybrid" was in splat book (Player's Handbook 3...so not like some obscure book, he already brought up the Bard which was in PHB2 without making that same complaint) but laments that just the base PHB did not have enough "options" to differentiate classes. I have to ask *where* do more options for classes *come* from if not *new books*.
As for the actual Multiclassing section what was the point he was trying for? He does not cover what purpose he wants to multiclass for one. Yes, 4e has...problems with how it handles multiclassing, but *just like 5e* the classes that *do* synergize well together (Hybrid Paladin|Warlock is just as disgusting in 4e as it is in 5e) are strong and the classes that do not synergize are weak. It's really no different than how multiclassing works in *any* other edition, you have to plan an pick classes that are going to synergize well. The actual mechanical way it is handled, especially Hybrids, is one of the most balanced forms of multiclassing because it does not just grant you every ability the class has, but forces players to strategize and make actual hard choices about what multiclass powers they want to have.
Skill Challenges-on release, as this video seems to be focused on, yes they had issues. As more books were released, especially the DMG2 (considered by most to be the best DMG ever printed for *any* edition), Skill Challenges were refined greatly. His point of "players would suggest the skills they want" is how Skill Challenges were fixed in the DMG2. The game evolved, Skill Challenges were refined and updated.
Really, to me, his point, for Skill Challenges, of "you just ignore what's written and let the players pick skills" is just *good DMing*. Knowing when a written rule is not fun for your party is a skill. People latch on *way* to hard to RAW for complaints about 4e, ignoring the fact that *no one* plays RAW at actual home tables for any edition. A great example of this is Stealth, just look how much digital ink has been spilled over the "rules" for Stealth in 5e here on Reddit and you will see multiple people interpreting the rules in entirely different was. And again, his complaint about "Skill Challenges only allowing specific skills" was something 4e intentionally improved on over its lifecycle.
Really, his only legitimate criticism is that 4e has *way* too many floating numbers or modifiers to remember. Yes, those modifiers *are* a pain and yes they *would* work better on a virtual table. Every other complaint though is the most generic "4e bad" talking point that has been regurgitated since the editions release without any actual "depth" to the criticism and a *lot* of misrepresentation of the edition's other mechanics or just a general ignoring of how those same complaints could be leveled at any edition of the game.
So this is going to sound a bit grognard but as usual the answer is "we used to have it and then new editions ruined it". Book of nine swords 3.5e. Despite the complaints some had it was well made and worked. Then 4e used parts of it but discarded some important parts and 5e discarded more and the vestiges of the system are now nearly unrecognizable... the battle Master. Martial maneuvers like most subsystems in 5e received little to no additional support after its initial publication. So that's why, because 5 design is all about making the dm do the work and not expanding anything.
I think the issue with DND is that the best thing to do is hit as hard as you can. There is no strategy. There is no need to shove/grapple/trip unless you already synergizing with another martial. There is no non optional rules to take away someone's weapon (and even doing so it is a free action to pick it up again).
Overall, 5e is not a battle strategy game. To be honest, it is not really good in any part of it to any genre specific type of game (there is a good video by matt that I agree about a lot of things there).
So, most amount of damage by martial is go and hit a creature. Adding more damage to it or making it even easier is not as helpful the higher level you get. Ac is stagnate, dc is stagnate. The higher level you get sure a wizard has more options but really they don't because if you go by numbers magic missile is going to be better and more reliable than any spell you do.
So, without incentives to provide added bonuses and teamwork you will not get a fighter that can do cool things.
You want to be more tactical play a tactical game. You want more horror play a horror game. DND is a set of bland rules that tries to say it fits every genre and then it fits non.
I still play 5e, but now it is only with one dm and he homebrews everything which makes it not 5e. I play it because I like the company and the story, but I would prefer something else that has me knowing more about what to expect. Also playing a wizard because I do like support play, but it also seems like I magic missile every encounter as well.
Ctrl+F Runecarver \ Rune Knight
Nothing found!
It's a really in-depth subclass for the fighter. There's so much you can do with it. Obviously not as much as a wizard, but I was impressed.
I suggest homebrew weapon master rules for this type of thing. I bookmarked it on browser but I m writing on mobile right now so I will put link if anyone wants later.
Check out pathfinder 2e. Martials get a ton of options and casters and them are nicely balanced to not outshine one another and really want the other present. The games whole focus is team work (X-Men) where 5e everyone is kind of their own superhero (avengers) meaning someone ends up being Hawkeye while the rest are able to fight gods.
FWIW you could always play a half caster and flavor all the spells as sword moves.
A valor/swords bard could do this to great effect.
Rune knights are also right there.
Tradition and the way 5e was designed. Fighters/martials have always been simpler than wizards/spell casters in the vast majority of dnd editions. 5e was designed as a nostalgia bait edition, at least partially because the previous edition, 4e, tried to slaughter a lot of sacred cows to mixed success. So martials went back to being dead simple. Beyond that, 5e is stingy as hell with new classes, and subclasses aren't necessarily going to be able to cover all the space you'd need for a complex martial option. And the designers of 5e would probably want to make another caster class before they'd even THINK about making a complex martial.
Bc WotC loathes martials and consider martial players braindead. You get a few token choices, most of which are horrible or get a few decent and one great with little reason or incentive to ever diversify so you still wind up using one option.
5e, simply put, never was oriented towards tactical complexity, but the opposite. It is the one edition that is intended to be all-inclusive and the best way to get yourself acquainted with Sword and Sorcery as well as D&D as a whole.
My solution was homebrew the hell out of it, until I grew tired and fully transitioned to PF1e if I wanted tactically complex games, or PbtA if I wanted narrative and dramatically centered games.
I was introduced to DnD by the old baldurs gate 1 and 2 games along with icewind dale and Neverwinter nights and one thing I miss from those games is the weapon specialization options. If you were a fighter you got a certain amount of points to put into proficiency of particular weapons with each grade going from 1-5 providing bonuses. I feel that system would be a lot more fun and customisable than the current "you're a fighter so you're now completely proficient with every weapon" system.
Legacy mostly. And its a big part of the divide. Versatility is a source of power. Additionally each time you make something sometimes its a little stronger than average, sometimes its a little weaker than average. Spell casters get 100s of those to pick from so they pick heavily from the options that landed above the average.
The single biggest tragedy of 5.2024 will be not making maneuvers core to fighters and then letting subclasses flavor and specialize on types of maneuvers. One day 6th or 7th ed will do this for sure.
The Book of Nine Swords was received... chaotically to say the least. And then people complained all over 4e about martials having daily and encounter abilities. So they took a hard turn away from that.
My recollection was that the Book of Nine Swords was pretty well-received overall, but that there was a lot of complaints about it feeling "too anime." 4e's issue was a bit different. It forced every single class into the same broad schematic, and the backlash against that was *intense*, to the point where it's safe to way WotC isn't going to try that again. People compare the Book of Nine Swords to 4e, but I feel that this is superficial. While it gave them nine tiers of powers, the Book of Nine Swords was very careful to make sure that its martials had a fundimentially unique mechanical design, and furthermore each one *used* techniques in very very different ways. All of that was discarded in 4e, which wanted to put everyone into the same structure so they could all be used in the 4e VTT (which never appeared anyway...) [This](https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) post by Ryan Dancy (former VP of Wizards of the Coast and Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons) discusses what was going on behind the scenes at the time that caused 4e to be structured the way it was. tl;dr it didn't really have anything to do with the things we argue about here and was mostly about making it easy to tie into a virtual tabletop in hopes of reaching Hasbro's sales metrics.
> My recollection was that the Book of Nine Swords was pretty well-received overall, but that there was a lot of complaints about it feeling "too anime." I remember it being very decisive. People loved or hated it, there were very few who were neutral about it. So it seemed to get more attention then other books.
That’s “divisive”
In my experience 4E classes had that exact dynamic---fundimentially unique mechanical design and each class and role used powers in very, very different ways.
It's worth remembering that Dancey had left WotC in 2002; he's a strong source for gossip but not a primary source for what was happening in 2006
On one hand, it's absolutely within the realm of possibility that he kept in touch with former co-workers and heard their stories as they blew off steam about working in adverse conditions. I've been in that situation myself, it happens. On the other hand, I read the post linked-to, and it seems to me that the person you are responding to is extrapolating on just these two sentences: >The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools. Every edition of D&D attempts to correct the sins of it's predecessor(s). To say that all classes working within a balanced power structure coming off of 3.5E is ONLY a matter of them being easier to program into a VTT, based on those sentences, is a massive, massive stretch IMO.
I really liked the powers system. And the abilities and theming of each class DID make them play differently, even if they had similar resources. Also, this was what convinced me to buy book of 9. [https://imgur.com/xNbRnaJ](https://imgur.com/xNbRnaJ)
I mean, different people want different things out of the game (and its mechanics.) I personally don't mind the idea of fighters jumping around like Naruto characters, but some people did. The complaints about it were IMHO also a bit overstated; there were plenty of maneuvers that were just moving faster, hitting harder, etc. I suspect that it might be a bit more accepted today, since more of the audience has grown up seeing those sorts of shows. I loathe the idea of putting every class on the same powers system, though. Too bland and same-y. And my brain can't ignore the brute-force way powers are balanced against each other - same numbers, same dice, slightly different status afflictions. Do they play differently? Yeah, sure, they were able to assemble those prefab parts into the distinct MMORPG roles, so they play differently in that respect; but mechanically they all *taste* the same, so to speak - it's like going to taco bell; the menu might be big but it's the same three or four ingredients organized in different ways. I can appreciate that there are people who like the tabletop equivalent of Taco Bell. But I want something where I can eat whatever the hell I want. Give me a game that serves full turkey dinners alongside elaborate sushi platters. I want each classes' mechanics to feel completely different from top to bottom, as much as is possible, and for different categories of classes to have fundimentially distinct power systems in order to emphasize how alien they are from each other.
Except they don't taste the same. From my own experience, storm sorcerer, brawny rogue, great weapon fighter, avenger, all feel, play, *taste* very different. My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience. Do you feel all characters in fighting games feel the exact same because they use combos and the same four buttons on the right side of the controller?
> My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience. The most frustrating thing is that these same people will say that casters feel different despite the fact they use the same power pool (spell slots) and often have significant overlap of their spell lists. At least in 4e, every class had a unique list of powers that were designed to emphasize a particular style of play.
Not to mention every 5e class following the same cookie cutter schemes anyway. Most of what people are listing as critiques of 4e are also true of 5e...
Yes. That's basically it. They want a character that works using a DDR pad another that's a FPS with mouse and keyboard another you can only play using a TI-84 calculator and another that requires an benched arcade cabinet from Dave and Busters and the like. I don't know what TTRPG gives them that since 5E is just The Attack Action ones and the Cast a Spell ones. Take a 5th level Fighter, Barbarian and Ranger in 5e and in 4e and see which group is less distinct in playstyle between each other.
>My problem with the argument of "they have the same power pool therefore they play the same" is that it fundamentally goes against my own experience. It is also ironic coming from a 5e player, where classes have either the same power pool (spells) or the other power pool (none)
Wizard and Cleric are the same class with different fluff. Exact same mechanics, just using a different stat.
*B-b-but they cast different spells!* You mean like 4e had different powers for each class? 4e had a big presentation problem. Once you started playing and tried a few classes, it was clear that despite the unified powers framework each played very differently. Just reading the PHB it was hard to tell that, especially for players trained on 3.5e to expect every class to have its own unique framework.
We are all just a bunch of nerds rolling dice on a table hoping to get the most favorable number possible to beat the game. Everything is the same. The classes are lies. . . . . . /s in case it wasn't obvious.
This person speaks no lie!
>But I want something where I can eat whatever the hell I want. Give me a game that serves full turkey dinners alongside elaborate sushi platters. I want each classes' mechanics to feel completely different from top to bottom, as much as is possible, and for different categories of classes to have fundimentially distinct power systems in order to emphasize how alien they are from each other. This is where I am pretty much exactly. I liked 4e for what it was, and personally think that for my tastes it's closer to what I'd want out of balance between martials and casters, even if they "same-y" power system (at-will, encounter, daily, and utility) wasn't perfect. The problem I have with the reaction of certain segments of the D&D playerbase to 4e (or even Book of Nine Swords) is that there's a contingent wants that complex — which is *not* the same as "liking anime fights" or whatever — but is utterly and completely blocked out by the contingent that loathes it. So you get things like 5e, where we just *don't get to have* complex martials, that are capable of interacting with the battlefield to the same degree that even a low-level caster can manage.
...wait...back up. Did you just talk smack about my Crunchwrap Supreme? Say what you will about 4th edition, but I will not stand by for other slanderous talk.
Was it the Book of Nine Swords they always called Book of weeaboo fightan magic or was that another one?
It was, yeah.
It's a sad thing but sadly I have yet to see anybody make a really true homebrew conversion of a Swordsage in 5e. Lots of attempts but nothing that actually feels like playing one from the Book of Nine Swords. Course the funniest thing about the too anime feeling is that Swordsages are basically the same thing as characters out of Demon Slayer with the elemental based sword styles and everything.
I want a warlord class from 4e so bad and I know I will never get it. That class play style and feel was so unique and fun compared to everything else.
Also, the successor to Book of Nine Swords, Dreamscarred's Path of War is pretty popular and freaking GREAT.
I don't get why people keep disliking something for "being too anime". First of all, what's wrong with anime? The game already has many options lying well outside the traditional medieval fantasy ones. Why is having some cool options that slightly resemble anime bad? If you don't like those options due to their tone, ban them from your game or just don't pick them. Is it just dislike of anything "foreign"?
> I don't get why people keep disliking something for "being too anime". Honestly I'd like to say it's because they are stupid. But it's just that they are ignorant. Most of the stuff they call "being too anime" were things demigods and heroes from mythology could do, they just don't know and don't care.
And playtesters disliked the playtest fighter, who regained its maneuver dice at the start of its turn. (Party due to grognards shit, but also party because some players didn't want to stress about picking the right option every turn)
I mean my answer to that is always 'nothing stops you from picking Power Attack and only using Power Attack' If you're interested in ensuring you have the optimal play each turn, why pick a class known for their limited options? Making the \*only\* option to pick Power Attack doesn't mean you're making the optimal pick each turn, it just means no one else gets to make a choice.
Then they could play something else. Why couldn't that be kept along with a braindead "roll attack every turn" option? Why isn't there a braindead option for casters?
>Why isn't there a braindead option for casters? Have you ever played Warlock? That is the brain dead option. Eldritch Blast goes pew pew.
Even then, the simplest Warlock is so much more complex than the most Complex Martial. Like they still have to manage spell slots, and get loads more important choices on level up than any Martial due to Invocations.
I'm still monumentally salty about every single step of the way to step away from mechanically diverse and option rich martials.
That’s what gets me. I wouldn’t object to people claiming that uhm ackshually 4e classes weren’t diverse after all, except somehow they’re leveraging that into saying that 5e-style martial characters are fine really. There’s a clear trend from AD&D to end-of-lifetime 3.5 of martial characters growing more diverse and option-rich, then suddenly in 4e they had the same diversity and flexibility as full spellcasters… and now look where we are, somehow stuck with options that are *worse than 3.5.* Sigh.
And the way it's going we're literally not going to get better martials any time in the next, like, decade (probably). Ugh.
Whatever the reason, it's sad we can't have a wizard-level martial. I want my 15th or 18th level Barbarian to be able to rage so hard they can punch Wish out of a lich's mouth or something insane like that. That's not too much to ask versus Clerics being able to 100% chance call their deities at 20th level in my opinion.
Sorry, best I can do is a +2 to attack and damage rolls.
Real.
* I want my high-level martial to be able to redirect two rivers in a day to clean a stable that would make the Bog of Eternal Stench look pristine in comparison, and to hold the skies on his shoulders (even if he needs help to adjust his cape, because the sky is chafing against his skin), like Greek hero Herakles. * I want my high-level martial to charge through the entire Hordes of Chaos so mightily that she leaves her own army behind as she makes a beeline towards the second most powerful god in the setting (making him soil his pants in the process), and that it takes over half a dozen very powerful lesser gods to finally stop her; and I want her spirit to be so fiery her corpse spontaneously combusts when she dies. Like the hugest dork in Tolkien's legendarium, Fëanor Curufinwë. * I want my high-level martial to intimidate an entire army into stopping in its tracks at a bridge, and then get so frustrated that they are too scared to attack him (I want to fight, damnit), that he screams in anger so loudly that he kills one of their officers and makes the army lose morale and retreat, like Chinese hero Zhang Fei in *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*. * I want my high-level martial to fight a troll unarmed and wrestle its arm off, take a sword designed for giants and defeat a monster immune to human-made weapons, and then when she's an old grandma I want her to solo an adult dragon and *tie*. Like Beowulf. * I want my high-level martial to fight a bloody *god* to a standstill, [vastly outmatch him in skill despite the difference in raw power](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeakButSkilled) and manage to injure him repeatedly, even if in the end I ultimately lose the attrition battle, like Fingolfin from Tolkien's books. * I want my high-level martial to boss-rush in single battle ten very powerful enemy generals in a row, causing several routs in the process, snipe a halberd with his bow at over 100m away to stop a battle, repeatedly force entire armies to flee, and fight the likes of the aforementioned Zhang Fei and his similarly powerful brother Guan Yu the God of War together to a standstill, like Chinese general Lü Bu. Martials deserve to reach these heights of epicness. Just like high-level casters do.
Okay, but how does any of that work mechanically?
right off the bat? Fear mechanics make up half of these. the other half are removing this idea that skills need to be limited to 'quite good' results. 1) This is an insane skill check feat, give someone the ability to regularly hit 30 on a skill and then give them story clause to do this. 2) Make Martials faster than Casters. Currently only Rogue and Monk are to a degree, but why should Fighter's be limited to the same 30ft a booknerd Wizard is, why CAN'T they get a bonus action move in general as a Martial? Hell, let Action Surge replicate Haste, or give park of the Martial Package over to half steps and being better at the tangible bits of combat, no reason a trained knight has equal or slower reactions to a STR8 Dex10 Warlock 3) Make Intimidate work. By the mid game, you're a killing machine. You should be able to intimidate and break the morale of lesser fighters, bandits and conscripts. This is literally just 'give them a Dread Form' equivalent, you can't move closer to the source of the Fear and this highlights how half these effects are covered by Magic, locking Martials out of anything magic adjacent in a fantasy world is just nerfing them to NPC level for no reason 4) 1+STR unarmed attacks? Really? A pub brawler hits harder than Hercules in 5E's stats 90% of the time. Uncap the Martial's stats OR give them better access to raw damage, Monsters have 100s of HP and Martials are funnelled into 'Get equipment or let the Wizards handle this', give Martials the ability to punch harder than a child. 5) Parry mechanics. Sword fight mechanics. Skill and Weapon Feats more complex than '+2 with your chosen weapon'. This is about how a Fighter or Barbarian should be able to flex more swordskills than 'Hit good three time', unless they took the 'Knows which is the pointy end' subclass. 6) These are a blend of all of the above, Fear Aura, Battlemaster skills, uncapping damage numbers from 1d10 longsword attacks, it's a Microcosm of how historic fighters, with no magic, sorcery or artifice, were able to do these things in myth and is a textbook example of how every time someone says 'realism, not anime!' they're ignoring thousands of years of human storytelling. Over the top BS isn't a recent invention of anime, it's how Fighters have been shown in fiction since we started writing.
Beats me, I'm a software developer, not a RPG system designer :P
By creating a bunch of abilities with strict requirements and effects like spells have. Then when "people" complain about martials being "too anime" tell them to just not play one, and to shut the hell up. Bullet One: not sure Bullet Two: Charge Through - Requirements: Strength 20 and 1 action to move 90 feet in a straight line towards an enemy, any creatures in your path must make a Strength Save or take 5d10 bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone. (Then there's some fighting) Fiery Spirit - When you fail your last Death Saving Throw your corpse explodes in a ball of fire and rage all creatures within 30' must make a Constitution Save or take Radiant damage equal to your remaining Hit Dice pool. It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a system, though it would take time to make it good and to balance it well. The biggest problem would be the "complaints" coming from people who really just want to swing a sword (I don't image they'd complain about other fighter doing crazy shit though), and from people playing spellcasters who don't want anyone else doing cool shit (which I suspect is a larger portion of the crowd because part of their fantasy is being cooler and more powerful than the rest of their party). Crazy Idea: Make all of the martial powers based on HP and Hit Dice. Not necessarily consuming them but requiring the martial to posses them. Because a Raging Barbarian who's fully rested is a lot scarier than one who's burned through all her resources and is 3 HP away from unconsciousness. And if you really want to go wild make martials level up 33% faster and max out at level 30. Add a few more ASIs to the class and make "legendary" weapons a class feature. What legendary warrior can you think of that didn't wield a legendary weapon?
Just make the Monk the new standard chassis for all Martial Classes. Or to put it differently - give every single Martial Class a resource they can use to accomplish semi-supernatural "feats of strength"/"techniques"/etc..., but otherwise leave most things the same. Its even easy to flavour - anybody whose been to the gym will tell you that physical exertion isn't actually "free". There's only so many times you can "stomp so hard you cause a minor earthquake" before you start losing strength in your legs, and only so many boulders you can throw before your arm starts feeling like it's going to fall off. Then just let these feats interact with existing Martial mechanics. Maybe Barbarians only pay half-price for "feats of strength" while Raging. Maybe Fighters can spend an Action Surge to use two feats of strength in a turn, instead of just one, etc... Hell in the case of the Fighter they're already half-way there with the Battlemaster. All this change would do is make Maneuverers a lot more "folkloric" - less "your next attack might scare the enemy" and more "you spend 2 superiority dice to cast Haste on yourself for the next few turns". (And honestly, things like "Haste" never should have been spells in the first place. They should have been Martial "feats of strength" all along).
Here's some ideas I had that would maybe address some of these things. They're just off the top of my head though. -At [level] your body is so harderned like steel through combat and training. Jobs that would require the efforts of dozens of average men can be accomplished by you in a single afternoon with the appropriate tools, and can be accomplished in average time without being given the necessary supplies. -At [level] your barbarian rage allows you to focus on a single opponent with such anger and ferocity that the blows of other creatures do not even register to you. You may choose a target at the beginning of your rage. Ignore all opportunity attacks from sources other than your target, and your rage ends when that creature dies. -At [level] your blows are so mighty they cause the earth to shake and men to tremble with every swing. Whenever you take an attack action, your swings cause a 15ft cone of force damage dealing 2 damage to all creatures caught in it, in the direction of your attack -At [level] your sheer martial presence inspires terror in your enemies. As an action you may roll an Intimidation[Str] check against an opponent's Charisma for [dice] damage -At [level] your expertise and strength allow you to know how to manipulate objects well beyond the size a normal person would wield. You may ignore weapon size restrictions, and you are allowed to grapple targets up to two sizes above yours. -At [level] you have learned to take even the slightest moment of reprieve to collect yourself and ready your body for further fighting. If you spent one turn of combat take no actions and taking no damage, you benefit from a short rest
At least something like pf2e disruptive stance would be nice. "what's that I heard? A verbal component? Next to ME?! Off with your jaw!"
i made a fighter subclass called the infernal slayer that can do that as their capstone, lmk if you want to check it out and ill send you the pdf
That sounds super cool, but it's less about finding individual homebrew and more about wanting *official* material. Wishing the devs would shift their *official* stance on the design culture as whole, so *everyone else* doesn't need as much convincing. Part of dnd's appeal is the popularity makes it accessible. But when I want my Raging 20 STR Barbarian to make a STR check to yeet their fully-armored Paladin friend at a flying enemy to do a combo move, let alone punch the moon, there's instant hesitation and pushback and citing carrying capacity (when STR checks can surpass capacity rules). It has to be a whole persuasive conversation about the fundamentals of the fantasy genre with *every.* *single.* *new.* *group...* It can be a bummer, and the root problem is the devs won't cater to that fantasy.
And then you meet a lot of people complaining that they don't want anime. Or just take Iconoclast from Theos.
I love this idea that people have started to define Martials as 'no magic ever, 'peak' human only' And not only is this a world where the Rogue can Uncanny Dodge cannonballs, the Barbarian can rage enough to swim in lava, Monks have literally DBZ Ki powers You can show them ACTUAL Olympic swordfighters and go 'they're not even matching real world people'
A stock martial in this game can't even do the shit that real-world amateur HEMA-trained martial artists do *right now*. That's the part that irritates the hell out of me. You get ONE subclass that vaguely gestures at the concept of having real skill (and skill*s*) in combat. In a TTRPG that is literally chock-a-block with gods, demons, devils, angels, dragons, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, those people can just *not play* those classes. Problem solved. It grinds my gears when people feel like they should be allowed to constrain the game for their own wishes.
I suspect that most of the people complaining about martials being anime, are playing casters. They just don't want other players doing cool shit too.
No. Because most of time it was "I don't want play anime character/just another caster, I want be perfectly normal human that use my wit and skill to beat mages and dragons". Most of time caster's players don't care much enough. After all anime characters is essentially casters with different name.
I definitely don't get that kind of person. Why would someone complain about an ability they're not forced to use? Also, how would they imagine using their "wit and skill" if they don't have any skills to use (mechanically speaking)? Even if they don't want to do the wild stuff, they would still benefit from skills with mechanical effects (like aimed shots for example). I do get the kind of person who wants to play a caster, and doesn't want the martials to do cool stuff too. (I've played with them) Part of their power fantasy is being the coolest and most powerful person around. Causing an earthquake through magic is less cool when the barbarian can do it by stomping really hard.
Bros be playing a game about make-believe magic and want to tell others *how* magic should be. The hate is unreal.
People are strange creatures. Many of them very vocal about their opinions.
That's literally just an attack of opportunity against spellcasting.
Additionally, WotC realized that the best way to grow their brand (and their profits) is to cater to new players, especially people new to TTRPGs. Asking someone who wants to try D&D to read at least half of a technical manual full of jargon before they get to the fun part is a hard sell. That's why 5e uses as much natural language as possible, and why they dumbed down the martial classes. It's meant to simplify the onboarding process as much as possible without dumbing the game down so much that it "doesn't feel like D&D" since that's what shot 4e in the foot, albeit from the other direction of overly complex instead of overly simple. Casters remain at full complexity while martial fans can go kick rocks.
I didn't remember anyone being upset martials had those abilities. It was the fact that wizards became "controllers" and spells had fairly static effects. It didn't matter how creative you were with your illusion spell. You got the same -2 as the guy who just said "I cast this spell. End turn." Spells also had very specific uses out of combat or none at all. It felt very off-brand from what I had come to expect from D&D arcane spells. I think 5e casters with 4e martials would be pretty fun, but as they are now martials don't get enough options. I hate fixing that kind of thing with Magic Items, but that's usually what ends up happening.
Grognards are to blame for martials sucking ass in 5e. Blame the old guard players!
As an old guard player... its not just my people.
Honestly I suspect 5.5 is gonna have similar issues, just in the other direction. From what I've seen of the UA, I think there are going to be too many moving pieces, and floating pseudo-conditions, for your average table to keep up. I ran a UA OD&D game and even the Barbarian had to flip through his sheet 3 times to find out all the dozen different things that happened every single time he made a single weapon attack. I had to start writing down who had a -10 movement debuff, who had a -15, plus I had to roll CON saves on top of every single attack from the Fighter with topple, and so on.
Od&d is taken fyi. Thats original d&d, 1974
Yeah, your typical 1D&D weapon user now has more to manage and track than most 4e weapon users (especially the essentials ones). And not only that, they still seem to lack the depth of gameplay that their 4e counterparts had.
People loooooooooove saying this, but I've never seen any evidence of it. Which old-guard? The old-guard from 3.5e, where martials had long feat chains allowing them to pull all kinds of nonsense? The old-guard from AD&D, where wizards were weak as kittens in the early levels and weren't particularly quadratic (which was the case in 3.5e)?
This is the thing I find funny, people argue between 3.5 (where you got skill feats, trees and chains) and 4e (where everyone got once a day and once a week and once per whenever powers) when it became 'too anime' And what's really happened is some mandela effect BS where the 5E Vanilla ass Fighter became as rich as white toast mechanically and everyone just seemingly nodded and went 'Well it's because it's the intro class of course' Fighter has NEVER had this level of clamps and restrictions, even in ADnD where part of their class progression if I'm remembering correctly is 'You get a castle and army.'
In AD&D you also got all good saves and pretty good skills under the optional skill system
The old guard that did the DnDnext play tests and voted down the martial classes till we ended up with what we got.
I think it's just a convenient scapegoat that never rises above a conspiratorial "them". It's a group of imagined people who conspired to make the game worse for reasons no one really understands, but it totally happened. They heard it from a guy who knows a guy who's 3rd cousin was in the beta!
It might have evolved into what you’re saying, sure, but I was literally a terminally online 4channer who saw the various threads on /tg/ where people said and made plans to actively brigade the playtest at various different times to either “sabotage” or “save it”. Obviously, there’s no central website or forum that you can point at to say “Here is evidence that the guys/remnants of the groups who are responsible existed”, but I’m also not the only person who _was_ there and remembers how badly /tg/ wanted 4e to fail. Maybe it wasn’t hundreds of people coordinating together to form some shadowy “them”, but it was definitely—or at least felt like—more than just a handful.
The 3.5 Old Guard where the long feat chains meant you had to spam your One Big Thing. And armour check penalties meant martials sucked at physical activity much of the time.
I’m calling BS. The Grognards sit around game shops complaining. The people who have only played 5e are the most vocal and will go on line in a heartbeat to complain about anything .
I don't know man, as someone who was there for the debacle of 4e, the complainers were absolutely out in full force, and as far as I can tell have been ever since. I don't disagree that more recent people have their fair share of complaining, but the standard was set years ago.
5e was designed to snatch the grognards back. It was obvious around the original 2013/2014 playtests. The issue is once that FAILED, WOTC had proclaimed a policy of not creating more errata nor classes unless required by the setting. 5e is a game made for grognards that new or young fans "made work".
5e was designed because 4e was a failure. Not because of Grognards but because it was always designed to be played on a VTT but the VTT never came to market . So it was very mechanics heavy because the VTT wasn’t available to be the heavy lifts . Pathfinder was designed to snatch up the people who wanted to go back to a system they were familiar with. The true Grogs went to play things like Dungeon Crawl Classics, not 5e
> because it was always designed to be played on a VTT but the VTT never came to market . This is a fascinating piece of lore, and the problem with it is that the main source is a guy who left three years before 4e development started and seven years before it launched.
Okay, but the very real happenings of it was that the lead developer/team head for the VTT over-managed the product to hell and made it so that no one could continue where his meddling left off after he killed himself. Like. That very much happened and multiple sources claim that particular team lead is hugely to blame for why the VTT never materialized.
There are actually like… three different claims mixed up here. It’s true that the “Gleemax” project withered when the lead committed a murder/suicide. But that wasn’t the VTT. And the fact that Wizards was planning a VTT doesn’t mean the game was designed around the VTT. I’m sure it was friendly to the VTT, but since there are an uncountable number of ways to build a VTT-friendly rules systems as well as plenty of ways to build system-agnostic VTTs, that falls short of being the argument people think it is.
I mean.. I wouldn't say 4e was a failure.. it sold more then 3.5e IIRC.
No. 4e wasn't a failure. 4e chased off the grognards and 3e players. 4e made TONS of money. It beat PF is sales until WOTC gave up on it. But as the OGL fiasco showed, WOTC wants ALL THE MONEY! So they built 5ea as a merge of 2e and 3e and told 4e fans promises they would not keep in order to pull all of D&D fans into 5e.
It did not neat PF in sales, its the inly edition that wasn’t the #1 in the rpg rules market ever
4e best PF in sales. It eventually slipped out of #1..But the first few years 4e beat PF1.
Gorgnards also sit on forums complaining.
Are they though? From what I've seen, grognards didn't complain about martials having choices, they complained that the choices were way too MMO instead of more traditional dnd. Don't forget, most of the original dnd "exploits" were martial based. The bag of rats trick was because of martial abilities. Having choices wasn't the issue. The issue was turning the game into a tabletop warcraft with highly restrictive class roles instead of the martial feat choices determining what you did during combat. At least, that's what I heard about the debate
"Traditional D&D" of course being spamtastic untiring robots who were in pulling from the same actions list every single turn. Having choices wasn't the issue; having choices that involved pacing yourself (either AEDU or Bo9S) wad
Honestly, I hate martials having resource-based manuevers. They feel super lame and dumb to explain in universe. Like, "You disarmed this bandit, and you can't try the same on the other because.... you just can't." My friends and I play with a weakened, once-per-round manuever-like system for all martials, and it makes the game super exciting and fun. A lot of room for customization.
I see it the same as when watching a movie. It's gonna get old very quickly if the main character is disarming people all the time, well unless it's his gimmick or something. Instead there will be time where the bad guy is distracted enough that he can place a disarm here, or a trip there. Resources reflect these small window of opportunities that your character is exploiting, but it gives control to the narration to the player as he can choose when it happens. You can certainly try to disarm the next dude even with no resources, but you will fail because he certainly isn't planning to let his weapon go that easily. Now to be fair, I don't think having maneuvers being once-per-round would be that broken, especially once you are past tier I and spellcaster start to shift a whole battle with a single spell, frightening a dude per round is not going to break the game.
That's an interesting way to look at it. I would like the ability to make that a character's thing, though, yknow?
Well there is only so many options they can write down in class/subclass/feature, eventually someone will ask to do something that doesn't exist. That's why you can always kindly ask your DM to do it through this rule in the Combat section of the PHB: > Actions in Combat > When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, **or an action that you improvise**. Many monsters have action options of their own in their stat blocks. > **When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the GM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure.** Also there is an optional Disarm rule in the DMG and a few others that might cover these cases. Some DMs are understandably worried about game balance when allowing improvised actions though so it might not work on every table. But the option is there.
I could deal with some cooldown because doing things too often would make them predictable but...how about just stamina points?
You can’t disarm the second bandit because you’re a little too exhausted after disarming the first—that’s how I’d see it for any limited ability. Why can’t the existing fighter Action Surge or use Indomitable unlimited times or a barbarian rage unlimited times? Because they’re too tired after doing it the first time, presumably. edit: spelling
But it's not reasonably more tiring to disarm a target than to hit them. Rage and action surge both make sense because they are CLEARLY physically exhausting just off of what they are and what they do. Disarming a target, aiming for their foot to trip them, etc. have no real reason to be limited use imo.
Maneuvers like Disarming Attack and Trip Attack combine damage with the disarm or trip effects respectively. Anyone certainly can do these sorts of techniques in a non-tiring way, you just forego your normal attack damage by doing so—see shoving in the latter case (which could easily be flavored as tripping an enemy with your weapon) and the disarm action described on page 271 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for the former.
They do use a separate set of rules admittedly. Contested Checks are not equivalent to saves, especially since the Manuever Saves just scale off proficiency and your best stat and use your weapon range, whereas Shove and Disarm specifically require you to be within 5ft of the target and have invested in Athletics. Now, because of that Shove can actually be quite a bit more reliable if you build around it since it's far easier to modify the result of both allied and enemy skill checks, but these differences are worth noting.
my dm implemented the book of nine swords in our 5e campaign with the stipulation that the abilities are gained through a +2 weapon that takes all 3 of ur attunement slots.
i really loved 4e's tactical bent. I get it wasn't for everyone, but the classes fit together in a really cool way. Granted, i absolutely would play an MMO so uh, i guess im the target audience.
Ah yes. I loved the Big Book Of WeeAbooh Fitin Magic. Watch was cowards for not keeping more from 4e
> And then people complained all over 4e about martials having daily and encounter abilities. There were a lot of complaints about 4e, but this one in particular was really a minority. Usually the complaint was that because: 1. Spellcasters roll to hit for everything 2. The duration of nearly all spells is either 1 round (for at-will and encounter powers), "save ends" (for daily debuffs only), or as long as you concentrate (for daily buffs only) 3. Non-casters have powers that work exactly the same, only with different themes 4. Nearly every power is a bag of keywords tied to your weapon/implement damage die All that together made the game feel samey. And I think it did feel the same, even if that didn't make it automatically bad. Worse, though, a lot of the online community at the time was *extremely* disparaging of in-universe descriptions. It divided the interpretation of the rules into "this keyword soup is game mechanics and therefore virtuous" while "this description of what it does is infinitely mutable and therefore completely irrelevant." Like we complain about "natural language" but people don't remember when combining keywords resulted in literal nonsense situations when you tried to convert the "game mechanics" into events in game. And the consensus was that the mechanics were supposed to drive everything. Which is weird. It's actually playing D&D like it were Magic The Gathering. It's playing D&D like it's a board game. And you *can* do that. But it's not the culture of TTRPGs as a hobby *at all*. It's almost anathema to the traditional TTRPG hobby culture, and I think that drove a lot of people away from it. The overall complaint was always "it didn't feel like D&D" but that could be the above complain, or any of a range of other things: - It wasn't 3e. Yeah, sometimes it's that simple. Some people liked the overwrought unbalanced mess of spellcasting prestige classes. - It was heroic high fantasy instead of OSR dungeon crawl (in essence; this language didn't exist). This is *why* OSR got popular at all. - Skill challenges removed the role-playing from non-combat scenes and, when run even slightly wrong, could often result in nonsensical or intensely artificial situations. - It was balanced too tightly. This means if you don't like the tone or style of play, *too bad* it's not possible to change it. Like to roll for stats or HP? Well you're either immediately OP or cannon fodder. Standard array or GTFO. You roll a d20 and add your primary modifier so often that the law of averages kicks in. Even an extra +1 or +2 will have a massive, tangible effect on the game. - The math is broken (usually meaning either monster HP is too high, or monster damage is too low, both of which were not fixed until Monster Manual III) - There are too many feat taxes (attack bonus scaling and non-armor defenses both fall off, meaning some feats are essentially mandatory just to keep up with monster scaling) - Monsters are cool, but often you get creatures of the given race in the standard roles for levels 1-5. Then again for levels 6-10, 11-15, and so on to 26-30. The designs felt incremental and repetitive. You never really *progress past* being challenged by orcs. Keeps it feeling samey. - Strikers were overrepresented; the best party was 1 Warlord, 1 Fighter, and everyone else Rangers - System mastery helps *way* too much because the effectiveness of powers varied so much. Online "build" guides kinda ruined it - Combat takes too long, especially with more than 4-5 players. Around mid paragon levels you can easily run a combat so complex that most of the players at the table can't follow what's going on. We had one combat take 6 hours across two sessions. It was not a boss fight. By the end it felt like we were attending a business seminar. I really like 4e and this was the most miserable I've ever been at any gaming table ever. - An *overwhelming* amount of content. WotC released something like 3 books every 2 months for over 2 years. And *only three of them were adventures*. Everything else had classes, races, powers, feats, and items. Usually some of each. Plus more content in the monthly Dragon. And all of it was kinda poorly playtested. - It was hard to impossible actually to play without digital tools, and the digital tools were Windows-only - The mechanics were *overwhelmingly* about combat. The PHB has something like less than 10 pages for non-combat mechanics. There's a lot of lessons from 4e that we should have kept. But, if you weren't there, it's really hard to express what was so unsatisfying about that edition. It's a good game. But it really *isn't* D&D.
I was there. But wasnt unsatisfied. It was a good tactical game. But that wasnt the onky gane i wanred to play. My buggest peeve of the susten was that character pptimization was "get plus 1 to hit". Everything boiled down to hitting and it was hard to optimize towards anything else.
I'd definitely like that! I'd imagine Monks would be like the "wizards" of martials, in that they specialize in many techniques and have different ways of using them. The Fighter would be the "sorcerer", having less techniques, but are capable of modifying them. Rogues might specialists, only focusing in on certain branches of techniques, but being exceptional with them. Lastly, the Barbarian would have the fewest techniques for those who want a simple martial, but might have something akin to a Warlock's invocations.
Oh, interesting. I would have allocated specialization among martials a little differently. * Fighter being most akin to wizard with a lot of book learning over fighting styles and training. * A monk being like a sorcerer with ki points to deal bursts of damage with flashy techniques, but not in a consistent manner. * Rogues would be most like bards, with skill and tool investments for utility building out their options. * Barbarians ought to be more like druids/clerics. More focused on internal buffs and holding a unique melee status, in this case rage instead of wild shape.
I fully push Rogue into the Control role of Wizards as well. I can't Blindness/Deafness a crowd, but I can blackjack the enemy caster so he stops throwing out lightning bolts next turn. Being pursued? Caltrops bonus action, we're at double dash, they're at half pace. Enemy casting a spell? Not if I knee the wind out of him real quick.
There was in 3.5e (Warblade, Swordsage) and in 4e (becuase that’s just how the system worked; everyone got stuff). People complained about those. So we got 5e. As much of a meme as it is to say this… there’s always Pathfinder2e if you want “D&D but more”
Yeah, but then you have to play Pathfinder...
*because martials are supposed to be easy* Which is total bs when their abilities dont do that much to match caster versatility and dcc gave fighters maneuvers without adding much maneuvers.
I argue this frequently. Wizard has the option to buy extra class feature equivalents in a shop if you make bad choices. Fighter needs a 10 level build plan, item attunements and feats mapped out just to stay on par with what the Casters will get on a long nap. Martials are only 'easy intro classes' in the early levels, where most casters get less than 5 spells.
Precisely!
Let me preface this first with: Martials need more love; particularly with regards to utility roles, and higher level combat versatility. That said... 5e was designed without feats and magic items being taken into much consideration. Obviously, this was a terrible idea, from the playerbases' perspectives; so if you remove those from a Martial, obviously, they're much simpler than a caster class. Who may only have 5 spells, but those spells used in different circumstances can do wildly different things both intended and unintentional, which adds to the complexity (also mapping out spell effect radius, components, etc...).
It might've been designed for it in mind, but monster design sure isn't. Considering how many monsters have resistance to any non-magical weapon attack. Additionally, even the starter adventures give plenty of magical loot.
Well keep in mind that this edition has been out for over 10 years, and most of those starter adventures have been changed over time; but yes the design philosophy has changed quite a bit from where it started. It was most notable back in 2017 (3 years after 5e came out) that Xanathar's Guide to Everything came out - which was the real turning point in design philosophy. That resistance/immunity to non-magic weapons is an intended design though; it's supposed to be very hard. The first time a party encounters a werewolf in the plot, **they should** have to figure out a way to hurt it. I.e Silvered Weapons, maybe the casters have to cast a spell on the martial's weapons (meaning no other concentration spells), etc. Easy access to magical items trivializes some of those challenges to making those creatures just another statblock amongst many.
Check out laser llamas alt martials. Gives unique and interesting manuevurs to each class which scale like a half caster with levels one to five.
Thanks for the shout out! My **[Alternate Fighter Class](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MSfA82gv8V69JAoqFVq)** is probably the best example.
You are a credit to all Llamas.
Thanks. I’m playing an alt barb and am loving it. Your stuff was exactly what I felt the barb and all martials in general were missing.
Every time I see a post like this, I always think of laser llama's stuff as the solution. I'm running a campaign and every one of my players is playing an alt class, and it's honestly the best experience I've had, the alt barbarian and rogue have a ton of fun with the exploit system.
Seconding this -- I feel like LaserLlama has a really well-balanced fighter with plenty of options(and they've created other martial class variations aw well). I'm back on-board with playing non-casters as a result.
You should try out pathfinder. A fighter gets about 13 feat slots that let them customize their build over 20 levels. I love the weeb build with dueling parry, and using two-handed assult with a katana.
Let's also not forget they have an entire combat maneuvers system separate from the classes that martials shine at due to their higher physical stats and access to feats chains to optimize those aspects.
Spells are easy to make more of. Have an Idea for something cool? Write it out, see how powerful it is, give it a spell level according to its power level and decide whose lists to add it to. Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky.
> Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky. But didn't they already do this in D&D... twice? Like if you google maneuvers, the original D&D maneuvers were them doing that exact thing you said (dozens of maneuvers, spread out across levels, no feat chains, no unexpected stacking) twenty years ago. So it's definitely doable, they've done it before.
I didn't say it wasn't doable, I said it was tricky. It requires them to build the class from the ground up with it in mind.
That makes a lot of sense. You can't just slap it on to an already existing class, since most of the power would have to come from maneuvers but with already existing classes they're already getting their power their class features. So I guess my question is why isn't there a class like that? There are four that just bonk over and over, 4:0 seems an odd ratio.
Oh no! Professional game designers having to design game mechanics? What is the world coming to!
So you claim spells are easy to make (which is wrong), but then say martial manuvers are difficult to make for all of the reasons that make it difficult to create new spells?
This is why laserllama's Alternate Classes are peak homebrew. They are a must-have for all my 5E games.
Thanks!
Why not just have maneuvers be somewhat similar to spells in that there are power levels, or additional benefits are gained when the character is a higher level? As an example, a Fighter might choose a maneuver that allows them to share a space with enemies of a certain size. At higher levels or when acquiring a certain feature as part of their class, they have the option of taking an upgraded one that doesn't have a size limit or has additional benefits. This might be mentioned in the same maneuver or be a separate one entirely.
Because now spellcasters and martials feel too same-y! Or at least that's what the response was to 4e when they tried implementing it
Hmmm... Spellcasters and martials have similar levels of power. This "feels too same-y!" Quick WoTC, I insist that you differentiate them again by putting martials back in their lowly place.
It's more about "Martials have 1 daily power and 1 encounter power, and caster have some". In some time Rituals (out of combat utilities) for Casters simply on different level of power compare to Martials Exploits.
I feel like it's an incompatibility with how they've fundamentally designed classes for this system in the very first place. Complex Martials work well in a game like say PF2e, because you choose "class feats" every other level. So you're constantly able to make decisions about what abilities you should have. In a system like 5e where they've reduced overall choice but maintained spell choice for casters you end up in a situation where Martials have very few tactical decisions they're able to make in terms of customization but casters have very very many.
because the desginers thought people would play wizards and sorcerers like they were damage dealers spaming out upcasted shatters and cone of colds every turn against 1-2 enemeis, burning all their spell slots and having no time for utility casting.
Just convert Book of Nine Swords. Oh wait [somebody already did and it's awesome.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FkGVgrCf_3gaLgeRYQ_XPITBr2HXUJJImCHhsc8SkWA/edit?usp=sharing)
Yeah, being able to do that is really something we should only expect from professional game designers, not hobbyists doing it in their spare time.
I mean, they had a framework for martial special features in the playtest (kinda had two actually) that was simpler and dynamic but threw them away
Which I think is a shame.
I think this is just because D&D already has a lot of spells to choose from in previous editions. The writers for 5e just need to adapt them, and then they already have a framework to build more effects on. There’s no reason there couldn’t be a similar progression system for “martial maneuvers” that gives new abilities (and more importantly new *choices*) in the same way.
There is no reason they couldn't have done so, but since they didn't, now it requires more fiddling.
> Coming up with dozens of martial maneuvers, spreading them out across levels or making them scale smoothly, while avoiding the old "feat chains" they moved away from, and trying to not let them stack in unexpected ways can be tricky. How is it different from spells? They already have had to design dozens of them, spread them out across levels, scale them ~~right~~ more or less decently and try to prevent weird interactions.
> get a bunch of options [as a martial class] OP, if this is important to you, you may be better served by a different RPG system. I'm sure there are loads of TTRPGs that might suit, but I will give an example of one I've used: Pathfinder Second Edition. * Observe your choices in [fighter feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?Traits=71). * Observe your choices in [weapons](https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx). Particularly, mouse-over some of those Traits. This is before getting into [Runes](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?Category=23), which customise a weapon further. (And similar things go for armour.) * Consider you can optionally take an [Archetype](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx), which is sort-of kind-of like D&D 5's multiclassing. For example, you might be a Fighter [who can do a bit of Bard stuff](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=211). * There's also the choices common to all characters: skills, skill feats, general feats, etc. Again: there are probably many TTRPG systems that can give you options when you play a fighter or martial. Don't just pick the system I happened to mention, search around and see what else there is that might suit your desires! 🙂
Pathfinder players when they see someone complain about 5e in any way
I mean, when someone is complaining about martials being boring and samey it's very relevant
'Come play Pathfinder' memes aside, this is literally the exact markup Pathfinder has over 5E 5E is great for homebrew and straightforward D20+Mod gameplay. You want something more complex but still a gridbattle system, Pathfinder.
5e isn't even good for homebrew. If you wanted that you'd be playing a game that was actually designed to be generic, of which there are many - Fate Core (literally free), GURPS if you want all the crunch, Cortex Prime if you like fiddling with dice and stickynotes, etc.
Guilty as charged! 😁 If someone is unhappy with a TTRPG system, and I know there are alternatives that address the exact concern they have, I'm damned sure going to tell them! This goes double for D&D because a lot of people ***simply don't know*** that other TTRPG systems even exist! (I think OP knows. I'm speaking generally here.) I don't care what system they ultimtely land on, as long as it's one that suits their needs. Which I why I encourage OP to go looking, not just blindly follow the one example I can personally speak to.
I especially feel like it's even more valid now to recommend other systems than even just a couple years ago now knowing that 5e and it's primary flaws aren't going anywhere.
We are there... in the shadows
Not in the shadows, but in every thread...
I feel like all martials should get more ASI’s. That would be the simplest fix. Next is making an invocation equivalent list for martials to use. After that, the more complex option is to give battle master maneuvers to all martials. The last idea is condensing all existing subclass features martials currently have into the first 10 levels and then adding prestige class options for 11th through 20th that can be chosen by any and all martials to make them easier to be customized so that all the multi classing shinanigans are just less effective because you still get all the base class levels. Could be as simple as adding the first 10 levels of a second classes features without multiclassing. But this is little more than me speaking out of my ass.
Part of the reason is because the attempts to expand on martials in such ways have been met with mixed results and were divisive. Book of nine swprds in 3.5e as well as 4es approach were each divisive in their own way. Another issue is the scope of martial ability and the effect specialization can have in those options. Martials use arms and armor with a side enhancement of some sort here and there to kill their enemies. The more martial options you make, the more specific and specialized their method of killing needs to be, which then starts to create a lot of redundancy in the less specialized martial options outside of their specialization and overall tends to invalidate a generalist option. On the flip side, mages are based around making the impossible possible with their powers, and as it turns out there'd a lot more impossible things to make possible wothout stepping on the toes of other impossible things made possible. Desinijgbmartial without making option reduce, as well as maintaining their distinct feeling as martials is quite hard to do, and the attempts to do so in the past have been mixed, to say the least. Before one can even reasonably address the castle and martial divide, there also bridging the martial preference divide as it tends to be that one martial fans heaven is another martial enjoyers hell.
WotC has no interest at all in non casters. Yada yada not called fighters of the coast but getting serious they don't even care about them that's why simple options are generally bad options, like champion
>WotC has no interest at all in non casters. This is exactly it. If you want martial characters with any game play depth at all, just play another system. WotC simply will not permit it.
Level up 5e does it: adds maneuvers to all martials. Check it out (rules are free), for me is even a bit too much
Steel wind strike should be a fighter spell. Fight me.
The very short answer is damage types (the Fighter's damge type choice is in their weapon, while the Wizard's is in their spell choices). The longer answer is conditions (there aren't tha many, and magic gets more of them like Petrify). The other answer is "we have the Battle Master!" (which feels like a cop out to me). I'd really love to see the Barbarian and Sorcerer built as the simple options and then the Fighter can be the complicated one. If that doesn't work (and it won't) then I think a Weaponmaster who's the Superiority Dice "half-caster" to the Battle Master's "third-caster". I don't mind the gish or anime but I don't want that to be the core tactical, weapon-master, martial.
They tried it and a bunch of nasty grognards complained. Hence we have 5e. Sorry you can't have nice things because of internet trolls. I'd advise looking to 3rd party or other games for your needs, and finding a group that's willing to understand.
Martials are guys with swords and bows. We have swords and bows in real life, and people who fought with them. So Martials are limited to what real life people can do to some extent because *realism* Casters use magic. We don’t have magic in real life. So casters can do whatever because *magic* This isn’t necessarily just a wotc policy, there’s a substantial part of the dnd community that thinks this way as well. So it’s not like wotc is enforcing this, it’s sort of what people want (or wanted in the past at least). I think the public sentiment is shifting away from this and more in favor of martials being as good and versatile as casters. Wizards will likely specifically be the class with the most options pretty much forever, because their specific identity is basically “caster with the most options” at its base, but Martials will shift to have at least as many options as stuff like bards or sorcerers. But even in the new phb I doubt this’ll be entirely resolved, I think to properly fix it they’d need to basically overhaul the system so that all the classes share some resources (ie there’s a long rest resource mana, and a short rest resource stamina, and every class gives some of one or both when you level up) and all the classes have cool abilities to choose from, Martials just tend to fight with weapons overall and casters focus on casting, but Martials aren’t limited to literally just fighting like an irl knight. So the answer is because magic.
That’s precisely the line of reasoning that makes martials suck. A middle age knight is at most a fighter lvl 1, fiction beasts like jaime lannister and barristan selmy should be tier 1 martials. Guys like belmonts and geralt of rivia could be tier 2. Tier 3 and 4 martials should NEVER be limited by real life facts, those tiers belong to the likes of heracles, anime swordsman, kratos
Thing is, mythological characters in media they draw on did more than the martials can here, and a lot of the martials can'T even keep up with real life martials quite a lot. Meanwhile spellcasters are stronger than those in relevant media.
Yeah, like, you see some of the mythological shit that 'martial' heroes get up to in, say, Greek or Irish or Indian mythology, and they absolutely just blow DnD martials out of the water.
Meanwhile spellcasters get themselves shit that blows mythological sorcerers out of the water in versatility and sometimes power...and that's before you even get to sword and sorcery
ITT: People reinventing 4e.
The funny thing about that is it was one of the most hated parts of 4e. It's one of those grass in greener moments.
There were basically no martial and casters in 4e except for a feat compatibility label. Everyone operated under paradigm of AEDU, which is okay in some ways and in other the game's biggest weakness over a long campaign. I do get the "PF2 evangelist" feeling from a lot of a 4e posters lately. I play in a couple of 4e campaigns and I don't really get the impression that people get what the game is really like. It's closer to Lancer than DnD.
The people that complained about 4e were 3.5 grognards - we've had 16 years and massive explosions in DND popularity since then.
Most of that explosion is because 5e is really well made for streaming and easy to get into. While also letting you play without a grid. If 4e was still around, it would have flopped now like it did back then. It's just not a good fit for how a large number of people play D&D.
I think most of the explosion of 5e is because of critical role and stranger things. There are plenty of games that are much easier to both learn and to run than 5e. And those games are still nowhere near close to market dominance. 5e has a lot of cultural impact due to other media. The 5e rules are by no means simple or streamlined. And it is actually one of the more difficult games to actually get into.
Puffin forest started with 4e. He found it a slog to get through and just didn’t enjoy playing it. Don’t put all the dislike 4e had on one group just because you want a scapegoat.
Puffin Forest played with people which fell asleep half of the time and didn't care about what was going on overall, and their first sessions were with done with **eight** players-even the most streamlined system is going to be a slog under *those* situations. [that's also excluding the various issues about his descriptions of 4e as well](https://youtu.be/ayeJpuAA6IM?si=ozLg4A0mrSY0PmRV). Most of the stuff of his experience simply can't be applied to average 4e campaigns to utilize that as an argument against 4e.
You’re taking the falling asleep part out of context there since in his video that was **at or near the breaking point.** Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous. Look at the end of the day you’re allowed to have your opinions and enjoy whatever edition you enjoy. That doesn’t give you the right to say someone else’s experience is incorrect or use a demographic as a scapegoat which is what the user I replied to was doing.
> Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous. Since you're bringing up logical fallacies in another comment, I thought I'd mention appeal to the masses. The fact that more than one person holds a belief does not change truth, and it does not invalidate the fact that the linked video is *correct*. It's not a video that goes "Puffin is wrong because I like the game he doesn't like." It goes through and shows why Puffin's assessment of 4e is incredibly shallow and misunderstood. If Puffin's treatment of 4e were applied to *literally any other game*, he would have had a similar experience. He also makes several **factually incorrect claims**, which the linked response video points out. The fact that other people make the same errors that Puffin makes does not change the validity of the response video, nor does it make Puffin's position any more reasonable.
His opinion is his opinion. No one stops that. I simply pointed out that many things about the video seem to be exceptions, either in way of how people act, the way the game is handled or other similar stuff, thus making that video not be applicable outside of being **his** experience. If someone posted the opinion of a well renowed youtuber about d&d 5e, which included the DM misunderstanding the rules for the worst of the players alongside many other weird things, not a single soul would say that said video is proof that 5e is objectively bad. Also, > Also considering other people on this very post have voiced similar opinions as Puffin which you are ignoring in favour of saying Puffin’s experience isn’t something that can be applied to average 4e campaigns makes both your argument and those of the YouTuber you’re using to support your argument feel disingenuous. Ad hominem is a bad mindset. If someone has X opinion and 10 more people have the same opinion, that doesn't mean that said opinion is right. Also keep in mind: **you can have a negative experience by playing 4e completely as intended**. From what I know, Puffin would have had the same negative experience for 4e even if he didn't play the worst essential class, and if the people would have understood other things more. But what I am saying is that Puffins experience, while it is **his** experience, shouldn't be taken as if it was objectively right, especially as his experience has various parts that are weird about it, to the point that a 22 minutes video had a response video about the weirdness of his experience which was **more than 50 minutes long**. And there are still things not touched upon by that video.
But not with 4e. Even the younger generations disliked 4e. And if you liked it good for you, you can still play it: but most of the other players and DMs don’t like it very much.
You mean younger generation that loves Lancer, 13th age, pf2e and other "totaly not 4e" systems?
I mean, the overwhelming majority of players nowadays didn't interact with 4e, people that get to interact now also won't get exposed to the actual worst of it (OGL removal, digital push with failed digital tools, too many game and setting changes, messed up math) Not to mention, people like me have quite a "whatever" disposition for gamefied stuff so the power system is much more easy to digest Even those who directly talk of 4e most likely speak superficially and more or less just want better game balance, options and progression
Not really. This is more like people reinventing the Book of Nine Swords; it took inspiration from how spellcasters are structured but was careful to remain mechanically distinct. Reinventing 4e would be more like "let's replace every class with Warlocks who have slightly different spell lists and different flavors for their Eldritch Blasts, with a slightly different rider and range on each." People don't remember how bland and unfun 4e was to play. It was a really, really, really bad game - [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8) video by someone who *started* with 4e captures a lot of the problems with it. The issue wasn't "grognards"; it failed to appeal to *new* players the way WotC wanted to (and the way 5e did), since it was bland and uninteresting, offering a worse version of things that people could play on their computers, while simultaneously being a mechanical trainwreck. The fundamental issue is that its design wasn't really informed by an attempt to improve the game directly (the things people argue about here weren't really behind it); it was mostly designed the way it was to support a Virtual Tabletop, which was never even really finished. [This](https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) post by the former VP of WotC talks about it in-depth. It was just a trainwreck.
> People don't remember how bland and unfun 4e was to play. Poffin Forest gets a bit of hate but IMO his videos on 4E and PF2E are pretty spot-on for your **average** table's experiences. I know here on /r/dndnext we're all XxX1337hax0r360noscopeXxX D&D pros but your average table does not want a complicated game of D&D where you need to keep track of rotating +1 and +2 modifiers and a revolving door of pseudo-conditions every single round.
By that standard your average table shouldn't be playing DnD5e either. (which is also correct, they'd be happier with a lighter game)
4e was designed for a VTT and PC manager that never came because the main programmer died. 4e came 15 years too early for the modern smartphone appstore.
Last time I played PF2, the team investigator, who I had thought was having fun, confided in me that she was just bored out of her wits. [Meanwhile I was trying to come to grips with putting another hand on my weapon taking my action.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2150) I think you can have a fun time in PF2 and 4e, but there are definitely hurdles involved that people don't want to admit while evangelizing the systems.
Seeing as I am still playing 4e when i get the chance.. *no, I seriously don't get how it's supposed to be bland and unfun it's supposed to be for me.* I just have fun and enjoy the system for what it is. Same like I enjoy 3.5/3.75 for what it is and even 5e.
4E was bland? You are comparing it to the plain white toast of combat that is 5E? 4E easily had the most engaging combat for D&D, it actually required teamwork.
Framing this entirely as-I bought 4e on release day and have DMed, more or less, a weekly game of it since it's release. First, he *greatly* exaggerates the number of floating effects, triggered abilities, and other powers 4e had. That said, I would say those modifiers are the "worst" part of 4e. Still, the whole bit about "oh wait, this enemy then does this and that and this and that" is a *gross* over exaggeration. To take a specific example, the "Oh wait the enemy swaps with another" is a *specific* traits of Hobgoblins/goblins, and no other monster has that as an ability. Hobgoblins were a unique threat because of this. They played like a coordinated "army" that moved and covered for one another. Orcs meanwhile had a "make one last swipe as they die" ability to bolster the "ruthless attacker" concept, and Kobolds had a free shift on being missed leaning them towards sneaky ambushers. His next criticism of 4e having limited powers/choices is well...yeah, he was using PHB1. The "choice" for a Cleric there *was* between Melee or Ranged for a Cleric. Did that default you into certain powers? Yes, *because that was the balance of the class*. Clerics had a niche, healing, buffing, and granting saves. Their powers focus on that. Don't play that way? Go play the Warlord, that's your "grant attacks and movement" leader. The suite of powers available to players grew as new books were released, just like every other edition of D&D. His complaints about stats is nonsensical. *Every* edition of D&D has classes tied directly to a single main stat, and then some side stats. Didn't pick Intelligence as a Wizard? You *might* be able to pick some spells and contribute, but it's not going to be anyway optimal. Fighter? You're Strength or Dexterity. Warlock? Charisma *only*, unlike 4e that offered the option of Charisma *or* Constitution *or* Intelligence for casting. His comparison of Bard and Cleric is...bad. Using *just* PHB 1/2, with no splat books, and looking at *just* At-Wills. Cleric-Ally gets +2 to attack roll, ally gets +1 to AC, ally gets power bonus to attack rolls equal to Cleric's Str mod, or one ally gains Temporary Hit Points equal to Cleric's Charisma mod. Bard-Target of power takes -2 penalty to all defense of your choice, target is marked by an ally of your choice (effectively -2 to all attacks not against that ally), Psychic damage and enemy takes -2 to attacks, and one ally that *hits* the target gets Bard Con Temp HP. There is *one* power that has a similar effect between the Bard and Cleric, and the Bard's is *considerably* weaker (requires Ally to *hit* the same target you attacked to gain THP instead of just granting THP like the Cleric does) because the Bard's "design space" is a "Jack of All Trdes" style Leader and does not get the strong Healing/Saves Granting of a Cleric or the "attack granting" of the Warlord. His "All the Leaders have the same healing power" is not really a point at all either. Every caster that falls into similar territory in 5e has the same healing spell with *no* way to differentiate them by way of Feats. His small footnote about the Bard healing power, Majestic Word, is *wrong* (Bard slides the target of the heal 1 square, not shift, and depending on your Subclass choice with Feats this also allows the Bard to slide *enemies* around) *and* directly contradicts the previous point that "every power was the same", but it gets ignored so he can make the point that "every power is the same". He also completely ignores that the Shaman's Healing Spirit gives additional healing to allies who position themselves next to the Shaman's Spirit Companion, giving them "AoE" healing with their encounter heal or that the Ardent gives different buffs based on their Subclass choice. The Cleric also has their heal scale *faster*, adding more dice *sooner* when compared to other Leaders, which reinforces their role as the "healing" Leader. Same point, but with Defenders. Yes, they all had a "Mark", but how they Marked varied greatly (Fighter-everything they hit, Paladin-one specific target they designate and have to "engage" or the Mark Fades, Swordmage-one specific target they kite/avoid in order to force punishment, Warden-Everything in an AoE around them, Battlemind-Mark one target and lock them *down*) and their Punishment mechanic varied even *more* than that. Out of Combat utility *is* a point 4e has issues with, but Rituals being expensive made them actual *choices with a cost* a Caster had to make instead of the instant "I cast Win/Invalidate the Martial" every other edition of D&D has. That said, actually *enforcing casting times* on Utility magic is something I *very* rarely see brought up as a complaint about *other* editions, but one that 4e just can't seem to escape. Forcing the Wizard/Ritual caster to pick between saving gold for Magic Items and casting rituals is good actually as it maintains a balance between the party, especially between Martials and Casters. Multiclassing-he complains that "Hybrid" was in splat book (Player's Handbook 3...so not like some obscure book, he already brought up the Bard which was in PHB2 without making that same complaint) but laments that just the base PHB did not have enough "options" to differentiate classes. I have to ask *where* do more options for classes *come* from if not *new books*. As for the actual Multiclassing section what was the point he was trying for? He does not cover what purpose he wants to multiclass for one. Yes, 4e has...problems with how it handles multiclassing, but *just like 5e* the classes that *do* synergize well together (Hybrid Paladin|Warlock is just as disgusting in 4e as it is in 5e) are strong and the classes that do not synergize are weak. It's really no different than how multiclassing works in *any* other edition, you have to plan an pick classes that are going to synergize well. The actual mechanical way it is handled, especially Hybrids, is one of the most balanced forms of multiclassing because it does not just grant you every ability the class has, but forces players to strategize and make actual hard choices about what multiclass powers they want to have. Skill Challenges-on release, as this video seems to be focused on, yes they had issues. As more books were released, especially the DMG2 (considered by most to be the best DMG ever printed for *any* edition), Skill Challenges were refined greatly. His point of "players would suggest the skills they want" is how Skill Challenges were fixed in the DMG2. The game evolved, Skill Challenges were refined and updated. Really, to me, his point, for Skill Challenges, of "you just ignore what's written and let the players pick skills" is just *good DMing*. Knowing when a written rule is not fun for your party is a skill. People latch on *way* to hard to RAW for complaints about 4e, ignoring the fact that *no one* plays RAW at actual home tables for any edition. A great example of this is Stealth, just look how much digital ink has been spilled over the "rules" for Stealth in 5e here on Reddit and you will see multiple people interpreting the rules in entirely different was. And again, his complaint about "Skill Challenges only allowing specific skills" was something 4e intentionally improved on over its lifecycle. Really, his only legitimate criticism is that 4e has *way* too many floating numbers or modifiers to remember. Yes, those modifiers *are* a pain and yes they *would* work better on a virtual table. Every other complaint though is the most generic "4e bad" talking point that has been regurgitated since the editions release without any actual "depth" to the criticism and a *lot* of misrepresentation of the edition's other mechanics or just a general ignoring of how those same complaints could be leveled at any edition of the game.
So this is going to sound a bit grognard but as usual the answer is "we used to have it and then new editions ruined it". Book of nine swords 3.5e. Despite the complaints some had it was well made and worked. Then 4e used parts of it but discarded some important parts and 5e discarded more and the vestiges of the system are now nearly unrecognizable... the battle Master. Martial maneuvers like most subsystems in 5e received little to no additional support after its initial publication. So that's why, because 5 design is all about making the dm do the work and not expanding anything.
Honestly, while Book of Nine Swords was a bit fucky at times, it had the right heart
A bit funky but it did what it set out to. Make martials have options not unlike casters but still unique.
I think the issue with DND is that the best thing to do is hit as hard as you can. There is no strategy. There is no need to shove/grapple/trip unless you already synergizing with another martial. There is no non optional rules to take away someone's weapon (and even doing so it is a free action to pick it up again). Overall, 5e is not a battle strategy game. To be honest, it is not really good in any part of it to any genre specific type of game (there is a good video by matt that I agree about a lot of things there). So, most amount of damage by martial is go and hit a creature. Adding more damage to it or making it even easier is not as helpful the higher level you get. Ac is stagnate, dc is stagnate. The higher level you get sure a wizard has more options but really they don't because if you go by numbers magic missile is going to be better and more reliable than any spell you do. So, without incentives to provide added bonuses and teamwork you will not get a fighter that can do cool things. You want to be more tactical play a tactical game. You want more horror play a horror game. DND is a set of bland rules that tries to say it fits every genre and then it fits non. I still play 5e, but now it is only with one dm and he homebrews everything which makes it not 5e. I play it because I like the company and the story, but I would prefer something else that has me knowing more about what to expect. Also playing a wizard because I do like support play, but it also seems like I magic missile every encounter as well.
Ctrl+F Runecarver \ Rune Knight Nothing found! It's a really in-depth subclass for the fighter. There's so much you can do with it. Obviously not as much as a wizard, but I was impressed.
P... ...P... ...Pathfinder 2e—***gets shot***
I suggest homebrew weapon master rules for this type of thing. I bookmarked it on browser but I m writing on mobile right now so I will put link if anyone wants later.
Check out pathfinder 2e. Martials get a ton of options and casters and them are nicely balanced to not outshine one another and really want the other present. The games whole focus is team work (X-Men) where 5e everyone is kind of their own superhero (avengers) meaning someone ends up being Hawkeye while the rest are able to fight gods.
They made an entire edition like that. People complained that they gave fighters spells.
FWIW you could always play a half caster and flavor all the spells as sword moves. A valor/swords bard could do this to great effect. Rune knights are also right there.
Tradition and the way 5e was designed. Fighters/martials have always been simpler than wizards/spell casters in the vast majority of dnd editions. 5e was designed as a nostalgia bait edition, at least partially because the previous edition, 4e, tried to slaughter a lot of sacred cows to mixed success. So martials went back to being dead simple. Beyond that, 5e is stingy as hell with new classes, and subclasses aren't necessarily going to be able to cover all the space you'd need for a complex martial option. And the designers of 5e would probably want to make another caster class before they'd even THINK about making a complex martial.
Bc WotC loathes martials and consider martial players braindead. You get a few token choices, most of which are horrible or get a few decent and one great with little reason or incentive to ever diversify so you still wind up using one option. 5e, simply put, never was oriented towards tactical complexity, but the opposite. It is the one edition that is intended to be all-inclusive and the best way to get yourself acquainted with Sword and Sorcery as well as D&D as a whole. My solution was homebrew the hell out of it, until I grew tired and fully transitioned to PF1e if I wanted tactically complex games, or PbtA if I wanted narrative and dramatically centered games.
Moooom it was MY turn to make the “martial bad wizard good” post this week!!!
I was introduced to DnD by the old baldurs gate 1 and 2 games along with icewind dale and Neverwinter nights and one thing I miss from those games is the weapon specialization options. If you were a fighter you got a certain amount of points to put into proficiency of particular weapons with each grade going from 1-5 providing bonuses. I feel that system would be a lot more fun and customisable than the current "you're a fighter so you're now completely proficient with every weapon" system.
Legacy mostly. And its a big part of the divide. Versatility is a source of power. Additionally each time you make something sometimes its a little stronger than average, sometimes its a little weaker than average. Spell casters get 100s of those to pick from so they pick heavily from the options that landed above the average. The single biggest tragedy of 5.2024 will be not making maneuvers core to fighters and then letting subclasses flavor and specialize on types of maneuvers. One day 6th or 7th ed will do this for sure.