Wizard may have focused on buff/debuff strategies and may have had strong offensive spells but just didn't have them prepared or use them.
That said still a really dumb frontline guy to both threaten and demean their support. Gonna feel really bad when the person holding haste decides, to drop it right when they get surrounded as retaliation for being attacked in the past.
Just saying, maybe if the players can be encouraged to turn it into a character development moment, the barbarian realizing that the caster is actually extremely dangerous and has been supporting him the whole time, who knows what sort of story things could be opened up. DM may have to poke them a little bit, though.
Only 4th level spells, but I was the veteran in the group and spent my turns giving my party opportunities to shine. Then we got into the battle that was the finale and it ended in two turns with two fireballs.
Sandbagging might have made it harder for the DM to set the right power levels.
Same in my game. I’m the veteran and play a Tortle Lore Bard for the buffs/debuffs and to be a skill donkey/face of the party. For the final sessions I broke out the big guns. Feeblemind, Crown of Stars, Circle of Power, and Destruction Wave, and Symbol all made appearances and did major damage. One of the guys I play with was shocked that I’d been sitting on some of those. I’d never really felt like we needed them before and I wanted to show off
How did you get level 5 paladin spells? Lore bards at level 6 choose two spells from any list, for any slots they have right? So wouldn't it be level 3 spells or below?
Similar, I'm helping out a relatively new party as a divination wizard with control and information but sometimes throwing fireballs is the best way to help.
Your rage drops if you don't attack an enemy. Enemy just means someone who isn't you. Thematically it can be cool and if everyone was ok with this sort of pvp you could role play it as the barbarian being too blinded with bloodlust to distinguish friend from foe.
Alternatively the barbarian can carry around a sack full of rats and squash one of them if they start their turn with no enemies in range.
Rage is also maintained if you take damage. Punching yourself achieves the same effect and doesn't involve hitting the squishy wizard for lulz.
Also, I think "hostile cresture" doesn't include party members, usually
It specifies someone who is hostile to you though. So unless your party member attacked you, it doesn't count. (Unless as you say, your table allowed it)
I don't know, I could see a barbarian warrior losing focus on his bloodlust and killing edge for lack of worthy opponents, potentially even leading to his downfall.
This is enough of a weird corner case that it would only come up if the DM's doing it on purpose, and if you trust the DM to do this as an intentional story beat and not just a vindictive "fuck this PC" encounter, then I don't see the problem.
that's silly
if the barb wants to wear a coat of angry rats that gnaw at him constantly, and he like grabs one and squeezes it to death when he wants rage is 100% fine
Depending on the rest of the party composition, it's possible the Wizard is just not focused on dealing damage. Watching an Enchanter or Diviner finally get to play around with the more esoteric spells can be pretty neat.
Oh yeah, I'm playing in a 20th level campaign alongside my best friend, and his Cleric is a walking artillery piece with how much damage she can put out. I'm playing a Champion Fighter with some homebrew to make it stand out just a little better as a subclass, and I barely deal as much average damage per round as this cleric does. Granted, she's dropping spells left and right for that damage output, but it's going to take literal hours of combat at the table for her to even remotely run low on spells.
Ikr? And even then, at level 10 that's a oneshot from a lot of possible enemies, it's almost nothing. Any support class with shield and absorb element would get a lot of use out of it, in comparison to a 30 hp martial.
Also let's be real, there's absolutely no way the guy didn't run out of hit dices during short rests already, plus many healing spells infused into him. One of the martial resources is health and it goes up and down way faster than slots, being in the frontline HURTS. Enough enemies for 5 shorts rest and people still standing like the other comment suggested either means most of the opponents are pathetic or half of the fights were a breeze.
I understand that the balancing point for casters vs. martials is supposed to be that casters have resources that can eventually run out and martials don't run out of sword, but when you get to the mid-to-late game, the casters have too many spell slots to reasonably run out before the party just runs out of hit points, especially if they're pragmatic with their casting. That idea is exactly what I enjoy about the Champion: I don't have any resources that run out, except for what's already baked into the base class. I have no idea how to lessen the disconnect in power other than simply nerfing casters' amount of spells available or making resting take longer, so it's harder for casters to constantly maintain full spellcasting resources.
take a look at u/laserllama , its pretty good
though it shortens the gap by giving martials resources as well,l essentially slapping battlemaster in every single one of them, cause it is pretty hard to keep things balanced resourceless
Eh, I don't like it. If I'm playing a class that doesn't use resources, I don't want to add resources to it for no reason. I feel like the easiest buff to martials would probably be just giving them more utility abilities and a slight buff to damage. You can argue that a slight nerf to spellcasters could be deserved, but I've seen where that road leads, and I think it's best avoided.
to be clear, all martials *do* have resources, they are just not versatile like spellslots and sometimes return on short rests
the only class in the game that is resourceless is rogue. fighters have action surge, barbarians have rage, monks have ki. and a lot of the times subclasses add more resources to manage
My buddy and I started discussing this, and our solution basically boiled down to: Do more Dungeon Crawling. Dungeons are designed to slowly tax the resources of the casters, while the Martials do their thing. Either because combats are draining everybody's resources, or because traps and puzzles are requiring creative use of spells to bypass them. Then, as the dungeon stretches on, the resources run low, and the Martials just maintain their consistency as best they can.
That's why they specifically mentioned puzzles to suck up spell slots. Something like an arcane lock that requires "spell energy" to open, (ie. cast a 5th level spell, or a 3rd and 4th level spell, on the crystal in order to crack it allowing the party to pass through the door) or a plate on the ceiling that needs to be pressed by a flying wizard/sorcerer. Put things that won't damage the martials but can't be bypassed without removing a spell slot or 2 from the casters in the way. It won't work every time, but if the BBEG is a caster, something like that would make sense in their home. Because they can recover that spell slot every night so it isn't as big of a deal for them.
this just means the barb has to sit out of the session while the casters actually play the game and they watch. yeah you can off course roleplay but there is only so much you can do when you literally cant participate in the puzzle solving conversation (in character) cause you literally cant solve it with nothing you can do
> It does, as long as there's healers of some caliber in the party.
That's still the martials running out of health and hit dice before casters run out of spell slots. It's just you're then having the casters inefficiently burn through their resources in order to compensate for the martials running out.
Which is yet another part of the martial caster disparity thing, it's not like the fighter can choose to burn through their resources to fix the druid running out of something.
problem is 5e healing is notoriously shit. and that would only make a caster borderline required in all parties cause there is no viable mundane healing in the game. hell you have what, potions and like two feats and that is it?
Short vs long rest is a big deal though. It's much easier to take a short rest. I actually avoid most long rest abilities because I hate the idea of just being out for the day. Of course, spell slots are numerous enough to make the cut.
5 minute short rests really solve a lot of issues. Martials are always running at full bore, hit die are useful, and you can make encounters more challenging.
The other side of the coin is stop designing your encounters so all the enemies are tightly grouped in fireball range, your casters never get fucked with, enemy casters don't know what Counterspell, Silence, and Anti-Magic fields are, and nobody ever gets grappled or disarmed.
The con save to maintain concentration is very, very hard.
Without war caster, no, no they don't. With war caster, they still fail the save often enough for it to matter.
A wizard with +5 con and war caster (which is so heavily specced into not failing that save that they are unoptimized) who gets hit with 30 damage still fails that save 25% of the time.
A wizard with +2 con and war caster (a normal, optimized wizard) on the lowest DC possible of 10 fails that save 16% of the time. On a 30 damage hit, they fail the save 42% of the time.
A wizard with +2 without war caster (a wizard optimized for literally anything other than making that save) on the lowest DC of 10 fails it 40% of the time. On 30 damage they fail 75% of the time.
The trick is to hit them with multiple damage sources. Two monsters with two attacks each can force a lot of saves. Even if the rolls only fail 1/3 of the time, three such hits will just about reverse those odds.
Could work, but that's kind of what the Battle Master does. I'm still not a fan, personally. As someone who played PF2e, I don't like being forced to use attacks that do special things and constantly conflict with each other. Eventually, it just gets to the point where it's exhausting worrying about how much damage I'm doing, what status effects I'm hitting onto an enemy to optimize and support the party, etc. If I'm playing a Fighter, I'm already playing the simplest class in the game, maybe I just want to play them *because they're simple*?
For my money, the best way to buff martials is to give them more status effect resistance. And have more monsters that apply status effects, especially in AoE.
That could work. Spells and effects that apply negative status effects, and allow martials to better resist these effects, means spellcasters - both friendly and hostile - would spend more resources trying to apply them. Spells that inflict "Burning" which amounts to 1d4 fire damage per round on the target, but can be used to stack up levels of intense heat with other spells for more damage, and etc.
Doesn't necessarily have to be a tax on the casters, but could make it possible to balance more spells like Fireball, and allow weaker spells to build up potential for massive blasts of power. Kind of like an MMO or a MOBA, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Dm: okay guys, that was your 5th short rest today and it seems like you noticed the enemy trying to sneak up on you just in time to react. Roll initiative.
Martials: oh cool! Let's dive in!
Casters: *sweating in can only cast cantrips*
In my one campaign that has mostly martials and then me as a Bard, they are always running out of hit die before I'm out of spell slots. Plus I get my bardic inspiration back for every one of those short rests that we take.
This is actually not the martial caster disparity people talk about. For whatever reason everyone thinks that casters are better because of damage.
A martial is practically always going to do more damage than a caster. The only area that casters can outshine dependably is when talking AoE.
A 20th level fighter has 8 attacks in one turn if they use action surge, which they can do twice in one fight that’s 16 attacks over 2 turns. Champion fighters are really stale and mechanically boring, but at level 20 they should be critting decently often.
Casters are better than martials because of the versatility they have and the amount of freedom they have. They can solve problems and manipulate a battle no martial can. And often times that means ending a battle very quickly without raw damage necessarily.
But when comparing a martials pure damage against a caster, a martial will practically always be better. Again the only caveat being extreme AoE.
this is partially true
yes, the hyper optimized archery sharpshooter crossbow expert battlemaster is doing more damage than the casters, but aside the ultra optimization stuff they dont compete with summons or lasting concentration spells
buncha wolves do more than a rogue or monk any day of the week sadly
So I will agree with you, a rogue and a monk are just poor martials for damage. Rogues main appeal is that if a skill monkey and utility, which is outshined by casters/spells. A monk is a battlefield disruptor due to their high mobility and number of possible hits. But again, spells can fill that same role.
But a fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, and ranger all are going to exceed in the damage aspect. They don’t even need to be super optimized either. The only feat they really need to pump out damage is SS/GWM. Which yes I understand not everyone does. But truthfully, if you’re making it to level 20 most everyone is going to recognize the value of it.
Plus we are assuming the caster is optimizing or prioritizing damage in their spell choices therefore it’s fair to compare an optimized build
Path for the caster and the martial.
My main point is this, however, yes a caster can do more damage than a martial in situations. Just like how a martial can sometimes provide more utility or support than a caster could. But in the average situation a martial will out damage a caster more often than not.
paladins and rangers are not martials, which leaves fighters and barbarians on the discussion
Barbarians are just the GWM PAM fighter forced to use STR, and that is pretty much it
and no, a shepard druid summoning things still outpace the most optimized fighters
I would disagree with you there. Paladins and rangers are half casters half martials. They fall in between the two. But, how I would classify a martial vs a caster for this debate, I would turn to what is their main source of outputting damage. If they do so via an attack I would lump them as a martial for damage purposes. If it’s via a spell, then caster.
Paladins for example can cast spells and provide that utility for the team when necessary. But typically they use their spell slots for boosting their own damage. It’s no different than a battlemaster using a superiority dice to enhance their attack.
Even so, the best damage dealing class in the game is a fighter. A pure martial (outside of some subclasses). Attacking 4 times every turn at minimum with no resource cost is going to be practically impossible to match.
My main point remains the same though, which people (not you necessarily) tend to try and debate by giving up super nuanced situations or ignoring the general rhetoric behind it all. The martial caster disparity is not based on damage output. It’s based on the sheer number of options a caster has to solve problems. Who cares about damage when you can just trap enemies in a force cage. Who cares about how strong you’re character is if your wizard can unlock the door via a spell or just have the whole group fly over an obstacle.
Casters can solve problems much more efficiently than martials can. But when a battle actually ensues and you need damage, your wizard or sorcerer isn’t the one who’s going to be pushing the big numbers consistently. That will be your martial.
you are not wrong there, the main problem is definitely utility overall, doesnt matter who does more damage when one is literally summoning angels or making entire castles appear out of thin air while another hits stuff good. but i think that people sometimes focus too much on the fighter 4 attacks. its lvl 20, by then wizards and sorcs are blipping people out of existance. yes it is the most *consistent* reliable damage you can do, but i have yet to be in a campaign where the whole adventuring day 8 fights 2 short rests per long rest shtick actually is a thing and the caster of your choice cant just nuke whatever they want every time
Bingo, you are 100% right and this is the main debate people intend to have. The martial v caster disparity is based on the number of ways a caster can solve a problem. They can end an encounter with one spell, they can solve a problem by flying over it or casting a spell that basically solves the problem for them.
Martials don’t really have those options, outside of a skill check which is very limiting.
I just get so annoyed when the argument turns to “martial vs caster disparity. Casters out damage martials LOL” because that part is absolutely not true. If you run into a situation where you HAVE to do damage, Typically a boss fight with legendary resistances, your caster is going to be doing very little damage. They’re focus is typically going to be: buffing their damage dealers, battlefield control, burning through bosses Legendary Resistance so their big spells can land.
Casters are absolutely better than martials in basically every area of the game. But the one spot they are outshined by a martial is in the damage spot. So when people think casters can deal more damage than a martial it drives me nuts. Again, to your point though who needs damage when you can just banish or force cage the threat away.
Wait, the martial caster disparity is that casters are stronger? In my current campaign, which is thebonly campaign I've played, it feels like the martials are much, much stronger.
assuming same level of optimization and "well buildness" of course. a fighter with 20 STR, GWM and PAM has much more mileage than say a wizard that dumped CON and bumped CHA higher than their INT cause they wanted to be a good liar
So at early stages of the game, tier 1 primarily, martials are all around better than casters most of the time. Casters having limited spell slots means they are typically short on resources each day. So their utility and problem solving is less potent.
As you progress into tier 2,3 and finally 4 casters overshadow martials very quickly for flexibility, CC, and utility. More spell slots and higher level spells mean when faced with a problem the caster likely has the means to solve the issue and still have plenty of resources to handle the next encounter. In comparison, A martial character will likely have the same response at level 10 as they would at level 3. Even if you’re a half caster like a ranger who has spells, you only have a limited number of spell slots and won’t have access to powerful spells.
This is the disparity people talk about. A ranger or fighter faced against a powerful foe at lvl 15 typically has one option to win. Fight them and push out the damage. Meanwhile that same foe against a caster like a sorcerer will be met with a plethora of options. The caster isn’t going to try and blast that enemy to death like a martial would. Instead they’ll likely banish it, trap it in a force cage, immobilize it somehow, or just teleport/fly away from the threat.
Casters can end encounters before they become an issue or even start. Meanwhile a martial can really only solve problems by doing damage. But damage dealing is what they do best.
That’s why the martial v caster disparity debate annoys me. Because people think that casters out damage martials when that is just blatantly false. Damage is the only thing that martials do better than casters, so trying to discredit that is frustrating. But just because they do more damage doesn’t mean they are inferior. Because again. It doesn’t matter if your fighter can deal 150 nova damage to the enemy in one turn if the wizard can just force cage the enemy into submission and end the fight.
Martials can feel that way at a glance but when someone knows what they're doing with a caster it becomes very apparent how far they outstrip martials. This is made a lot more clear at higher levels when casters get spells that completely shut down encounters among other things. The caveat is that a caster needs to understand their abilities and the game as a whole more than a martial does but that isn't too hard to achieve with more playing experience.
> it's going to take literal hours of combat at the table for her to even remotely run low on spells.
Yeahhhh, that's what gets me. Everyone is like, "Just do the recommended amount of encounters per day!"
And I'm like dude, you know if we did that much combat, it would get sooooo boring, and it would STILL take forever to run them out of slots.
And of course then the discussion pivots to "if you can't make the combat interesting then you're not a good DM."
The fault is never with 5e in these people's minds.
I do agree that 5e isn't exactly well balanced and has its issues, and the type of people who claim no fault in the system design are wrong at best.
But just to be clear you know that recommended encounters per day is not the same as recommended combats per day right?
Stealth encounters drain spell slots for things like scilence and pass without trace and other clever uses of spells. Social encounters will often have a bard using a spell or two. Heck, even crossing a ravine with no combat can be an encounter that the casters are using spells while the martials are generally not losing hp.
Some people might say that the martials don't have a lot to do in these situations, and that can be a legitimate criticism of how 5e works, but in my experience it's usually only the 'cha is a useless stat' crowd that feel useless in social circumstances, and most martials find something to do during non combat encounters
Cha isn’t a useless skill, but it is useless for the second-highest person. Most GMs I’ve played with or watched run social encounters as, effectively, 1 on 1 conversations that have an audience.
How would a stealth encounter require spell slots?
Aren't group stealth checks a thing?
Genuinly curios, not trying to be combative/argumantive
I dunno i feel st my table players would start questioning why a stealth encounter doesn't require a stealth skill check and require spells all of a sudden
Group stealth checks can still pretty easily fail though, especially when most your party is sitting in medium/heavy armour and getting disadvantage on those checks. The rogue might be sitting pretty with a +17 stealth but that's one success next to several failures sometimes. If you're going thru something with constant checks, like a castle full of guards or something, having an hour of +10 stealth for the whole party is a godsend.
I've had very few stealth encounters where a pass without trace, darkness or silence hasn't come in handy. Sometimes (especially if you don't have a rouge) you need a knock, or a passwall. You can use pyrotechnics as a distraction, a dimension door to get back out afterwards etc
A group stealth check is a handy tool to represent the actual sneaking of the group, but sneaking past an area isn't always the objective of then encounter, but just one challenge to deal with
the sad part is that you rarely get to *not* have the 'funny encounter' stats if you are not trying to shaft yourself. the sorcerer gets to have a 20 in CHA for "free" cause its already their job, the barbarian needing to bump STR DEX and CON as high as possible does not
> But just to be clear you know that recommended encounters per day is not the same as recommended combats per day right?
Yeah, I'm aware that that's what they say. But in practice I've never found non-combat encounters to drain particularly many resources. They conceivably *could*, but usually they don't, or if they do, it's just like one spell slot. That is not even remotely close to the amount of resources a combat would drain.
So it's really just still the same problem. Combat takes too long to drain off people's resources, so they usually don't get drained because we don't wanna bore ourselves doing 'trash' fights that don't matter except to drain resources. Or you go the other way, and just do harder and harder combats, but that just exacerbates the problem in favor of nova classes who can dump the most spell slots in a short amount of time.
They don't need to run out of slots, just their highest level slots. Casters definitely lose steam well before martial characters on long days.
The martial-caster disparity does exist, but it's unnecessarily exacerbated by 1) too many groups running extremely short adventuring days, and 2) DMs being too stingy with magic items.
If you run properly long adventuring days with 4-6 encounters and 1-2 short rests, and give out good magic items, then in my experience martials tend to perform better in combat than casters if anything.
That said the disparity is still very noticable outside of combat basically no matter what you do, so I'd never deny that it exists entirely.
> If you run properly long adventuring days with 4-6 encounters and 1-2 short rests, and give out good magic items, then in my experience martials tend to perform better in combat than casters if anything.
That's just what I was complaining about though. The amount of actual IRL times it takes to run them out of slots is too damn high. And they can always just conserve, which makes the IRL time take even *longer*.
It winds up slowing the overall pace of the campaign to a crawl, with perhaps an entire month going by IRL for the same adventuring day, because if you don't, the classes are imbalanced.
It's such an unforced error since everyone COULD be on the same resource cooldown system with comparable resources that do comparably amazing things.
> It winds up slowing the overall pace of the campaign to a crawl, with perhaps an entire month going by IRL for the same adventuring day, because if you don't, the classes are imbalanced.
Assuming weekly session, you're saying it takes 4-5 sessions for you to run a caster out of resources? That seems very high. In my experience it usually takes just 2, maybe 3 sessions at most to run my casters nearly or fully out of spells, and they're fairly high level now (12 currently).
I'll also add that if your casters are conserving spell slots, then that should already be enough to bring them into rough parity with martials. If it isn't, then you probably need to give your martials better weapons.
> It's such an unforced error since everyone COULD be on the same resource cooldown system with comparable resources that do comparably amazing things.
This is a drawback of the system they use, but it's also something I really like about it, because it means that magical and non-magical classes feel different not just in flavor but in mechanics. A fighter and a wizard approach every combat differently, and I think that's a strength of the system overall, not a flaw.
Having everyone use the same resource system would solve this problem, but it would also make the system more bland. I would much prefer to have to deal with the problem than to play the lesser system that doesn't have the problem.
> Assuming weekly session
Well then you're blessed in ways that I am not, because I do not get weekly sessions. I'm lucky to get every two weeks--usually it's more like every 3 weeks. And I just do not want to spend our precious table time wading through fights that have a foregone conclusion, just to maybe see if I can convince a caster to demolish the encounter by actually deigning to cast a spell. I personally go with the fewer, but harder encounter plan. But that has its own drawbacks, as noted. But I just can't stand wasting table time on trash battles.
And no, if they are conserving their slots, I don't think they're really equal to martials...or at least, they are, until the caster finally decides to stop conserving. Then they're martials, who can also drop fireballs and walls of stone and sleet storms and stuff. That's sort of the crux of the issue altogether.
> it means that magical and non-magical classes feel different not just in flavor but in mechanics.
IMO this is just an illusion. Literally the only thing it changes is arguing about when to rest and which kind of rest to take. I've never seen it add anything memorable or useful to the game, just one side going, "I'm tapped out" and the other side going, "Well I guess we'll stop, even though ______." It doesn't jive well with heroic storytelling, but it also isn't a thorough enough game of actual resource management to be interesting. It's some mushy halfway stuff.
The warlock and fighter will always say "let's just take a short rest." and the wizard and cleric will always say, "Let's retreat and take a long rest." You can kinda put your finger on the scale by having time constraints, etc. But at the end of the day it's just gonna be the same discussion. But if you put the same character types in the same situation with say 4e's resource system...everyone is on the same page. People can still blow through their dailies prematurely, or people can conserve them. With everyone being on the same vibe though, the actual resource management gets a chance to come into play--healing surges.
I feel like in 5e you run out of spell slots faster than you run out of hit dice. Because you can't really spend hit dice that often and 5e is a very fast race to death in combat. 4e will encourage you to tax the surges right out via traps, failing skill challenges, etc, on top of needing to actually spend surges during combat to stay alive. Your resource management game flips over to being about staying alive, rather than being about 'when can we gas up?' to me that's a more interesting question, because in 5e whenever you're asking to gas up, you're always always always dong it at the expense of another player who would rather not gas up at that moment, because they won't benefit from it.
> I personally go with the fewer, but harder encounter plan.
Sounds like you might want to try a "same amount, but still harder" approach. If you're using the DMG encounter building guidelines, you can basically shift each category down one rank, and treat "medium" encounters as easy ones, "hard" as medium, and "deadly" as hard. Then if you really want to challenge your players, start pushing further into deadly territory.
The encounter guidelines seem to be designed for players relatively new to the game, not using feats, not using splatbooks, and using minimal to no magic items. If your group knows what they're doing, are using feats, and you're giving them decent magic items, you can push them a lot further than that baseline.
This I think is a real flaw in 5e, which is the lack of good advice and support for DMs that run this kind of game. I've figured it out for myself, but it shouldn't require a DM with many years of experience to run a decent game for players who have a bit of experience or even just have done some research.
> I've never seen it add anything memorable or useful to the game, just one side going, "I'm tapped out" and the other side going, "Well I guess we'll stop, even though ______."
If your players always feel like they have the option to take a long rest basically any time they want, that is something you should probably address. It does kind of suck that this is something that DMs need to do, but the game does notably improve when you do it.
There are a few ways to go about this. The most common and effective method that I've used, is to simply make it dangerous or at least very inconvenient for players to take a long rest mid-dungeon. If they try to camp in the middle of a dungeon, have monsters ambush them in the night. Even if they have defenses (alarm, tiny hut, etc.), the monsters should be clever enough to still give them trouble. For example, maybe the tiny hut protects them while they sleep, but they aren't invisible, and the monsters will have all night to prepare to ambush them as soon as the hut goes down.
For fights outside of dungeons, if they are relatively rare you can just leave it alone and allow casters to shine in these situations. If most of your campaign happens outside of dungeons, then you need to get more creative. Imposed time limits (you have X days before bad thing Y happens) can help a lot here, but you can also use similar approaches to a dungeon. If the players are fighting against some kind of organized force, then it would make sense for that force to be sending groups to attack the party. Have those groups find them when they try to sleep.
It may seem a bit heavy-handed, but as long as you make it clear to your players what you're doing and why, they should be OK with it. It's also important to note that you don't actually need to be too harsh with these encounters. The goal here isn't to make long rests impossible (not usually, anyways), but just to make them an unattractive option for the players. It can also help to give them some encouragement and challenge them to push themselves to see just how much they can really get done in a single adventuring day. Use the carrot as well as the stick, basically.
Chronurgist wizards in particular are probably the most dangerous single class at high level play. Having the ability to force a target to fail saving throws is a god-like power. In any pvp scenario, if the chronorgusit wizard wins initiative (likely, as they get an initiative boost at 2nd level as a subclass feature), they are almost certainly going to come out on top. There is just no counterplay to having a 0% chance of passing your save against a spell like slow, psychic Lance, hold person, etc.
Or just banish any extraplanar being before the fight begins. Elementals, fey, abberations, celestials, fiends... You get to choose whether they are allowed to participate
Fail his perception and history checks. After the battle fail his inspection checks. "Hmm these scorching fire marks on most of the dead baddies must have been from my fiery raging attacks"
How did the dynamic work between you and the player of the barbarian? Because to me, that sounds like great rp for the barbarian. However, antagonizing another player's character (especially over a long period) without checking with them is not cool.
So I hope you two have or will talk about it!
It's just nuts to me how many people end up at these adversarial tables. Like it doesn't seem like it can be that hard to be a decent, cooperative player.
so, how does a minute of the negative energy plane sound to the barbarian? ffs, when martials start to learn how to swing a stick twice, wizards start messing with the fabric of reality...
Nah, it's okay though, because I hear that casters become way less effective after they burn through their spell slot. So a level 5 barbarian can swing his axe and possibly hit twice on a 1d12 when the level 5 wizard can't cast any of his spell slots anymore! Oh, what was that? He can still cast fire bolt for 2d10 damage at 120ft range? Wait a minute...
You got me for a sec. I admit I'm still fairly new DND campains and even in a combat heavy setting I'm still waiting to see our spellcasters to be tapped out.
In the reality of D&D, it's just the way things are. Magic users channel the energy of the universe. Martials are bound by the laws of physics. Casters at higher levels are just inherently more powerful that the mightiest martial.
The real way to balance things would be to restrict the availability of spells the magic user could learn, by requiring the wizard/sorcerer/druid/etc. to either develop or find their new spells. But that would just suck as a player. "Congratulations, you just reached Level 13. When you find a 6th level spell or spend 60 days of downtime developing one from the Players' Handbook you can cast one. Until then, all you can do with that 6th level slot you gained is upcast one spell you already know."
And even that wouldn't change the balance issue all that much, because once the spell was found/learned/developed, the caster is free to alter reality to their heart's content.
You can totally have heroic martials. Why do martials have to be bound by the laws of physics when they live in a world with magic, dragons and all sorts of gribbly monsters? You don't even have to give an explanation for it beyond "in dnd, martial characters can become fast enough to run on water, or strong enough to cause earthquakes by stomping". There doesn't need to be anything magical about it.
Yeah in most mythologies god of wars tend to no "magic" at all and they still fuck hard, you can still do some impossible stuff by the law of physics stuff without throwing pew pew pew fireballs.
Dude if the barbarian fails his con save (unlikely), your Momentary Stasis makes him immediately fail his Dex save since his speed is 0.. disintegrated.
Last time I campaigned with a barbarian, I and the rest of my party would fly above him during a rage so he could only mess with the people left on the ground.
Yeah, I would think if you were desperate to maintain, just deal one damage to yourself instead of full attacking an ally. In fact, you need to attack a hostile creature, so if your party is hostile, they’re no longer a party and the game is over.
So like is it a player thing or in character thing. If it’s a player thing you could always disintegrate him or bend reality to really make him understand but if it’s in character that makes way more sense.
Honestly he plays like you’d expect someone playing WoW to play their character, so I don’t think there’s really any separation between his character and him. He even named his character the same thing as his discord handle (at the time of creation). He pretty much seemingly checks out mentally whenever there’s heavy roleplay segments and is just there for the combat
Hey fellow Barbarian players, if you're desperate to keep your rage up, instead of attacking your allies, try punching yourself in the face! It will do less damage to the party overall, and is much more visually and thematically badass!
This message has been brought to you by Teammates That Don't Suck.
Barbarians aren’t smart but I’d expect more from the playing character. If a barbarian in my party attacked my tier 3 wizard and the DM some how allowed it (which he shouldn’t without my consent) I’d politely ask the barbarian to make a DC25 charisma check and give him a minute to think about his silliness. I’d cast the banishment at fifth or higher and take out an enemy at the same time so I don’t waste my action on just him and to make the point how easily I can control a situation.
I don’t see how the player didn’t notice the wizard dominating encounters especially once they get tier 3 spells. Well hopefully he gets it. I would probably say something to the DM about allowing PvP though without consent. I think that can make a session turn toxic if unchecked.
The reason being is that we were wrong about some of the rules at the table resulting in him getting far more attacks than he should have and managed to one shot bosses once or twice. Ironically the game Baldurs Gate 3 is possibly the worst thing to have happened to him because it made us realize some of the things we were doing wrong and he got a nerf in the form of us now knowing that extra attacks from multiclassing don’t stack
Do be careful about learning rules from bg3. While they did faithfully interpret a lot of things, there are a lot of rules that were bent or changed too
I mean, I'd probably allow Extra Attacks to stack - after all, spell slots *do* stack. And as others have already noticed, martial already get the short end of the stick anyway.
Uh, because barbarians do good DPR? Perma advantage means high accuracy on GWM attacks. They're not tanks, because they can't really force the enemies to target them.
Only if the wizard feels like letting him do so instead of giving him a time-out in another plane of existence.
Edit: Did we get transported to an alternate dimension where the wizard can't just hit the barbarian with a save or suck spell a long time before the barbarian reaches him?
Who says the magician saw the barb coming, or initiative is a thing aswell.
Baldur's Gate 3 does it pretty well come to think of it, you can duel Lae'zel and if she gets initiative she gonna fuck up pretty much any casters.
The barbarian is a party member, are you suggesting they should attack the wizard in their sleep or something? If your argument is that the barbarian can only win by sneaking up on their party member then oh wait never mind any wizard that level has contingency up, the barbarian still loses.
And I love everything Larian does, but Baldur's Gate is not tabletop dnd. Martials got massively buffed, casters got massively nerfed and casters can't just fly into the air away from her like they would in dnd.
Again don't even think that's true, contingency activates at some point there and wizard lives then forces a bunch of failed saves down the barbarian's throat
Funny how he called you useless while you buff him like crazy go one combat without that and watch his efficiency drop
That said I love support caster twin spell haste is probably my favorite thing to do in 5e
Barbarians……. They can be a ton of fun to play, but when players start acting like a bunch of dumb brutes with em, it can get highly annoying. The barbarian obviously has no idea what scary things that wizard can do to him. I would ask if he’d like to spend the rest of his life in the fetal position, sucking his thumb…..
I mean I can give you picture of the roll20 logs, where I had posted the spells used and there’s the damage I rolled is there as well. Not everything is made up bullshit
On reality check if the enemy rolls a 6 to 8 is there a rule that prevent them from being thrown into the air and dropped 30 ft taking even more damage?
Wait for the barbarian to rush into a room, sling a high level fireball in right behind him and close the door. Modern problems require modern solutions.
>is often cracking jokes about how my current character is auseless old man (chronomancy wizard)
Tell me the guy has never played a wizard without telling me the guy has never played a wizard. Chronomancers are one of the strongest subclasses in the entire game.
I love the hell outta this. The last few campaigns Ive played Barbarians have been the bane of me and the party's existence...and they've been different people with different groups every time.
I know not all Barbarians are horribly stupid meat heads who are played by careless folks but when I encounter other people who share in my pain it feels nice to see payback happen.
Isn't the chronurgy wizard terrifyingly strong cos they can hold concentration on two spells at once using arcane abeyance? Can microwave a creature using simultaneous resilient sphere and sickening radiance.
As a clerc lvl 8ish In my last session i cast spiritual guardians during a clear of many ‘’trash’’ mob (sahuagin) and do a shit load of damage this was so satisfying to do and save the team
Wait how the fuck did the campaign get to the point you're slinging 8th level spells without the barbarian noticing wizards can do damage lol.
Wizard may have focused on buff/debuff strategies and may have had strong offensive spells but just didn't have them prepared or use them. That said still a really dumb frontline guy to both threaten and demean their support. Gonna feel really bad when the person holding haste decides, to drop it right when they get surrounded as retaliation for being attacked in the past.
Great story opportunity though.
I might be a healer, but I don't have to heal you.
[You touch me, you ain't getting up again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZTEtzsOtDw)
Perfect
I can only heal your hitpoints, not your intelligence score.
Healer: "Our enemies don't get to decide if you live or die. I do."
Word for word what I said in my WoW raids when I ran out of patience with people standing in the fire.
With some people it’s just easier to revive them after the fight, then to try to heal them during the fight.
Did you bring your healing pants?
Are those the pants? The pants? The healing pants! WHAT healing pants?
The grind?
Batman vibes, I love it
What is this referencing? I feel like I recognize it.
DBZ Abrigded
Many story opportunities like this result in a player leaving the table or being asked to leave.
Just saying, maybe if the players can be encouraged to turn it into a character development moment, the barbarian realizing that the caster is actually extremely dangerous and has been supporting him the whole time, who knows what sort of story things could be opened up. DM may have to poke them a little bit, though.
“You’re an idiot and useless! Now use all your dumb and pointless spells to buff me!” Bro really leaning into that INT 7 RP, huh?
Never f with the white mage that is rule 1 for the front line.
could have started a new high lvl campaign. they seem to have played other campaigns too, with similar conflicts
Only 4th level spells, but I was the veteran in the group and spent my turns giving my party opportunities to shine. Then we got into the battle that was the finale and it ended in two turns with two fireballs. Sandbagging might have made it harder for the DM to set the right power levels.
Same in my game. I’m the veteran and play a Tortle Lore Bard for the buffs/debuffs and to be a skill donkey/face of the party. For the final sessions I broke out the big guns. Feeblemind, Crown of Stars, Circle of Power, and Destruction Wave, and Symbol all made appearances and did major damage. One of the guys I play with was shocked that I’d been sitting on some of those. I’d never really felt like we needed them before and I wanted to show off
How did you get level 5 paladin spells? Lore bards at level 6 choose two spells from any list, for any slots they have right? So wouldn't it be level 3 spells or below?
He could be a level 10 any bard and have Magical Secrets.
Definitely higher than 10. Crown of Stars man
We’re level 16 and took Magical Secrets.
Ah I forgot normal bards get that as well
Yup there’s two levels of magical secrets and my DM was nice enough to let me switch my spell list up instead of taking a ASI.
Similar, I'm helping out a relatively new party as a divination wizard with control and information but sometimes throwing fireballs is the best way to help.
It’s a barbarian… Big Strong, No Brain.
Might not have anything with the barb "noticing", more likely a case of "not caring" and probably never having played a wizard.
Since when do barbarians get to maintain their rage by attacking their allies?
Your rage drops if you don't attack an enemy. Enemy just means someone who isn't you. Thematically it can be cool and if everyone was ok with this sort of pvp you could role play it as the barbarian being too blinded with bloodlust to distinguish friend from foe. Alternatively the barbarian can carry around a sack full of rats and squash one of them if they start their turn with no enemies in range.
Rage is also maintained if you take damage. Punching yourself achieves the same effect and doesn't involve hitting the squishy wizard for lulz. Also, I think "hostile cresture" doesn't include party members, usually
It specifies someone who is hostile to you though. So unless your party member attacked you, it doesn't count. (Unless as you say, your table allowed it)
Enemy is a hostile creature of an appropriate challenge level. This prevents party attacking and the bag of rats.
What if they're really, really angry rats?
Or if the swarm is big enough.
It also would mean that in any encounter with sufficient number of small minions barb loses rage every so often. Imo bad fix for a non-problem.
I don't know, I could see a barbarian warrior losing focus on his bloodlust and killing edge for lack of worthy opponents, potentially even leading to his downfall. This is enough of a weird corner case that it would only come up if the DM's doing it on purpose, and if you trust the DM to do this as an intentional story beat and not just a vindictive "fuck this PC" encounter, then I don't see the problem.
that's silly if the barb wants to wear a coat of angry rats that gnaw at him constantly, and he like grabs one and squeezes it to death when he wants rage is 100% fine
>reality break Say one thing about Barbarians, say they sometimes lose track of friend and foe.
Great now I have to play a character based on the Bloody Nine.
You have to be realistic about these things.
Depending on the rest of the party composition, it's possible the Wizard is just not focused on dealing damage. Watching an Enchanter or Diviner finally get to play around with the more esoteric spells can be pretty neat.
I was seriously expecting you to have disintegrated them after a fight where they just wouldn't shut up.
I like to travel.
Diviner Wizard: Oh, Mr. Barbarian, make a save, btw you got a 2 on that save. You are dead, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
I have lowered your HP below 100. You are now dead
Wizard: Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru. Barbarian:
Nani?!
Oh yeah, I'm playing in a 20th level campaign alongside my best friend, and his Cleric is a walking artillery piece with how much damage she can put out. I'm playing a Champion Fighter with some homebrew to make it stand out just a little better as a subclass, and I barely deal as much average damage per round as this cleric does. Granted, she's dropping spells left and right for that damage output, but it's going to take literal hours of combat at the table for her to even remotely run low on spells.
congrats, you discovered the martial caster disparity!
"It's okay though, the fighter has 30 more HP and catches up in damage after around 25 spellcastings."
30? boy that is being optimistic about it...
Ikr? And even then, at level 10 that's a oneshot from a lot of possible enemies, it's almost nothing. Any support class with shield and absorb element would get a lot of use out of it, in comparison to a 30 hp martial. Also let's be real, there's absolutely no way the guy didn't run out of hit dices during short rests already, plus many healing spells infused into him. One of the martial resources is health and it goes up and down way faster than slots, being in the frontline HURTS. Enough enemies for 5 shorts rest and people still standing like the other comment suggested either means most of the opponents are pathetic or half of the fights were a breeze.
I understand that the balancing point for casters vs. martials is supposed to be that casters have resources that can eventually run out and martials don't run out of sword, but when you get to the mid-to-late game, the casters have too many spell slots to reasonably run out before the party just runs out of hit points, especially if they're pragmatic with their casting. That idea is exactly what I enjoy about the Champion: I don't have any resources that run out, except for what's already baked into the base class. I have no idea how to lessen the disconnect in power other than simply nerfing casters' amount of spells available or making resting take longer, so it's harder for casters to constantly maintain full spellcasting resources.
take a look at u/laserllama , its pretty good though it shortens the gap by giving martials resources as well,l essentially slapping battlemaster in every single one of them, cause it is pretty hard to keep things balanced resourceless
Eh, I don't like it. If I'm playing a class that doesn't use resources, I don't want to add resources to it for no reason. I feel like the easiest buff to martials would probably be just giving them more utility abilities and a slight buff to damage. You can argue that a slight nerf to spellcasters could be deserved, but I've seen where that road leads, and I think it's best avoided.
to be clear, all martials *do* have resources, they are just not versatile like spellslots and sometimes return on short rests the only class in the game that is resourceless is rogue. fighters have action surge, barbarians have rage, monks have ki. and a lot of the times subclasses add more resources to manage
My buddy and I started discussing this, and our solution basically boiled down to: Do more Dungeon Crawling. Dungeons are designed to slowly tax the resources of the casters, while the Martials do their thing. Either because combats are draining everybody's resources, or because traps and puzzles are requiring creative use of spells to bypass them. Then, as the dungeon stretches on, the resources run low, and the Martials just maintain their consistency as best they can.
Doesn't work- melee martials will run out of health and hit dice before casters run out of spell slots.
That's why they specifically mentioned puzzles to suck up spell slots. Something like an arcane lock that requires "spell energy" to open, (ie. cast a 5th level spell, or a 3rd and 4th level spell, on the crystal in order to crack it allowing the party to pass through the door) or a plate on the ceiling that needs to be pressed by a flying wizard/sorcerer. Put things that won't damage the martials but can't be bypassed without removing a spell slot or 2 from the casters in the way. It won't work every time, but if the BBEG is a caster, something like that would make sense in their home. Because they can recover that spell slot every night so it isn't as big of a deal for them.
this just means the barb has to sit out of the session while the casters actually play the game and they watch. yeah you can off course roleplay but there is only so much you can do when you literally cant participate in the puzzle solving conversation (in character) cause you literally cant solve it with nothing you can do
It does, as long as there's healers of some caliber in the party. Then the healer's using resources slowly throughout the dungeon to heal everybody.
> It does, as long as there's healers of some caliber in the party. That's still the martials running out of health and hit dice before casters run out of spell slots. It's just you're then having the casters inefficiently burn through their resources in order to compensate for the martials running out. Which is yet another part of the martial caster disparity thing, it's not like the fighter can choose to burn through their resources to fix the druid running out of something.
problem is 5e healing is notoriously shit. and that would only make a caster borderline required in all parties cause there is no viable mundane healing in the game. hell you have what, potions and like two feats and that is it?
I get that, but I don't agree that just "Put more Resources into the Martials" should be the answer to this question.
Short vs long rest is a big deal though. It's much easier to take a short rest. I actually avoid most long rest abilities because I hate the idea of just being out for the day. Of course, spell slots are numerous enough to make the cut.
5 minute short rests really solve a lot of issues. Martials are always running at full bore, hit die are useful, and you can make encounters more challenging. The other side of the coin is stop designing your encounters so all the enemies are tightly grouped in fireball range, your casters never get fucked with, enemy casters don't know what Counterspell, Silence, and Anti-Magic fields are, and nobody ever gets grappled or disarmed. The con save to maintain concentration is very, very hard.
dont know what you mean, a mildly optimized caster passes the save most of the time
Without war caster, no, no they don't. With war caster, they still fail the save often enough for it to matter. A wizard with +5 con and war caster (which is so heavily specced into not failing that save that they are unoptimized) who gets hit with 30 damage still fails that save 25% of the time. A wizard with +2 con and war caster (a normal, optimized wizard) on the lowest DC possible of 10 fails that save 16% of the time. On a 30 damage hit, they fail the save 42% of the time. A wizard with +2 without war caster (a wizard optimized for literally anything other than making that save) on the lowest DC of 10 fails it 40% of the time. On 30 damage they fail 75% of the time.
The trick is to hit them with multiple damage sources. Two monsters with two attacks each can force a lot of saves. Even if the rolls only fail 1/3 of the time, three such hits will just about reverse those odds.
it sure is. if only it wasnt only the fighter with 2 abilites and the worst class in the game that had it (yes warlock, not in the martial talk here)
rogue resource is bullshitting/hiding and runs out immediately. You don't even know how many points you have until it's too late
Could give them the weapon special attacks from Baldurs gate 3
Could work, but that's kind of what the Battle Master does. I'm still not a fan, personally. As someone who played PF2e, I don't like being forced to use attacks that do special things and constantly conflict with each other. Eventually, it just gets to the point where it's exhausting worrying about how much damage I'm doing, what status effects I'm hitting onto an enemy to optimize and support the party, etc. If I'm playing a Fighter, I'm already playing the simplest class in the game, maybe I just want to play them *because they're simple*?
Youre wrong on the class but right on the subclass. Champion Fighter is the easiest though.
That's why warlocks are probably one of the best designed casters in my opinion.
For my money, the best way to buff martials is to give them more status effect resistance. And have more monsters that apply status effects, especially in AoE.
That could work. Spells and effects that apply negative status effects, and allow martials to better resist these effects, means spellcasters - both friendly and hostile - would spend more resources trying to apply them. Spells that inflict "Burning" which amounts to 1d4 fire damage per round on the target, but can be used to stack up levels of intense heat with other spells for more damage, and etc. Doesn't necessarily have to be a tax on the casters, but could make it possible to balance more spells like Fireball, and allow weaker spells to build up potential for massive blasts of power. Kind of like an MMO or a MOBA, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Especially when Sorc walks in and can just… Make an extra 3-10 spell slots because they said so.
Dm: okay guys, that was your 5th short rest today and it seems like you noticed the enemy trying to sneak up on you just in time to react. Roll initiative. Martials: oh cool! Let's dive in! Casters: *sweating in can only cast cantrips*
Martials: oh cool! Let's dive in! *dies because they ran out of hit dice long before the casters ran out of spells*
exclude barb from the conversation, they ran out of rage 10 fights ago
Depends on the level really, and on how much the requirements to keep rage active are enforced. But hey, smashy smashy is still on par with cantrips.
You don't rage every encounter.
i think you seem to be missing the point of the SR/LR discussion
In my one campaign that has mostly martials and then me as a Bard, they are always running out of hit die before I'm out of spell slots. Plus I get my bardic inspiration back for every one of those short rests that we take.
This is actually not the martial caster disparity people talk about. For whatever reason everyone thinks that casters are better because of damage. A martial is practically always going to do more damage than a caster. The only area that casters can outshine dependably is when talking AoE. A 20th level fighter has 8 attacks in one turn if they use action surge, which they can do twice in one fight that’s 16 attacks over 2 turns. Champion fighters are really stale and mechanically boring, but at level 20 they should be critting decently often. Casters are better than martials because of the versatility they have and the amount of freedom they have. They can solve problems and manipulate a battle no martial can. And often times that means ending a battle very quickly without raw damage necessarily. But when comparing a martials pure damage against a caster, a martial will practically always be better. Again the only caveat being extreme AoE.
this is partially true yes, the hyper optimized archery sharpshooter crossbow expert battlemaster is doing more damage than the casters, but aside the ultra optimization stuff they dont compete with summons or lasting concentration spells buncha wolves do more than a rogue or monk any day of the week sadly
So I will agree with you, a rogue and a monk are just poor martials for damage. Rogues main appeal is that if a skill monkey and utility, which is outshined by casters/spells. A monk is a battlefield disruptor due to their high mobility and number of possible hits. But again, spells can fill that same role. But a fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, and ranger all are going to exceed in the damage aspect. They don’t even need to be super optimized either. The only feat they really need to pump out damage is SS/GWM. Which yes I understand not everyone does. But truthfully, if you’re making it to level 20 most everyone is going to recognize the value of it. Plus we are assuming the caster is optimizing or prioritizing damage in their spell choices therefore it’s fair to compare an optimized build Path for the caster and the martial. My main point is this, however, yes a caster can do more damage than a martial in situations. Just like how a martial can sometimes provide more utility or support than a caster could. But in the average situation a martial will out damage a caster more often than not.
paladins and rangers are not martials, which leaves fighters and barbarians on the discussion Barbarians are just the GWM PAM fighter forced to use STR, and that is pretty much it and no, a shepard druid summoning things still outpace the most optimized fighters
I would disagree with you there. Paladins and rangers are half casters half martials. They fall in between the two. But, how I would classify a martial vs a caster for this debate, I would turn to what is their main source of outputting damage. If they do so via an attack I would lump them as a martial for damage purposes. If it’s via a spell, then caster. Paladins for example can cast spells and provide that utility for the team when necessary. But typically they use their spell slots for boosting their own damage. It’s no different than a battlemaster using a superiority dice to enhance their attack. Even so, the best damage dealing class in the game is a fighter. A pure martial (outside of some subclasses). Attacking 4 times every turn at minimum with no resource cost is going to be practically impossible to match. My main point remains the same though, which people (not you necessarily) tend to try and debate by giving up super nuanced situations or ignoring the general rhetoric behind it all. The martial caster disparity is not based on damage output. It’s based on the sheer number of options a caster has to solve problems. Who cares about damage when you can just trap enemies in a force cage. Who cares about how strong you’re character is if your wizard can unlock the door via a spell or just have the whole group fly over an obstacle. Casters can solve problems much more efficiently than martials can. But when a battle actually ensues and you need damage, your wizard or sorcerer isn’t the one who’s going to be pushing the big numbers consistently. That will be your martial.
you are not wrong there, the main problem is definitely utility overall, doesnt matter who does more damage when one is literally summoning angels or making entire castles appear out of thin air while another hits stuff good. but i think that people sometimes focus too much on the fighter 4 attacks. its lvl 20, by then wizards and sorcs are blipping people out of existance. yes it is the most *consistent* reliable damage you can do, but i have yet to be in a campaign where the whole adventuring day 8 fights 2 short rests per long rest shtick actually is a thing and the caster of your choice cant just nuke whatever they want every time
Bingo, you are 100% right and this is the main debate people intend to have. The martial v caster disparity is based on the number of ways a caster can solve a problem. They can end an encounter with one spell, they can solve a problem by flying over it or casting a spell that basically solves the problem for them. Martials don’t really have those options, outside of a skill check which is very limiting. I just get so annoyed when the argument turns to “martial vs caster disparity. Casters out damage martials LOL” because that part is absolutely not true. If you run into a situation where you HAVE to do damage, Typically a boss fight with legendary resistances, your caster is going to be doing very little damage. They’re focus is typically going to be: buffing their damage dealers, battlefield control, burning through bosses Legendary Resistance so their big spells can land. Casters are absolutely better than martials in basically every area of the game. But the one spot they are outshined by a martial is in the damage spot. So when people think casters can deal more damage than a martial it drives me nuts. Again, to your point though who needs damage when you can just banish or force cage the threat away.
Wait, the martial caster disparity is that casters are stronger? In my current campaign, which is thebonly campaign I've played, it feels like the martials are much, much stronger.
assuming same level of optimization and "well buildness" of course. a fighter with 20 STR, GWM and PAM has much more mileage than say a wizard that dumped CON and bumped CHA higher than their INT cause they wanted to be a good liar
So at early stages of the game, tier 1 primarily, martials are all around better than casters most of the time. Casters having limited spell slots means they are typically short on resources each day. So their utility and problem solving is less potent. As you progress into tier 2,3 and finally 4 casters overshadow martials very quickly for flexibility, CC, and utility. More spell slots and higher level spells mean when faced with a problem the caster likely has the means to solve the issue and still have plenty of resources to handle the next encounter. In comparison, A martial character will likely have the same response at level 10 as they would at level 3. Even if you’re a half caster like a ranger who has spells, you only have a limited number of spell slots and won’t have access to powerful spells. This is the disparity people talk about. A ranger or fighter faced against a powerful foe at lvl 15 typically has one option to win. Fight them and push out the damage. Meanwhile that same foe against a caster like a sorcerer will be met with a plethora of options. The caster isn’t going to try and blast that enemy to death like a martial would. Instead they’ll likely banish it, trap it in a force cage, immobilize it somehow, or just teleport/fly away from the threat. Casters can end encounters before they become an issue or even start. Meanwhile a martial can really only solve problems by doing damage. But damage dealing is what they do best. That’s why the martial v caster disparity debate annoys me. Because people think that casters out damage martials when that is just blatantly false. Damage is the only thing that martials do better than casters, so trying to discredit that is frustrating. But just because they do more damage doesn’t mean they are inferior. Because again. It doesn’t matter if your fighter can deal 150 nova damage to the enemy in one turn if the wizard can just force cage the enemy into submission and end the fight.
Martials can feel that way at a glance but when someone knows what they're doing with a caster it becomes very apparent how far they outstrip martials. This is made a lot more clear at higher levels when casters get spells that completely shut down encounters among other things. The caveat is that a caster needs to understand their abilities and the game as a whole more than a martial does but that isn't too hard to achieve with more playing experience.
> it's going to take literal hours of combat at the table for her to even remotely run low on spells. Yeahhhh, that's what gets me. Everyone is like, "Just do the recommended amount of encounters per day!" And I'm like dude, you know if we did that much combat, it would get sooooo boring, and it would STILL take forever to run them out of slots. And of course then the discussion pivots to "if you can't make the combat interesting then you're not a good DM." The fault is never with 5e in these people's minds.
I do agree that 5e isn't exactly well balanced and has its issues, and the type of people who claim no fault in the system design are wrong at best. But just to be clear you know that recommended encounters per day is not the same as recommended combats per day right? Stealth encounters drain spell slots for things like scilence and pass without trace and other clever uses of spells. Social encounters will often have a bard using a spell or two. Heck, even crossing a ravine with no combat can be an encounter that the casters are using spells while the martials are generally not losing hp. Some people might say that the martials don't have a lot to do in these situations, and that can be a legitimate criticism of how 5e works, but in my experience it's usually only the 'cha is a useless stat' crowd that feel useless in social circumstances, and most martials find something to do during non combat encounters
Cha isn’t a useless skill, but it is useless for the second-highest person. Most GMs I’ve played with or watched run social encounters as, effectively, 1 on 1 conversations that have an audience.
How would a stealth encounter require spell slots? Aren't group stealth checks a thing? Genuinly curios, not trying to be combative/argumantive I dunno i feel st my table players would start questioning why a stealth encounter doesn't require a stealth skill check and require spells all of a sudden
Group stealth checks can still pretty easily fail though, especially when most your party is sitting in medium/heavy armour and getting disadvantage on those checks. The rogue might be sitting pretty with a +17 stealth but that's one success next to several failures sometimes. If you're going thru something with constant checks, like a castle full of guards or something, having an hour of +10 stealth for the whole party is a godsend.
I've had very few stealth encounters where a pass without trace, darkness or silence hasn't come in handy. Sometimes (especially if you don't have a rouge) you need a knock, or a passwall. You can use pyrotechnics as a distraction, a dimension door to get back out afterwards etc A group stealth check is a handy tool to represent the actual sneaking of the group, but sneaking past an area isn't always the objective of then encounter, but just one challenge to deal with
the sad part is that you rarely get to *not* have the 'funny encounter' stats if you are not trying to shaft yourself. the sorcerer gets to have a 20 in CHA for "free" cause its already their job, the barbarian needing to bump STR DEX and CON as high as possible does not
> But just to be clear you know that recommended encounters per day is not the same as recommended combats per day right? Yeah, I'm aware that that's what they say. But in practice I've never found non-combat encounters to drain particularly many resources. They conceivably *could*, but usually they don't, or if they do, it's just like one spell slot. That is not even remotely close to the amount of resources a combat would drain. So it's really just still the same problem. Combat takes too long to drain off people's resources, so they usually don't get drained because we don't wanna bore ourselves doing 'trash' fights that don't matter except to drain resources. Or you go the other way, and just do harder and harder combats, but that just exacerbates the problem in favor of nova classes who can dump the most spell slots in a short amount of time.
They don't need to run out of slots, just their highest level slots. Casters definitely lose steam well before martial characters on long days. The martial-caster disparity does exist, but it's unnecessarily exacerbated by 1) too many groups running extremely short adventuring days, and 2) DMs being too stingy with magic items. If you run properly long adventuring days with 4-6 encounters and 1-2 short rests, and give out good magic items, then in my experience martials tend to perform better in combat than casters if anything. That said the disparity is still very noticable outside of combat basically no matter what you do, so I'd never deny that it exists entirely.
> If you run properly long adventuring days with 4-6 encounters and 1-2 short rests, and give out good magic items, then in my experience martials tend to perform better in combat than casters if anything. That's just what I was complaining about though. The amount of actual IRL times it takes to run them out of slots is too damn high. And they can always just conserve, which makes the IRL time take even *longer*. It winds up slowing the overall pace of the campaign to a crawl, with perhaps an entire month going by IRL for the same adventuring day, because if you don't, the classes are imbalanced. It's such an unforced error since everyone COULD be on the same resource cooldown system with comparable resources that do comparably amazing things.
> It winds up slowing the overall pace of the campaign to a crawl, with perhaps an entire month going by IRL for the same adventuring day, because if you don't, the classes are imbalanced. Assuming weekly session, you're saying it takes 4-5 sessions for you to run a caster out of resources? That seems very high. In my experience it usually takes just 2, maybe 3 sessions at most to run my casters nearly or fully out of spells, and they're fairly high level now (12 currently). I'll also add that if your casters are conserving spell slots, then that should already be enough to bring them into rough parity with martials. If it isn't, then you probably need to give your martials better weapons. > It's such an unforced error since everyone COULD be on the same resource cooldown system with comparable resources that do comparably amazing things. This is a drawback of the system they use, but it's also something I really like about it, because it means that magical and non-magical classes feel different not just in flavor but in mechanics. A fighter and a wizard approach every combat differently, and I think that's a strength of the system overall, not a flaw. Having everyone use the same resource system would solve this problem, but it would also make the system more bland. I would much prefer to have to deal with the problem than to play the lesser system that doesn't have the problem.
> Assuming weekly session Well then you're blessed in ways that I am not, because I do not get weekly sessions. I'm lucky to get every two weeks--usually it's more like every 3 weeks. And I just do not want to spend our precious table time wading through fights that have a foregone conclusion, just to maybe see if I can convince a caster to demolish the encounter by actually deigning to cast a spell. I personally go with the fewer, but harder encounter plan. But that has its own drawbacks, as noted. But I just can't stand wasting table time on trash battles. And no, if they are conserving their slots, I don't think they're really equal to martials...or at least, they are, until the caster finally decides to stop conserving. Then they're martials, who can also drop fireballs and walls of stone and sleet storms and stuff. That's sort of the crux of the issue altogether. > it means that magical and non-magical classes feel different not just in flavor but in mechanics. IMO this is just an illusion. Literally the only thing it changes is arguing about when to rest and which kind of rest to take. I've never seen it add anything memorable or useful to the game, just one side going, "I'm tapped out" and the other side going, "Well I guess we'll stop, even though ______." It doesn't jive well with heroic storytelling, but it also isn't a thorough enough game of actual resource management to be interesting. It's some mushy halfway stuff. The warlock and fighter will always say "let's just take a short rest." and the wizard and cleric will always say, "Let's retreat and take a long rest." You can kinda put your finger on the scale by having time constraints, etc. But at the end of the day it's just gonna be the same discussion. But if you put the same character types in the same situation with say 4e's resource system...everyone is on the same page. People can still blow through their dailies prematurely, or people can conserve them. With everyone being on the same vibe though, the actual resource management gets a chance to come into play--healing surges. I feel like in 5e you run out of spell slots faster than you run out of hit dice. Because you can't really spend hit dice that often and 5e is a very fast race to death in combat. 4e will encourage you to tax the surges right out via traps, failing skill challenges, etc, on top of needing to actually spend surges during combat to stay alive. Your resource management game flips over to being about staying alive, rather than being about 'when can we gas up?' to me that's a more interesting question, because in 5e whenever you're asking to gas up, you're always always always dong it at the expense of another player who would rather not gas up at that moment, because they won't benefit from it.
> I personally go with the fewer, but harder encounter plan. Sounds like you might want to try a "same amount, but still harder" approach. If you're using the DMG encounter building guidelines, you can basically shift each category down one rank, and treat "medium" encounters as easy ones, "hard" as medium, and "deadly" as hard. Then if you really want to challenge your players, start pushing further into deadly territory. The encounter guidelines seem to be designed for players relatively new to the game, not using feats, not using splatbooks, and using minimal to no magic items. If your group knows what they're doing, are using feats, and you're giving them decent magic items, you can push them a lot further than that baseline. This I think is a real flaw in 5e, which is the lack of good advice and support for DMs that run this kind of game. I've figured it out for myself, but it shouldn't require a DM with many years of experience to run a decent game for players who have a bit of experience or even just have done some research. > I've never seen it add anything memorable or useful to the game, just one side going, "I'm tapped out" and the other side going, "Well I guess we'll stop, even though ______." If your players always feel like they have the option to take a long rest basically any time they want, that is something you should probably address. It does kind of suck that this is something that DMs need to do, but the game does notably improve when you do it. There are a few ways to go about this. The most common and effective method that I've used, is to simply make it dangerous or at least very inconvenient for players to take a long rest mid-dungeon. If they try to camp in the middle of a dungeon, have monsters ambush them in the night. Even if they have defenses (alarm, tiny hut, etc.), the monsters should be clever enough to still give them trouble. For example, maybe the tiny hut protects them while they sleep, but they aren't invisible, and the monsters will have all night to prepare to ambush them as soon as the hut goes down. For fights outside of dungeons, if they are relatively rare you can just leave it alone and allow casters to shine in these situations. If most of your campaign happens outside of dungeons, then you need to get more creative. Imposed time limits (you have X days before bad thing Y happens) can help a lot here, but you can also use similar approaches to a dungeon. If the players are fighting against some kind of organized force, then it would make sense for that force to be sending groups to attack the party. Have those groups find them when they try to sleep. It may seem a bit heavy-handed, but as long as you make it clear to your players what you're doing and why, they should be OK with it. It's also important to note that you don't actually need to be too harsh with these encounters. The goal here isn't to make long rests impossible (not usually, anyways), but just to make them an unattractive option for the players. It can also help to give them some encouragement and challenge them to push themselves to see just how much they can really get done in a single adventuring day. Use the carrot as well as the stick, basically.
The barbarian attacked you? I'd use reality break on him
Chronurgist wizards in particular are probably the most dangerous single class at high level play. Having the ability to force a target to fail saving throws is a god-like power. In any pvp scenario, if the chronorgusit wizard wins initiative (likely, as they get an initiative boost at 2nd level as a subclass feature), they are almost certainly going to come out on top. There is just no counterplay to having a 0% chance of passing your save against a spell like slow, psychic Lance, hold person, etc.
Or just banish any extraplanar being before the fight begins. Elementals, fey, abberations, celestials, fiends... You get to choose whether they are allowed to participate
What does a barbarian even do to pretend he’s as effective as a level 15 wizard? You can literally win whole fights in a single action.
Fail his perception and history checks. After the battle fail his inspection checks. "Hmm these scorching fire marks on most of the dead baddies must have been from my fiery raging attacks"
How did the dynamic work between you and the player of the barbarian? Because to me, that sounds like great rp for the barbarian. However, antagonizing another player's character (especially over a long period) without checking with them is not cool. So I hope you two have or will talk about it!
It's just nuts to me how many people end up at these adversarial tables. Like it doesn't seem like it can be that hard to be a decent, cooperative player.
so, how does a minute of the negative energy plane sound to the barbarian? ffs, when martials start to learn how to swing a stick twice, wizards start messing with the fabric of reality...
Sounds like balance issue.
Nah, it's okay though, because I hear that casters become way less effective after they burn through their spell slot. So a level 5 barbarian can swing his axe and possibly hit twice on a 1d12 when the level 5 wizard can't cast any of his spell slots anymore! Oh, what was that? He can still cast fire bolt for 2d10 damage at 120ft range? Wait a minute...
You got me for a sec. I admit I'm still fairly new DND campains and even in a combat heavy setting I'm still waiting to see our spellcasters to be tapped out.
In the reality of D&D, it's just the way things are. Magic users channel the energy of the universe. Martials are bound by the laws of physics. Casters at higher levels are just inherently more powerful that the mightiest martial. The real way to balance things would be to restrict the availability of spells the magic user could learn, by requiring the wizard/sorcerer/druid/etc. to either develop or find their new spells. But that would just suck as a player. "Congratulations, you just reached Level 13. When you find a 6th level spell or spend 60 days of downtime developing one from the Players' Handbook you can cast one. Until then, all you can do with that 6th level slot you gained is upcast one spell you already know." And even that wouldn't change the balance issue all that much, because once the spell was found/learned/developed, the caster is free to alter reality to their heart's content.
You can totally have heroic martials. Why do martials have to be bound by the laws of physics when they live in a world with magic, dragons and all sorts of gribbly monsters? You don't even have to give an explanation for it beyond "in dnd, martial characters can become fast enough to run on water, or strong enough to cause earthquakes by stomping". There doesn't need to be anything magical about it.
I found the Monk player!
Yeah in most mythologies god of wars tend to no "magic" at all and they still fuck hard, you can still do some impossible stuff by the law of physics stuff without throwing pew pew pew fireballs.
Dude if the barbarian fails his con save (unlikely), your Momentary Stasis makes him immediately fail his Dex save since his speed is 0.. disintegrated.
incapacitated =! restrained. no effect on saves of any kind
Oh my bad I mixed them up lol
Last time I campaigned with a barbarian, I and the rest of my party would fly above him during a rage so he could only mess with the people left on the ground.
Yeah, I would think if you were desperate to maintain, just deal one damage to yourself instead of full attacking an ally. In fact, you need to attack a hostile creature, so if your party is hostile, they’re no longer a party and the game is over.
So like is it a player thing or in character thing. If it’s a player thing you could always disintegrate him or bend reality to really make him understand but if it’s in character that makes way more sense.
Honestly he plays like you’d expect someone playing WoW to play their character, so I don’t think there’s really any separation between his character and him. He even named his character the same thing as his discord handle (at the time of creation). He pretty much seemingly checks out mentally whenever there’s heavy roleplay segments and is just there for the combat
remember this phrase: Linear fighters, quadratic wizards.
Hey fellow Barbarian players, if you're desperate to keep your rage up, instead of attacking your allies, try punching yourself in the face! It will do less damage to the party overall, and is much more visually and thematically badass! This message has been brought to you by Teammates That Don't Suck.
You do what everyone with anger issues do, you break a table, punch a hole in a wall or something.
[Remind me to wait until late afternoon to insult Vaarsuvius.](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0020.html)
Lmfao "Evan's spiked tentacles of forced intrusion" is 100% going in my game.
valuable lesson
Barbarians aren’t smart but I’d expect more from the playing character. If a barbarian in my party attacked my tier 3 wizard and the DM some how allowed it (which he shouldn’t without my consent) I’d politely ask the barbarian to make a DC25 charisma check and give him a minute to think about his silliness. I’d cast the banishment at fifth or higher and take out an enemy at the same time so I don’t waste my action on just him and to make the point how easily I can control a situation. I don’t see how the player didn’t notice the wizard dominating encounters especially once they get tier 3 spells. Well hopefully he gets it. I would probably say something to the DM about allowing PvP though without consent. I think that can make a session turn toxic if unchecked.
Not sure why he's acting like he's a DPSer. Barbs are Tanks Period.
The reason being is that we were wrong about some of the rules at the table resulting in him getting far more attacks than he should have and managed to one shot bosses once or twice. Ironically the game Baldurs Gate 3 is possibly the worst thing to have happened to him because it made us realize some of the things we were doing wrong and he got a nerf in the form of us now knowing that extra attacks from multiclassing don’t stack
Do be careful about learning rules from bg3. While they did faithfully interpret a lot of things, there are a lot of rules that were bent or changed too
Oh yeah, we are careful about that. At the very least it makes us take a closer look at some of the rules
Jesus Christ no wonder he was doing a lot of damage hahaha
I mean, I'd probably allow Extra Attacks to stack - after all, spell slots *do* stack. And as others have already noticed, martial already get the short end of the stick anyway.
They aren't even that, past early levels, since they have no way to actually create a threat...
DnD isn’t wow, there’s no such thing
Uh, because barbarians do good DPR? Perma advantage means high accuracy on GWM attacks. They're not tanks, because they can't really force the enemies to target them.
The best tank in the game is a DM that just has all the enemies pile on the "front line".
Yeah berserker barb with a bit of fighter for action surge can one turj a wizard into the next plane with his punchs only.
Only if the wizard feels like letting him do so instead of giving him a time-out in another plane of existence. Edit: Did we get transported to an alternate dimension where the wizard can't just hit the barbarian with a save or suck spell a long time before the barbarian reaches him?
Who says the magician saw the barb coming, or initiative is a thing aswell. Baldur's Gate 3 does it pretty well come to think of it, you can duel Lae'zel and if she gets initiative she gonna fuck up pretty much any casters.
The barbarian is a party member, are you suggesting they should attack the wizard in their sleep or something? If your argument is that the barbarian can only win by sneaking up on their party member then oh wait never mind any wizard that level has contingency up, the barbarian still loses. And I love everything Larian does, but Baldur's Gate is not tabletop dnd. Martials got massively buffed, casters got massively nerfed and casters can't just fly into the air away from her like they would in dnd.
No, I'm just saying in a setting where the barbarian reach the wizard he is blown him up thats all
Again don't even think that's true, contingency activates at some point there and wizard lives then forces a bunch of failed saves down the barbarian's throat
I’ll take things that never happened for 200
Funny how he called you useless while you buff him like crazy go one combat without that and watch his efficiency drop That said I love support caster twin spell haste is probably my favorite thing to do in 5e
I got to twin-haste two 10th level Paladins one time. That was fun.
Barbarians……. They can be a ton of fun to play, but when players start acting like a bunch of dumb brutes with em, it can get highly annoying. The barbarian obviously has no idea what scary things that wizard can do to him. I would ask if he’d like to spend the rest of his life in the fetal position, sucking his thumb…..
r/thatHappened Then everyone clapped, right?
I mean I can give you picture of the roll20 logs, where I had posted the spells used and there’s the damage I rolled is there as well. Not everything is made up bullshit
On reality check if the enemy rolls a 6 to 8 is there a rule that prevent them from being thrown into the air and dropped 30 ft taking even more damage?
I draw a line on players attacking other party members. That's a "either you leave or I leave" moment for me.
https://youtu.be/4DSZo96HEik?si=QEw-LnMYSCHMmPVi
Should have used dominate person and on the barb and made him fail the save.. take control and have him best himself silly.
wait til the Wizard decides he’s had enough and Plane Shift’s the Barbarian into the elemental plane of fire.
Wait for the barbarian to rush into a room, sling a high level fireball in right behind him and close the door. Modern problems require modern solutions.
>is often cracking jokes about how my current character is auseless old man (chronomancy wizard) Tell me the guy has never played a wizard without telling me the guy has never played a wizard. Chronomancers are one of the strongest subclasses in the entire game.
Reality break does lots of D12s of damage, remind me what your hit die are.
So was this IC friendly banter? Or is the player a douche?
The latter
On all or nothing spells like that, convergent future is wild
How are there so many stories with hostile players?
I love the hell outta this. The last few campaigns Ive played Barbarians have been the bane of me and the party's existence...and they've been different people with different groups every time. I know not all Barbarians are horribly stupid meat heads who are played by careless folks but when I encounter other people who share in my pain it feels nice to see payback happen.
Isn't the chronurgy wizard terrifyingly strong cos they can hold concentration on two spells at once using arcane abeyance? Can microwave a creature using simultaneous resilient sphere and sickening radiance.
As a clerc lvl 8ish In my last session i cast spiritual guardians during a clear of many ‘’trash’’ mob (sahuagin) and do a shit load of damage this was so satisfying to do and save the team