The Fundamental Problem with D&D's Class Balance

[@cowpercoles1194]

Class roles in 5e are based in the core structure of 1st ed., but 5th edition changes the balance while ignoring how 1st edition worked. In 1st ed., Fighters were the infantry holding the line, Wizards were the "glass cannon" vulnerable artillery, clerics were fighting support units, and thieves were light/cavalry recon. Most importantly, wizards pre-loaded spells into their spell slots. So if you had 4x1st level slots, you chose 4 *specific* spells to memorize. For example, 2 magic missile, 1 sleep, and 1 Light (note: there were no "unlimited ammo" cantrips). Wizards would cast spells at the start of a round, and depending on the spell casting time, the spell would go off *during the round* , often at the end of it. If the wizard took *any* damage during the round, the spell would be interrupted and ruined, and the spell and it's slot would be automatically lost, with no "concentration" roll. Fighters had a d10 hit die, while wizards only had a d4!!! There were no death saves: at 0 hp, you die (optionally bleed out to - 10 hp, but with severe penalties upon revival). Fighters could use any weapon or armor; wizards could not wear armor at all (some multiclassing allowed this, but you could not just "dip" a level like 5e). Shield spell protected against missiles, much less against melee. Magic items had limited charges -- they did not regain charges after long rests like a video game--you had to spend gold to get them recharged, and this was possible for only some items. Also, to-hit rolls were asymmetrical by class, so fighters had better to-hit rolls than wizards, but wizards had better saving throws that fighters. 5e's bounded accuracy gives everyone the same to hit rolls--reducing complexity for newbie players, but making fighters less useful. So, fighters in armor would engage the enemy in melee, and screen the fragile wizards, so they could get their valuable spells off. If even a single goblin threw a javelin at the wizard, and hit him, the spell would be ruined! 5th edition makes it much easier for wizards to survive in combat, without changing the fighter's role, so they are less useful in the game. Aside from the fact that most classes have spells now, Wizards are particularly OP. Wizards can dip a level into fighter with lots of race options -- an aarocockra wizard in medium armor and firebolt can be an armored fighter, flying around and shooting unlimited heat rays at 2nd level -- essentially you have Tony Stark, Iron Man. Cast shield, and you have a better AC than most fighters.

[@spudsbuchlaw]

OMG THIS!! I commented something really similar but yes, 5e players dont know their history, and it hurts them. You cant take Old school design, bolt modern stuff on and call it a day, and when they do and it invariably fails, all they 5e people are shocked, and bicker about how to buff fighters as if that'll work. Some things aren't bugs, their features!

[@slydoorkeeper4783]

That's been my problem with 5e too, it felt like they tried to bring dnd sorta back to the older edition, BUT without understanding why/how things work. In addition, I've tried bringing up using spell chance failure for 5e like 3.x/pathfinder and all I got was "I don't like that because its too limiting for caster." Like yes, in a way, that's the point. Choose between casting your spells, or being able to have survivability in combat.

[@BDSquirrel]

@@slydoorkeeper4783 I urge you to look into HackMaster 5e. A low magic fantasy system that has a GREAT dynamic balance rather than a skewed and idiotic "balance" that whackjobs of the coast have put out.

[@joelsasmad]

@@spudsbuchlaw The thing is that unless they nerf wizards to better fit thier old roles, they need to assign new roles to fighters, which does mean "buffing" them.

[@thebolas000]

There were also asymmetrical XP charts, so the Fighter leveled up faster than the Wizard. A Thief could have a whole thieves guild by the time the Wizard had Fireball.

[@talscorner3696]

In my 15 years in the biz (both as a player and, recently, a professional), I don't think WotC has ever known what they wanted to do with martials

[@talscorner3696]

Also, edit: MAN I love Wrath & Glory xD Now, there's a thing in W&G that has spell slot-like dynamics (faith points), but it's relatively minor, compared to the rest, and very much not a must.

[@J-old]

Oh man, remember the warlord " Controversy"

[@talscorner3696]

@@J-old the DnD 4e class?

[@IdiotinGlans]

They're a company that sells a collectible card game about wizaqrds and approached d&d the same way.

[@theprinceofawesomeness]

I personally think of great wariors who thrue strengh and cunning can stand toe to toe with supernatrual beings. So improving endurance, and might, and mastery over prowes. This was achived in 3e with feats like Two weapon fighting and Cleave and other feat progression represented with the fighters bonus feats

[@Kayplay120]

One system I am fond of is the magic system in Shadowrun. There are no spell slots, you can potentially cast an infinite amount of spells, however when you want to cast a spell, you need to withstand the strain of channeling magic through your body afterwards. Basically depending on how strong the spell is they have a certain backlash or 'drain' value. You reduce that value after casting a spell with a 'drain' check and any leftovers are taken as damage. Thematically I like this system a lot, it's just difficult to translate to a system like DnD, where hp inflates a lot and is relatively cheap to get back.

[@arnepeeters7663]

It's not just that hp inflates a lot, the other factor is that shadowrun damage actually hurts you, so the more and higher level you cast, the worse you are at it afterwards.

[@Lunalander226]

I mean, HP is simultaneously cheap to get back and pretty hard at the same time imo What I mean is, if your talking about healing spells, then thier generally outpaced by the damage the party's taking most of the time (and would likely damage the caster at higher levels with this system, so kinda a nerf to them there) And if we're talking short rests, I'll admit, you can get a lot of hp back that way, but at the same time from what I understand most tables don't get that many short rests at all, just ask fighters and warlocks.

[@Avatarbee]

Warhammer also lets you cast infinite spells assuming you are brave enough to risk the horrific potential sideeffects. More powerfull spells also require you to spend some time chanelling to gather the neccesary energy to even hope to get a succesfull cast.

[@felipebisi4145]

I mean this is just post paid mana cost Which i think most of the problem is the lack of magic casting systems In theory the mage would need to have infinite use of spells but would need to "charge" the spell excluding Scroll mages they would be a problem in any systen The Sorceror would be able to instantly use his/her spell but would gradually tire him/her And Priests/Warlocks would depend on Charisma after all they need their superior being to allow them to use spells meaning that spells are instantly and have no cost but may simply fail to be casted

[@vyor8837]

Except that in shadowrun, one good spell ends the fight instantly.

[@ProtonCannon]

"Martial classes exist so that the Wizards have someone to watch them in awe while they are slaying gods."

[@CyberiusT]

Also, to keep them alive through the first five levels.

[@jacobmonroe3899]

@@ProtonCannon We clearly play at very different tables… If you actually play at all.

[@thomastanner8547]

"I'll protect you, just remember me when you become a demi-god!" :D

[@CyberiusT]

@@thomastanner8547 I will be a generous gof, I swear! Right now, though... "Aaahh! Why are we tackling this cave as our third encounter of the day? I can cast...light?"😀

[@brandonturner4113]

​@@jacobmonroe3899yeah he plays 5e and you play some crazy homebrew if martials can keep up at higher tiers lol

[@neirenoir]

There is a bigger underlying issue with D&D casters that is not mentioned in this video, abd I think it is the underlying cause of all balance: lack of specialization. The joke about everyone being a Sorcerer also kind of applies to 5e. Shooting Fireballs? Check. Crafting faster than a dedicated artisan or artificer? Check. Opening a locked door more reliably than a rogue? Also check. High single target damage? Believe it or not, also check. Casters get to engage with every aspect of the gane without compromising anything for their flexibility, while martials are reduced to purely combat skills, and even then, they have no AoE skills: all martials can choose is whether to be melee single target, ranged single target or spending a turn to switch between these two modes, something casters do NOT have to do because they are carrying all their weapons inside of them. I would love to see casters as martial enablers, Master of None generalists, or laser focused specialists (ie. Evocation Wizard only learning big shooty spells). Funnily enough, Final Fantasy got this right: black mages are the best at dealing magic damage, white mages are the best at healing, and red mages can do both, but they do not get access to higher tier spells, so they could sort of be considered a proper half caster. Casters need compromise, and martials need skills beyond combat; as it stands, casters have all the cakes and eat them, while the only interactions martials have with something as fundamental to the world of Faerun as magic depend on choosing a single feat instead of having a more proper solution, like 3.5e opportunity attacks as a general feature, or some sort of melee counterspell. With 5e, however, casters work in hyperspace while martials are left in Flatlands, unable to interact with the rest of aspects of the world. tl;dr spellcasters should choose between being thematic, weak generalists or powerful specialists, not everything at once.

[@Xplora213]

OSR casters were low level and low impact and that mitigates many of those issues. Legend has it that no one beats 7th level. Rare games go past that… Well most of those issues aren’t a problem when the rogue can hide in the shadows infinitely whereas invisibility is cast twice a session. The numbers of spells cast also doesn’t matter when you have 3-4 fights for 3-4 rounds… 12 spells per long rest is nothing at 10th level. The permissive nature of leveling etc makes for a lame experience unless you’re a caster who just loves being the centre of attention.

[@tomraineofmagigor3499]

While not forced to choose the system I'm making does some similar things. There's much fewer spells but each spell has a bunch of modifiers that requires ability points to improve. You can take as little as 1 spell constantly improving it and that's as valid as taking a bunch of spells that won't be as developed as a result. To give an idea as to how much going into one spell the fireball spell is doing the job of firebolt, scorching ray, fireball, and all together if you so wish if you develop it with all it's modifiers. All the base spell does is 1D10 fire damage to a target of your choice within 15 feet. Martial type characters ultimately get just as many options but they get more abilities to choose from with fewer modifiers per ability

[@fortunatus1]

I'd argue that this is true for arcane casters even Bard (which should absolutely be more limited in their spell selection and should be forced to be more specialized. Magical Secrets esp in 2024 5E is too broad. They can choose half their levels of spells from druid, wizard, or cleric spell lists. It's crazy!) For Druids, Bards, and Clerics, the martial caster divide can be narrowed by bringing back the importance of healing. Right now, players rarely heal unless a pc is at 0 hp. They need an incentive to heal while players are fighting (Bloodied condition from 4e that gives enemies special abilities) and a disincentive to heal while a player is at 0 hp (e.g. exhaustion). I have a homebrew system I'll be using in my next campaign to fix this but if players must prepare and cast healing spells, they're casting damage dealing and control spells less often between long rests. This helps with the divide.

[@neirenoir]

@fortunatus1 I would argue that the kitchen sink caster should probably be the Sorcerer, or at least one of its subclasses. Wizard should be forced to specialize or become a "red mage" with spells only up to level 6 or 7. Bards are actually fine with Magical Secrets (being a wildcard is the whole shtick of that skill), but the rest of their spell list should be very Bard related.

[@freelancerthe2561]

Thats still missing the forest for the biggest tree. The issue are the spells themselves. Theres a huge leap in power between tiers of spell lists, where spells change from narrow use cases, to open ended or reality altering levels of power. Martials can't compete, because magic spells at that level change the rules of the game. This is already a known problem in that past lvl 12, most environmental obstacles are trivially nullified by a spell or ability. Fabricate alone can upset entire economic systems, if the DM actually bothered to consider it. I'm convinced that higher level spells were designed for BBGs and Monsters than player use. While 4,5,6th level spells are either room clearing, climax of a dungeon crawl, or "explain how a plot thing can happen". If you reigned in the spells, martials wouldn't have a problem being in the same ball park in terms of combat efficiency. Would still have issues competing out of combat, due to 5e's lack of framework for applicable "skills". While Pathfinder 2 might still have the same problem with Spells; it gives a disgustingly large amount of options to do similar things without needing access to magic. Meanwhile, the book that introduces tool proficiency, doesn't even do a good job of explaining what you can do with that, beyond a few examples each. Unless I keep missing it.... there isn't much guidance on how to set DCs for skill checks. To the point where many came to the same conclusion that of giving advantage to someone who has both tool and skill proficiency applicable, as a way to express the tools doing something useful. 5e needs to learn from PF2's skill feat system, and make it clear that a multitude of options can exist. But people are too afraid to address it, because theres no clear example rules on how non-magical healing works, or improvising consumables, or even non-magical ways to disrupt magic effects.

[@lucasramey6427]

Using the spell point system when you create a slot that's 6th level or higher you can't do so again until you finish a long rest so no a high level wizard can't cast a 9th level spell multiple times a day

[@BlazeMakesGames]

yeah thankfully there are some proper limitations. Tbf I was more just talking in general why they don't just use pure mana and using the official spell points system to just get some numbers on screen. So yeah it's pretty obvious why even when you use Spell Points they couldn't let you really allocate your spells however you wanted. They effectively have to go back to normal spell slots above 5th level or else things are even worse for balance

[@jooshwolfheart]

Not exactly. At higher levels you get two 6th and 7th level slots. The spell point variant doesnt get more than one per day.

[@MagiofAsura]

​@@jooshwolfheartwhile true, virtually no one plays at those levels

[@rommdan2716]

Spell slots are fucking stupid, man

[@Romne]

Only the boss monster!; 🎉​@@MagiofAsura

[@Giantstomp]

Actually in the earlier editions, mostly OD&D, AD&D and AD&D 2E, magic-users were extremely frail and it was a serious achievement if they made it to a higher level. Also, in earlier styles of play monsters would target those casters knowing full well how powerful they could be, and lastly spell components were enforced more than they are today where they are mostly handwaved. What would become spell slots wasn't introduced until 3rd edition.

[@vyor8837]

3rd still had them really frail. 1d4 hp for wizards is harsh.

[@hiush1]

​@@vyor8837 Kinda, between you only dying at -10 HP rather than being instantly gibbed at 0 (or -3 if your DM was nice), concentration checks allowing you to take damage and still cast your spell, full HP dice at lvl 1, con giving more HP (a 14 in 3e gave you +2 to your HP per hit dice, in AD&D it gave you 0), dex having better scalling on AC, etc, etc. Even the wimpy wizard at lvl 1 was much tougher in 3e than they were in BECMI or AD&D.

[@vyor8837]

@@hiush1 they still risked being one shot by, say, a random goblin with a dagger

[@hiush1]

​​@@vyor8837 Only if you were a dumbass that set out to play a con 8 elf wizard. Plus if you were _that_ worried about getting one shot at lvl 1, pick human with the toughness feat and start with 16 con, boom easy 10 HP at lvl 1. The 3.5e system straight up offered a myriad of ways to get around the low hit dice and make your wizard more survivable, it speaks volumes about the average competency of the playerbase that they still think the 3.5e wizard was just as fragile as his AD&D counterpart.

[@peterhaberstroh8017]

Also strict enforcement of spell slots and non-improving spell save DCs kept them pretty grounded.

[@SoundtrackDetector]

One thing we arent accounting for- HP is a resource. Ones martials run out of faster than casters. So more encounters a day actually hurts martials just as much as casters if not more. Also- being without slots isnt fun in general. Personally, I care more about whats fun for the most players more than whats most balanced. That and choice and strategy. Personally, the key to bridging the gap is buffing martials versatility, and casters sustain.

[@SoundtrackDetector]

That being said, I thought the additional system ideas you suggested interesting! Other ideas I've had would be Spells using a recharge point system you charge up over turns, distinct spell systems for combat and non combat Spells, and spells as Crafting- renewable material components that you expend to produce specific results

[@JohnOlsen-dt9ek]

My gaming group used a Spell Points system for all spellcasters, so our Clerics were able to cast many Cure Light Wounds per day, even at 1st level. That allowed a *lot* more combat per day and more formidable foes, making for a much more lively pace of action. Combat XP was very healthy, which helped offset the GM's philosophy that 'Treasure is its own reward", worth ZERO XP when sold.

[@blahthebiste7924]

The part of the chart where the martials go back up to full power is supposed to be a short rest, where they recover HP anyway, I think.

[@wolven122]

I think the designers of the martial classes would benefit a lot from reading Murim/Wuxia novel/manwha. In those the martial artists are essentially magicians by another name, though they are generally also tied to actually using their sword/weapon. I've always loved the idea of a D&D esque wizard being placed into one of those settings and imagine how it'd all shake out.

[@megablasters5]

I've actually run into this same idea in some games I've been in. Our main change is basically allowing martial characters to perform superhuman actions off with their skill checks, or allow auto success on more minor things with the justification that they trained a physical form of mana. Like at 10th level martial characters can easily break down a door, fall a moderate distance without taking damage, lift a massive object, etc.. Overall it's not perfect but it gives some sort supernatural benefits to martial characters to give them a leg up over casters in utility

[@xadielplasencia3674]

Thats monks I think, but I agree

[@verdurite]

@@megablasters5 i mean, technically this is already raw, there were guidelines (that nobody read) in the 2014 dmg that explicitly outlines letting higher level characters handwave certain actions once they became good enough at certain skills or had high enough stats

[@The_Crimson_Witch]

​@megablasters5 This is what passive skills are supposed to represent. There is also an optional rule in the DMG where you auto succeed on skill checks where your ability score -5 equals the DC. So a fighter with 15 Strength autosucceeds on DC 10 Strength Checks, while one with a 20 Strength autosucceeds on DC 15 Strength checks

[@ShadowAraun]

They would benefit from abiut 20 minutes of looking at how 2e did it. You could probably double the damage of all damage dealing spells in pf2e and casters still would not be as innately lethal as martials in that system. What they do get is utility that puts martial classes to shame as they mold the battlefield to the parties advantage letting the fighters ans barbarians crit more, giving the snipers and rogues places to hide, and spawning allies in to soak damage and provide flanking.

[@JeffreyJusticeLosey]

I use a mana point system at my table. It’s like spell points, but replaces all class resources, and casters are still limited to spell slot casting limitations. Channel divinity, ki, sorcery points, spell slots, superiority dice, etc, all are instead fueled by mana points. The Mana Point Total is treated as a general attribute, like the Proficiency Bonus, and Mana recovers a little after completing a short rest. Buffs martials while balancing casters. Alternatively, mana can be replaced with a skill check with a DC equal to 10 + the usual mana cost. Under this rule, attempting to cast spells after exhausting slots runs the risk of a magical backfire.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

huh that seems like a pretty in-depth rework of a lot of the game's systems

[@giantflamingrabbitmonster8124]

Sounds kind of like Elden Ring. Weapon Skills, Spells, Miracles, some explicitly supernatural consumables, all consume "Focus Points", basically mana, in varying quantities based on their power. And the cost never really changes, but the damage/effect gets better as you level, and you can get more FP (if you level up the stat that gives it to you) so you still have the feeling of getting more powerful.

[@argos-ir7zn]

​@@BlazeMakesGamesNo only calculated mana like HP, a lot of games use this like age system , mana points and make hard to caster get acess to high Magic IS BEST solution , make the mage can use more Magic but less powerful

[@tofastninj9747]

The problem with the combat balance chart is that it doesn't include the fact that martial classes have resources that can run out(ki points, rages) and assumes a short rest after every fight. It also assumes that as a spell caster uses their resources that they become less effective, which is not true when level 1 spells can disable enemies and 3rd level spells tend to be spammed for a reason. The other systems seem to have their problems as well with the fact that a 1 in 6 chance to hurt your allies forces you to go for spells that end/define the fight so that you don't have to deal with perils. Same with the heat buildup where it encourages a fight defining spell to be thrown out, so that disabling yourself for a turn is worth it. The biggest problem is that magic can easily it can control how combat works and when spells like Hypnotic Pattern, Command, and Suggestion can shut down a key enemy or group there is obviously a discrepancy between the lvl 5 fighter with 2 attacks and the caster shutting down 5 lvl 5 fighter.

[@Lilith_Harbinger]

Exactly, it's not just about resources and damage. A wizard can disable enemies, buff allies, debuff enemies, lay traps and do AOE damage. All without having to specialize in one of those or sacrificing any. A fighter can only hit stuff. If "balance" is your goal, martials must be given access to crowd control, AOEs or other non damage options that can alter the fight. Also out of combat stuff that are not just picking heavy rocks.

[@nyandereboyfriend]

Lancer doesn't have that problem because not everything costs heat so you always have less powerful but safer options.

[@neirenoir]

More importantly: all classes, including martials, are limited by HP and hit dice. Melee martials are supposed to be soaking all damage, but you will end up running out of hit die in two days of "tanking", so the martial chart actually looks pretty sloped downwards as well.

[@NevisYsbryd]

D&D also has the issue that spells with numerical effects are actually comparatively weak. Abilities that control the game at a meta and narrative level are potentially _far_ more powerful, and some of these are actually quite low-level; _suggestion_ can win an encounter without it going to combat at all. An enormous swathe of individual spells are horribly imbalanced. The entire prospect of balancing around resource management is misguided for such a general system. There is too much variance in the pacing and content of individual games for a reliable, universal resource management pacing and the two binaries of the default pacing versus the one longer rest time optional rules have too big a gap to serve tables.

[@neirenoir]

@nevisysbryd7450 the thing is numerical spells are often equal to or superior to martial moves. Eldritch Blast is straight up better than any martial ranged option unless you factor in +X bows/arrows or Sharpshooter. It adds insult to the injury that most AoE spells are balanced around onlt affecting two enemies in the area. Unless your DM is into large scale wargames, chances are any AoE is gonna target many more enemies.

[@bulshock1221]

WOTC did try a martial rebalance before. And I'm not talking about 4e. I'm talking about back in 3.5 with the Tome of Battle/Book of Nine Swords. This allowed martials some much greater flexibility in terms of what they do at the cost of making extra attacks as well as rules on what is needed to learn the higher abilities of the various sword styles. Each class of Tome of Battle had a different way of refreshing these as well as how many of them they could have ready at any given time. And not all of the styles were pure 'this does damage'. For instance there was an entire style based around grappling and throwing, another style based around leading allies into the fight, a third that was all about focus and using your concentration to make single perfect strikes (as well as better resisting effects that target the mind), and another style that was about movement and fire where at a certain point you could literally create a massive whip of fire. When my friends and I heard about 4th edition we were initially excited because we had heard that the martial stuff in Tome of Battle was what the basis for martials in 4e was going to be, but with more overall design balance in mind. But Tome of Battle wasn't balanced overall with the greater magic system, it made magic much less attractive for combat because the martial classes could perform nearly as well as them in terms of dealing non-aoe damage (they did have some AOE but not much) and such but could do it all day. They didn't have anything nearly as potent as high level spells for AOE or general use, so they weren't stepping on toes there.

[@angolin9352]

IME Tome of Battle was rarely allowed (even still, for those of us still playing 3.x) because any martial NOT using ToB is strictly worse. Which isn't as much of a problem for players as it is for the GM - If you have to rebuild almost every monster across 5 MonMans and half a dozen other splats using ToB rules, with the associated bookkeeping, it makes your life a LOT harder. Also, while 3.x caster supremacy was definitely a thing, it's not as bad as most say. Martial characters could absolutely contribute, especially if they knew what they wanted to do and specced for it. 5e simply doesn't allow for specialization to the same extent as 3.x so a lot of character balance issues that could previously be solved with "Powergamer helps newer player with their build, and specs for odd/less effective things themselves" simply isn't an option. There's a handful of 5e subclasses that are strictly better than everything else and taking 1-3 of them can make you a nearly invincible avatar of Death with 4 skills and 2 Expertises, and anyone playing a more "normal" build is hitting monsters with Nerf bats and fails their main skill 3 times in a row because they kept rolling 8s.

[@Stephen-Fox]

(The main reason they designed magic to work this way - with spell slots - is that it's inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, in which magic is something that doesn't quite fit the human brain, meaning you learn the spell and then once you use it it disappears from your mind until you learn it again which in D&D is done during your daily preparations. It's a world-building decision to have magic work like that. Although, also, D&D predates mana bars and WotC are way too married to a bunch of sacred cows that existed back when TSR were publishing the game - For fantasy games my preferred magic systems tend to be more around combining words to create effects which depending on the effect you want to do will result in a difficulty determined by the GM rather than fixed spell lists. I like what Trevor DeVall seems to be doing with his Broken Empires system based on the solo campaign of it he's currently doing on Me, Myself, and Die, though we haven't seen what happens if you don't mitigate the weave response (making it harder to cast the spell in the process) in that campaign as of yet. GURPS does something similar in one of it's alternate magic systems in Thaumatology 4e, and I think Mage: The Ascension also does something similar to that?) (I think ICON is by the same designers as LANCER but for a fantasy game, I think specifically inspired by games like Final Fantasy Tactics, so if you like LANCER you might want to check that out) I'm absolutely not married to spell slots, or resource based systems. I just tend to avoid them by typically going for much lighter games - I'm running Animon Story at the moment, for example, where there is a resource system in there, but that's the metacurrency stuff that applies to all characters and is gradually leading characters towards bond break episodes where they get significant story beats (The game's modelling Digimon's genre, bond break episodes are the moments where the kid has a falling out with their partner and then have to make up with them. And/or causes a dark evolution in their partner. So you can put your players through what Tai experiences with Skull Greymon), with the battle encounter balance refreshing after combat outside via the characters catching their breath (so you can chain combat together so they don't recover between combat) - than the sort of games you're talking about for fixing the issue. The light side of medium, which is where I'd class Animon Story, is about my upper limit for running. I do think there's a fun in resource management that resources that don't refresh between combat is trying to give... Though I don't think that's where regaining resources at a long rest or equivalent is the best way of handling things, mind. Mausritter's magic which is limited based on item durability and then requires a mini-quest to recharge I think gives a lot more interesting of a gameplay loop, but... Even just "Towns have a magical sauna in them which you need to use to recharge your magic" style thing I think would work a lot better than the long/short rest system, at least for dungeoneering. As for other games with spellslots - Most of them aren't as bad as 5e seems to be from what I can tell? Though, yeah, if you don't like the 'some characters are more powerful at different points in the adventure' it's still going to be a problem for you, but... My experience of Pathfinder 2e is that it isn't as unbalanced because Paizo seem to take niche protection more seriously than WotC does, and also balances ranged attacks so they do less damage than melee attacks. Against one enemy, a martial will typically be doing more damage, but casters have better crowd control. Fighters still mostly get better at hitting things, sure, compared to the fun flavourful toys Wizards get, but when you need to make one thing bleed numbers good, fighters are the most effective at making that happen. (Though, unlike D&D Damage Per Round isn't always the most important thing). Also, spell slots for the prepared casters in PF2e seems to still be pure Vancian - If you prepare 2 level 5 fireballs as your two level 5 spellslots, you can't cast any other level 5 spells that day, while if you only prepare 1 level 5 fireball and 1 level 5 something else and you need to cast two level 5 fireballs, your SOL - While I think D&D has gotten more leniant over the years. And my reading of pre WotC era D&D indicates that in those games spell slots weren't nearly as lobsidedly unbalanced in part because wizards - magic users back in oD&D - were _actually_ squishy rather than that being a meme despite them really not being in the modern game, while different classes required different amounts of experience to level up - so classes that were stronger at higher levels took longer to level up (kind of like pokemon). And the quadratic wizards vs linear fighters stayed around while the disadvantages to playing a wizard to compensate for that mostly went the way of the dodo. Like, I think originally you had 1 level 1 slot at level 1? It's certainly true that different playstyles aren't accommodated for with the length of the adventuring day (although while there are some assumptions about that in Paizo's design PF2e is less designed around that than D&D5e is) - I think one of the most useful additions in Pathfinder are abilities that refresh every ten minutes. (Basically the 'per encounter' abilities of D&D 4e but phrased in a way that doesn't get people like myself's back up due to "What does that even mean in universe terms?" And, yeah, it is so freaking weird that the 'gritty realism' rules which sounds like it's for survivalist campaigns from the name are most suited to more story focused games because 6-8 encounters that are as draining on resources as combat make sense when a short rest is a night's sleep and a long rest is a week of downtime.

[@blahthebiste7924]

> For fantasy games my preferred magic systems tend to be more around combining words to create effects which depending on the effect you want to do will result in a difficulty determined by the GM rather than fixed spell lists. Are you literally me?

[@gatorguard5931]

While I'm not sure I agree that spell "*slots* are the biggest issue, I think you touch on the larger issue I have and what that entails: the power scaling of spells and their effects. Pure martials, by and large, are limited to doing damage, maybe tanking, and maybe a little battlefield control. Casters, by comparison, have battlefield manipulation, AoE crowd control, buffs for themselves and allies, healing, ways to automatically pass various elements of exploration (such as the Knock spell or Fly)...and that's on top of being able to tank (shield spell, absorb elements etc.) and deal damage (especially in AoE). They do many things that martials simply cannot, and they do the things martials can do as well or arguably better. And like, sure, casters have spell slots, but most martials have resources too (rage, ki points, second wind/action surge). How is a martial ever supposed to compete with characters whose arc is more or less ascending to godhood, summoning biblical plagues and rewriting reality every day? How is a DM supposed to balance encounters around that? Even if these spells fulfill a fantasy for the player, it makes the game literally unplayable past level 15 and arguably even earlier. And that's ignoring the outlier spells like hypnotic pattern or fireball or even sleep at level 1, which are just insanely out of line for the amount of work they can do at early levels. WotC has kind of intentionally designed the game to never really be played past 12th level, which does somewhat counteract the worst elements of caster power scaling. However, it feels weird to me that you would design your system so that 40% of its character features are never used. My solution would just be to not allow PCs to reach level 7-9 spells with casters. Spread out their power scaling to reflect that and either remove or tweak the really broken spells so that they aren't so game-warping.

[@vyor8837]

Spell resistance, damage resistance, the fact a lot of the utility spells are either buffs for martial classes or for countering other spell casters...

[@chongwillson972]

@gatorguard5931 "My solution would just be to not allow PCs to reach level 7-9 spells with casters. Spread out their power scaling to reflect that and either remove or tweak the really broken spells so that they aren't so game-warping." that just seems utterly boring in every way. games sure as hell are playable past level 12 and before that.

[@axel8406]

Martial competed with spellcaster in the earlier editions by being able to kill them fast. If a fighter got close to a magic user, good luck getting off your spells when a single hit would make you lose that spell. 5e is a joke and should be treated as one. If you break down each class and take away the test and just look at the numbers. They almost are all the same with minor differences.

[@BestgirlJordanfish]

That's why it always goes back to everyone's "fix" to 5E whether they know it or not: steal some of the best parts of 4E, and glad you mentioned it and Lancer. Defy physics, move the world, have your moves overwhelm and explode, utility powers for your apex training and ability, and put that on the same timer as spellcasting. Just be a different kind of awesome. If you want to design 5E in line of 4E, just use unique long rest powers. Barbarians? You can always rage, but your reserve rages are now like legendary resistance or have your attacks explode. Fighters? Yeah action surge and second wind for skills works delightfully (plus if you splash in 4E skill challenges they and rogues go harder). Etc. If you want to play with spell slots (though I still hate them and think there's a very good reason many new systems don't do that shit), give them resources on the same timer and let them find cool ways to spend the resource. That's really it.

[@robmarney]

I'm a fan of more grounded fantasy stories and magic systems, so this would absolutely not work for me. Instead, nerf spell slots so that casters have to make more tactical choices, especially at high levels.

[@BDSquirrel]

I found NOTHING good in the so-called 4e and what is being called 5e is a TTJRPG system that coddles players and allows for min/maxers to have field days. Absolute raw sewage since the horrid 2008 release.

[@Riposte8]

​@@robmarney wouldn't it make more sense just to cap characters at level 8 or under than making level 15 Fighters feel "grounded"?

[@robmarney]

@@Riposte8 Martials have a fun leveling curve from 9-20, with one or two splashy daily abilities, extra uses of short rest features, and scaled attack damage. If casters had the same restraint instead of gaining a half dozen daily powers and cantrip scaling on top of subclass features, it would be fine.

[@diamondmx3076]

@@robmarney That would be balanced, but it would also be boring. That's the problem casters solve - D&D isn't very mechanically interesting. If you're playing a strict martial, there's a minor bit of tactical positioning, and there's attack rolls, maybe with a rare maneuver. Outside of combat, it's all the one system, roll a d20 and add a number that doesn't change much. Levelling up - half the time you don't even get much in the way of choice. It's just not a lot of choice in what a player does. (It's less than most moderately complex board games) Spellcasters on the other hand - every turn is a choice between at least a half-dozen valid options which have different pros and cons in combat. Out of combat, you have abilities that can influence travel, puzzles, social encounters, investigation, or just things to have fun with. At the start of the day, you get to choose several options from among dozens. On level up, every level you get access to hundreds of new choices. Some people want the simple character - they want a simple game mechanic they can use repeatedly and get better at over time - they choose martials. I can't empathize with that, but I know players who genuinely want that style of play. Other people will die of boredom at the table if forced to do the same thing over and over - they choose spellcasters, because they get lots of options and things to do. If you nerf casters down to martial levels - I think you'd genuinely lose about half of the D&D players to another game within a couple of years. The martial game just isn't that engaging. You need to go the other way - make martials more relevant without making them much more complex. I think there's room for a little more complexity but not a lot before you chase those players away instead.

[@forever-raine]

another important factor compounding the issue is the 5th edition leveling system. in 2e, a large inspiration for 5e, mages need considerably more experience than other classes to achieve the same level. having wizards reach 20th level at the same time as a fighter throws out that balance.

[@aralornwolf3140]

5e is a combination of 3e and 4e. The biggest difference between all editions is, in 4e, all classes had "powers" and all powers were more or less balanced with each other. When they designed 5e, they removed the "powers" and gave characters a combination of spells and abilities... and the spells were nearly copy and pasted from 3e. So, martial characters lost power, magical character remained about the same...

[@russellharrell2747]

@@aralornwolf3140even back in the day Magic-Users weren’t that far behind the rest of the party. The biggest gap was between Thieves and MUs, but that was usually more more than 2 levels, with a thief of any level usually completely outmatched by a MU of level 3 onward.

[@michaellane5381]

Actually this is true for almost every D&D subsystem, for example spell cost, if you need the ingredients for every wish spell taken from your share of the loot your caster is gonna looked like a begging peasant compared with his rich monk friend... But we abandoned most of these subsystems for ease of use and bookkeeping reduction. I think ideally the solution is to give every class "spell slots", that are defined as unable to perform spells but able to enact level based abilities, in-battle healing, allowing a martial skill's cool down to be skipped, etc... Basic spell like abilities full casters either don't get or sacrifice daily slots to use, but that are extremely basic with really simple effects applying to general circumstances in every fight, for example healing yourself or giving a +1 bonus to any skill of a party member, abilities that garner a martial extra utility but not some great combat advantage beyond enabling them to retain every action's economy.

[@freelancerthe2561]

@@michaellane5381 But thats just shuffling around the resource management, when the underlying problem is that spells are just too powerful from mid-tier onward. Compounding this is that martials aren't given enough abilities, much less the action economy needed to properly handle multiple enemies. This is really obvious with Half Casters, who tend to get the worst of both worlds, and have to make up for it via spell like special abilities to supplement the weaker spell list. Just look at the Ranger and Artificer. Ranger is a half caster of the Druid, but its 5e implementation is horribly underwhelming, because its core ability is "slightly more damage against one target", and even costs previous spell slots as a baseline. Without it, half your class functions don't work. And now the 2024 revamp is just offloading more of the class into using magic, rather then fixing the problem of Hunter's Mark being too unwieldy. Artificer is a Half Caster Wizard that, at its core, relies too much on spell slots for the rate it gains spells. This leaves the Subclasses to carry it... and Alchemist is proof of that. Artillerist works by bypassing the dependency on spell slots, with the very resource efficient Cannons. Armorer and BattleSmith work around the limitations by being able to offload more into magic items. Alchemist flounders, because its still the most dependent on casting and spell slots; given nothing to help offload or increase the efficiency of spell slot usage. Its not even given the ability to craft temporary potions on the fly... which is the ONE thematic feature that would had solved half of its issues out the gate. However, the main thing hurting both rangers and artificer is that the martial half of the class is anemic at best. Paladin doesn't suffer as badly, since cleric abilities lean really well into supporting martials to begin with. Buff damage, buff defense, heal HP. Mount that on a Fighter Chassis, and its little wonder why it has great synergy with itself.

[@kosherkingofisrael6381]

@@aralornwolf3140 Yeah but you must have noticed that a lot of the changes they are making are based on 2e rules.

[@rogerwilco2]

I really liked how Star Wars: SAGA Edition solved the Force Users vs non-Force Users. It was also published by WotC. A bounty hunter like Bobba Fett worked as well as a Jedi.

[@Mnemnosyne]

So there's two important things to consider as for why it is the way it is. First off is the time thing, which was touched on - spell slots were originally even more difficult to regain in the earliest editions - In the 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook a 20th level magic-user would take 40.5 hours to re-memorize all their spell slots if they were to expend ALL of them. Spells take 15 minutes per spell level to memorize, and a 20th level magic-user has 162 levels of spells. And of course they'd have to rest more than once during forty hours so they would take well over 2 days of dedicated effort to re-memorize all their spells. A single 9th level spell cast would require over 2 hours to re-memorize. This is all to say that time and the expenditure thereof was originally a much more important part of D&D in general, and also a much more important consideration in the life of a spellcaster as far as when to cast what spells. But the other thing to consider, and the MUCH BIGGER thing, is that thematically, when we envision the worlds of D&D, magic should be more powerful. It's as simple as that, and this is one of the key factors that frustrates any attempts at balance. If magic is balanced, it tends to feel pathetically weak. It's kind of a fundamental problem; you can't really balance spellcasters while maintaining the thematic element of them being powerful magic-users. The Wrath and Glory system mentioned is a very excellent example of that fact! If you read Warhammer books and understand what Psykers are supposed to be capable of, then compare to what they can do in game, well....the theme of a psyker being a pants-shittingly terrifying threat because of how much power they have and the destruction they can wreak even before they start having 'accidents' that result in daemonic invasions...is completely gone in-game. And you brought up 4th Edition D&D, which is exactly where things go when you look to balance over thematics. 4th Edition D&D is an excellent game system, very balanced, very mechanically sound, it's a well-written, well-structured system. But it doesn't feel like D&D, because it has torn all of D&D's thematics apart in order to achieve this balance. If you successfully 'balance' martials and spellcasters, for a large number of players, you'll have the same problem 4th edition had - you'll have destroyed the thematic feel of the game. Many players want higher levels of balance in their system, but those players who actually love D&D for its setting and themes, will find themselves feeling like something is wrong when there gets to be too much balance and it throws off the thematic feel of the settings, even if many will not easily realize it's because the game has gotten *too* balanced.

[@TotallyCluelessGamer]

Couldn't you, rather than nerfing the hell out of casters to achieve balance, just buff max level martials from being Aragorn to being Hercules? Rather than just being a kind of strong dude make them absolute menaces who can hack mountains apart, split continents or fire bows so powerful their arrows cause explosions from raw kinetic energy?

[@Mnemnosyne]

​@@TotallyCluelessGamer Maybe, but usually there's a decent amount of people who then complain that martials don't feel right when they do that. I personally find that relatively okay, but I can also see their point where they feel that doesn't feel like they want either. Tome of Battle: the Book of Nine Swords, which I believe was the last published book in 3.5, did a pretty good job at bringing martials up a bit - still not even with fullcasters, but solidly strong. They did this by giving them 'maneuvers' which were kind of like spells, though not as limited. Overall many feel it's a good system, but many others think it feels off, and is 'too anime' or other such complaints. The D&D thematics really make martials feel like gritty tough guys, heroic but not superheroic, meanwhile the same thematics say wizards are stopping time, raising armies of undead minions who can themselves be a challenge to a fighter, creating buildings and such out of thin air, and otherwise rewriting the rules of reality.

[@WayneBraack]

@@TotallyCluelessGamer You could depending on how you want your game to feel. If you want DBZ feel then sure do that. If you want gritty and more realistic this would be the wrong direction. Just my tiny minded opinion.

[@calvinwarlick8533]

​@@Mnemnosyne I have never, in all my years Dming, had a martial player complain that giving the new or more powerful options in or out of combat ruined the feeling of the character for them. I have had caster players complain about the martials getting more options, even if they still had fewer than the caster, though. Funny how that works.

[@supermcspotty]

In my experience players or dms who dont want martials to recieve better abilities like casters being op even when doing things they say are martials specialties.pf2e reaches a good balance between nerfing casters and buffing martials with equitable options. ​@calvinwarlick8533

[@EpsilonRosePersonal]

3:10 I want to point out the phrase "Do very silly things, like cast 5 fireballs in a day." Because the other way of wording it is "Do the thing that makes their class interesting 5 times in a day." That's kind-of pitiful. It also encapsulates why spell sots, and spell points, don't really work. They're effectively giving the character a ceiling on how many times they can be relevant per day or per rest, so every time they do something it needs to be really impactful. Conversely, martial characters can, nominally, do their thing as many times as they want, so it can be less impressive. Except literally no part of that design philosophy makes sense. Melee characters can't act infinitely many times. They can only act as many times as they get turns in combat and that's going to be roughly equal to the number of turns the mages get in combat, because the alternative is some of the players twiddling their thumbs during combat encounters. At the same time, the idea that you can effectively ration your actions, throughout the day, in advance, without knowing what your day will entail encourages really awful play patterns, where you're either frequently resting, so you can actually play your character, or you barely play your character so you can save your resources for when you might need them (or you know you'll be resting soon). The simple solution is that you shouldn't build classes that revolve around per day/rest resources. 10:35 *cough* Tome of Battle *cough*

[@DrakeTheCaster]

Honestly I think as you point-out 4th edition may just have the best solution. I don't think magic-surges or "backlash" mechanics that punish you for using your abilities is a good idea. I had an idea I really liked of making leveled spells require time to "channel" sorta making them all into ritual spells in a way that take-up more turns to cast the higher level they are. But that's negated by the fact an ideal combat only lasts like 2-3 rounds anyway, so taking 2 turns to cast Fireball would kinda suck and you'd never get off a spell that's like 6th level or higher. Though it would be neat to see casters more dependant on their allies defending them while they channel spells, but that sorta forces teams to coordinate too much as well for D&D so eh.

[@megablasters5]

And this is a lot about in combat balance, rituals and many spells completely circumvent issues that martial characters would want to try outside of combat

[@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112]

Anything that a ritual spell can do, an ability check can also do, often better. And there are a practically infinite number of things that ability checks can do that spells cannot. (Unless the GM is quite bad)

[@russellharrell2747]

⁠@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112I don’t know any ability checks that can allow someone to breath underwater, summon a phantom steed or grant telepathy.

[@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112]

@@russellharrell2747 For some off the cuff examples, Breath under water = herbalist tools check to brew a batch of water breathing potions for the party. Find Steeds = Animal Handling check to tame deer mounts in the forest. Telepathy = Arcana check to modify an arcane relic to telepathically link the party.

[@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112]

@@russellharrell2747 Off the cuff, Water Breathing = Herbalist kit check to brew a cauldron of water breathing potion for the party. Phantom Steed = Animal Handling check to tame some wild horses. Telepathy = Arcana check to modify a mystical relic to telepathically link the party.

[@russellharrell2747]

@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 if any DM allows random wild horses to be tamed with just one check or even after a week of checks, that’s ‘wild’. Making anything more than a healing potion from an herbalists kit is definitely reaching. And I suppose random mystic telepathic artifacts are just all over the ground just waiting to be tripped over. This would just be finding a magic item at this point. Also at this point it’s just not by the book D&D, but you play how ever you want.

[@ChristopherRoss.]

Another thing to note is that the power divide is not just in raw damage, but also in utility. A high level mage can solve _any_ problem, while a fighter can make a single enemy dead, but like _really_ dead.

[@jocelyngray6306]

Book of Nine Swords did high level warriors right. Wizard throwing a meteor swarm? Well, the warblade sends out a wave of distruction with a swing of their sword.

[@Youcancallmeishmaell]

But people hated it because it was "anime".

[@IdiotinGlans]

@@Youcancallmeishmaell It really did no effort to actually try to integrate itself with visual image of the game. And, let's be honest, orientalism was through the roof, it really reads like if someone watched Naruto and thought it's accurate potrayal of Eastern cultures. Even anti-pc people found it cringe. And third thing, time of 3rd edition was time where everyone wanted to be Batman and thought Superman sucks for having powers. Any solution that boiled down to "give martials powers" was going to be rejected because "bAtMaN dOs'Nt HaVe AnY pOwErS!" Nowadays I could see it succeeding because culturally we're more knowledgeable and have got used to idea many myths and legends across the world just flat out make their characters superhuman without giving them any magic explanation.

[@clarkside4493]

4th edition did martials justice, too. But everyone wants to ignore its good points.

[@IdiotinGlans]

@@clarkside4493 because everything played the same. Wizard was just Sorcerer with a book, Fighter was Sorcerer with a sword, Monk was Sorcerer with hand-weaps, Bard was Sorcerer with a lute...

[@TheTomoyaNagase]

yeah that one was an issue because alot of those abilities were literally just coping spells but without spell slots so infinite spam of what people complain in small doses now

[@cyphus5]

I haven't watched video all the way through, but the answer is simple. You can't ultimately achieve game balance when magic let's you cheat the world. This happens most of the time in games that include one class being "normal" while the other is gandalf. At least older editions don't hide it or have spell casters level slower.

[@thomascranor2668]

Gandalf relied on a sword. D&D wizards are stupidly powerful compared to their inspiration

[@Subject_Keter]

I always hate when people just shackle the wizards instead of trying other ways tk intergrate them. For a community that formed from scrappy people.. they aint scrappy now kinda d o u g h y.

[@isitnotwrittenthat1680]

@Subject_Keter it's pretty damn simple, when you have one god class that's head and shoulders objectively the best at almost everything the quickest patch is nerf batting them instead of trying to rebuild the whole system to accommodate that nonsense Hells, I play a campaign that both buffs martials and knee caps casters and the wizards are still powerhouses

[@sharktos3218]

Just give martials cool things to do. Let them punch the ground to create earthquakes, let them speed blitz opponents like in Dragonball, let them break out of a spell because they are way too strong minded for that etc

[@axel8406]

​@@thomascranor2668yeah there is an old school article that said Gandalf was a low level wizard. I think it said he was around level 5. Remember this is at a time when there was a level cap. Also old school games were way deadlier than 5 edition. It was incredibly hard to get a high level wizard and you would have to spend many sessions objectively weaker than martial but you could have one or two game changers such as sleep.

[@trevorp8124]

I tried to run a cooldown system in 1e pathfinder where a given spell level would be locked out for a number of turns based on caster level and character class. So for instance you pop a Meteor Swarm, you then can't use Disjunction or Time Stop or anything else of 9th level for ~3 or 4 rounds of combat, with lower level stuff having little or no cooldown comparatively. It required casters have a little line of "countdown dice" during long encounters and a few considrations for buffs and healing, but it basically worked.

[@dagroth123]

i like this idea. i don't think i can find a way to get it into the system I've made but, I'll put it on my consideration notes.

[@AlteredNova04]

This reminds me of an idea I once had for a homebrew "chaos wizard" class. It was basically a wizard who didn't have to prepare spells and had no hard limits on the number number or level of spells that it could learn and cast per day. But casting spells always caused a random and dangerous backfire effect, and the backfire increased with spell level. You could even cast a level 9 spell as a 1st level character if you really wanted to, but there was a good chance the backfire would straight up kill you. The class still had spell slots though. But instead of being required to cast spells, you spent your spell slots to remove the backfire effect. Spell slots were a resource for casting spells safety.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

lol sounds like it might have been inspired by someone who knew of the Perils of the Warp

[@TheMinskyTerrorist]

This is a very common idea in other games, especially OSR games

[@hugofontes5708]

Good old mercurial magic in general and paradox from Mage: The Ascension. You cast a spell and it either worked as expected, worked somewhat differently than expected, worked with side-effects like a finger falls off, or works but has the universe accumulate backlash against you. Love it, hope to use it one day

[@Electric0eye]

Honestly might even be a better idea than spells slots outright which might not be saying much but it's definitely saying something! I kinda love this idea.

[@Matthias129]

Aside from your last section, this is literally the Chaos Mage from Mongoose Publishing's Encylopaedia Arcane: Chaos Magic for 3.5e. (And it's errata, and the redone Quintessential Chaos Mage book. It was a wee bit of a mess.) Regardless of needing two books and the errata, the system was one of the most fun I'd had outside of 3.5's psionics system and the Tome of Battle stuff. I really just want more systems that gives me all the building blocks upfront, with the progression being that I can use them more easily, or more of them at once, etc.

[@WombatDave]

For those wanting a more balanced system, I highly recommend the "Spheres of Power" and "Spheres of Might" systems, which are themselves designed to work together. They are an alternative progression system designed for Pathfinder 1e, though I believe a DnD 5e version is available as well. These two systems combined give spellcasters more ability to do things all day, though the 'big ticket' stuff costs resources. It is also very customizable in terms of what a spell actually does. For martials, sure, you could just attack, possibly multiple times depending on your level, but there are so many more options. Martial characters are not just buffed compared to the baseline, but also have more interesting things to do. As a brief example, a level 1 martial character could be built to do the following: Use a sword and shield, attack with both during their turn, impose a penalty to numerous enemy attacks against them each round, and counter any enemy attack that misses with a shield bash. The system also has the advantage of being published under the OGL, meaning all of it is available for free online, as are all of the rules for Pathfinder 1e. Seriously, give it a look. You won't regret it.

[@nchastan]

Now if only Sphere of Guile was as great... skills really need to give great abilities to those that master them, but most of the content is very situational, since making them good would take away the magic of... err... magic

[@WombatDave]

@@nchastan Yeah, Guile was disappointing

[@andrewcarter9649]

As a note, that 5e magic points system has restrictions on the number of 6th level and above spells that can be cast, in practice it feels like it ends up being pretty similar to the spell slot system. I would argue that spell slots is more the symptom and the problem is one of scope. D&D is a high fantasy set up that allows the players to attain near godlike abilities, but how do you justify a dude with a sword matching a Sorcerer in such a setting? Beyond that you've got the problem that martials are inherently limited to hitting/shooting things by their nature while a spellcaster can be a lot more freeform because magic. It used to be that older editions of D&D went up to level 30 or 40 (depending on edition or even class), maybe the answer is a return to the higher level cap as it may allow for a better level progression spread but also maybe martials need to accept that if they are going to fight alongside spellcasters at those high levels they need to be magically empowered in some way as well.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

I mean I've heard this critique before about "how do you design a class to keep up with a wizard without magic" and honestly I just don't buy it. Barbarians already can perform numerous supernatural feats through sheer anger. Monks have Ki as an excuse to do any number of extraordinary abilities. And Rogues can do all kinds of shenanigans based around stealth and precision and various tools. Fighters are the only ones that don't have some kind of built-in excuse for pulling off extraordinary feats but ironically enough the Fighter is actually the most powerful Martial Class right now so I still don't think it's a problem. And every other class has some form of explicit spellcasting so there's really no excuse there either. And like honestly the changes that are needed to improve martial classes aren't grandiose. Hell 5.5 is going most of the way there with things like Weapon Masteries that allow a Fighter to hit a guy so hard that they go flying 40 feet away, as well as a lot more Skill-based bonuses like how Fighters can use Second Wind on skill checks or Barbarians can rage to use Strength in place of other stats on their skills. If they just got some general AoE powers like a whirlwind attack and such to be made more widely available, that would be huge in helping close the gap even further. It's still not perfect of course imo but I don't think the remaining gap is insurmountable without making it unbelievable. After all I think that if a level 20 Martial character was designed to feel like a classical ancient hero like Hercules or Achilles and such then that would be a perfectly valid way to design them that would put them more in line with high level casters while still keeping the main theme of them being martial characters. Obviously there's still the overall problem of spells being way too overtuned in 5e at high levels which is the point of my video but yeah this idea that Martials "have" to be a more grounded class because they don't have magic in a high fantasy setting is just not true.

[@AlteredNova04]

@andrewcarter9649 it's not hard to justify martial classes keeping up with spellcasters. Just say that they channel their supernatural energy into their muscles instead of into weaving spells, and give them comic book style superpowers. That's basically how barbarians and monks work. Let the fighter leap 50 feet in the air, cut through solid stone with their sword, and slice enemies across the room with the air shockwave from swinging their sword impossibly fast.

[@randomransom4537]

I think how I ground it in the campaigns I play in are the idea that fighters barbarians and other martial classes become akin to living legends. Think of legendary tales and myths in greek mythologies like heracles and the sort. Just warriors going far beyond that of a normal soldier. I think if 5e played more into that idea there would be a wealth of ways for martials to catch back up to casters in some way

[@verdurite]

I think magic items are a big answer that is underrated. Look at any popular "martial" character in media or myth. For example: Kratos from God of War or Vi from Arcane. Both are "martials" in every way thematically and logically, but beyond their martial prowess they also wield insanely powerful/magical weapons. I think dnd would be better for martials if it emphasized martials having a stronger tie to powerful artifacts. I would have given every martial (rogue, monk, barbarian, fighter) the ability to attune to four magic items at higher levels.

[@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917]

​​​@@verdurite The problem with this is that the DM decides when you get a Magic item not the player, meanwhile the Wizard has all the advantages of one without having to beg them for it. A better solution that doesn't stray far from your point is to have martials innately make items magical. So they channel their magic through their deeds and their equipment instead. Think of it this way, is Excalibur legendary because it came from a lake, or was it legendary because it was used by Arthur?

[@Google_Corporation]

LANCER mentioned, opinion validated. Tom Bloom's game design is incredible. You should check out ICON, its a new mythic fantasy game that is in beta, where the line between martial and spellcasters is extremely blurred. Its awesome.

[@Gavriel01]

You don't have to speculate. I worked as an editor for Paizo and WOTC for a while, and I can tell you that the designers absolutely don't think 8th and 9th level spells need to be carefully balanced. In fact, I once pointed out a very abusable 8th level spell and was told "So what? It's 8th level. Let them go nuts."

[@diamondmx3076]

Yeah, but this attitude leads to them not supporting high-level play very much (even openly admitting that they don't think it matters) - which leads to no adventures or support for GMs past mid-level. So they can't go nuts, because noone helps people play at that level. They basically shrug and let the DM do the job of game design that WotC couldn't be bothered to do.

[@TelAdare]

This video made me think of one of my favourite systems, Earthdawn. It's a heroic high magic post-apo fantasy. STORY: Basic story is that magic in this world was abused to a point of opening portal to Astral Space, sort of a mirror dimention from which the Horrors came. Those were the monsters who fed on Namegivers (all sentient races of this setting) emotions. That caused Namegivers to hide in special magic bunkers and the game starts in a moment when the bunkers begin opening hundrets years later when the magic stabilized. MECHANICS: In this world all PC's are magical in a way. There are spellcasters of course but warrior in this world uses magic to know how to wield any weapon thanks to Melee Weapons Talent. That allows the designers to give martial classes some powerful and interesting powers, because they are magical. At the same time spellcasters are limited in multiple ways, first of it is often time, more complex/powerful spells require magic threads to be woven and that takes a standard action. Also, you are sort of limited by what spell you take in combat by your Matrixes, an astral constructs that hold spells. You have limited amount of them and each hold one spell, meaning that if you have two of them you have two specific spells that you can cast how many times you want until you meditate for 10 minutes to change them. BUT, you can rist and reattune on the fly, doing a test that might change the spell in your matrix... or leave your matrix empty, leaving you with only one spell that stayed in the other matrix. Of course there are other additional things like Upgraded Matrix that hold one thread already woven or possibility to try weaving mutliple threads in one test but at higher difficulty. Overall I seriously recommend Earthdawn, especially 4th edition. This game has a lot more interesting things like thread magic items that require you to learn more about the item before you can use it's powers and those powers are leveled. Or connection of the mechanics with the world. In Earthdawn if a Namegiver says that he is an Warrior Adept of 3rd Circle both players and characters in the world know what that means.

[@tonyh8166]

Its more a matter of adventure design. Bad design allows casters to unload up-front without consequences. Longer sequences between rests fixes the problem. Time limits before consequences the players want to avoid helps a lot. Take to long? The critters notice the players being a problem and increase their defensive preparations, or hunt down the party and hit them while theyre trying to rest to prevent their recovery, or threaten someone or something, or if they feel hopelessly outgunned they just pack their loot (and exp) and sneak away in the night. The move away from study/prayer time to prepare your magic that 1E had also contributes. Before it took you 15 minutes per spell level to recover your spells once you got your 8 hours sleep. A lvl 12 wizard who had blown his entire spell load would need 16 and a half hours of study to reload them all. If you're pressed for time for some reason thats extra incentive to economize on spell-slinging. Currently 5E adventures are more like a scattered scuffles between half a dozen people a side who totally ignore each other. Its usually silly, and you cant do epic or even large scale events like that for the most part. Nothing involving even a tiny army without somehow handwaving away the troops and just declaring by fiat a fight with the commanders. You *can* deal with the OP's complaint by careful adherence to the number of encounters per day thing, but that in itself is limiting as implied above. While earlier editions of the game have some problems, adventure design and balance was much faster and easier and more room for variation I think.

[@SymbioteMullet]

Star wars d20, a 3.5e version of d&d set in thr Star Wars universe, used the Vitality system for HP; Basically, instead of HP you had Vitality points and Wounds. Vitality is equal to your normal rolled HP per level, Wounds are only ever equal to your Con score. Run out of Vitality, you're winded, but not strictly hurt (just kinda scuffed and bruised), run out of Wounds... you're dead. Critical hits ignore your Vitality and go straight to your wound points. I bring this up because Force users in SWD20 used their Vitality to cast Force powers. Representing the stamina cost of grabbing a cosmic force and bending it to your will. It's an interesting alternative, especially since you can't cast yourself to death... but you can make yourself very vulnerable if you cast too much. Another alternative I will bring up is the magic system in World of Darkness D20, a 3.5e full system conversion. That game had potentially the best modular spell system I've ever seen in a d20 game, but it's granular as heck and requires you to have a good head for numbers. And played wrong, can result in Mages being immortal demigods at level 6. Look it up some time, it's too complicated to get into in a yt comment, but definitely worth a look.

[@clarkside4493]

Player's Guide to Powers is an almost 1-to-1 update of 4e classes to 5e. If you want to play a 5e martial that keeps up with a caster then I highly recommend it. In spite of what he says of about 4e classes "being the same," I would say they _look the same on paper._ They feel correct in combat.

[@appleseed8282]

100% Even in the same Role or Power Source, every class played pretty different. Only similar in the point of having similar *per level* Action Pools. A level 5 fighter and a level 5 wizard may have the same amount of Per Long/Short rest abilities; but the type, the way they interact with class features, they're class features in general, even their ability to bounce back from damage are all massively different. And yet, because Fighter can do something beyond Melee Basic Attack, suddenly it's a caster 😅

[@clarkside4493]

@@appleseed8282 thank you! It's like saying a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard are all the same because they have a spell list! What's _on the list_ makes a huge difference. It's the same for the 4e classes.

[@stuggaroy]

Its not the only problem. Martial classes have a limited resource. Hit dice. These often run out before the wizard runs out of slots. This puts mattials in the most dangerous position. In the front lines, without spell support, with 1 hut killing them.

[@Youcancallmeishmaell]

The problem is that martials are assumed to be mudane.

[@chongwillson972]

@@Youcancallmeishmaell honestly wish they made martials a little bit more superhuman, like wall jumps, reducing fall damage and its threshold, being able to regularly smash apart doors, create dust clouds by striking the ground.

[@Youcancallmeishmaell]

@chongwillson972 The problem is genre. While Demigods and other mythical figures routinely perform superhuman feats. The stories that laid thr foundation for modern western fantasy. Didn't have superhuman warrios.

[@appleseed8282]

I wish they didn't gimp so many of the 4e mechanics they brought over to 5e. Healing Surges worked so good, why did they didn't need to Homoginze the amount they had across classes...

[@simonjay9758]

@@Youcancallmeishmaell The problem is 5e martials getting hit more often due to bounded accuracy.

[@malkavthemad4249]

Pathfinder, especially 1st ed is basically a D&D homebrew

[@simonjay9758]

Another D&D youtuber who's only played 5e and thinks it's always been like that...

[@malkavthemad4249]

@@simonjay9758 yeah, pretty much. Other games don't have this problem for a number of reasons.

[@LuarL4581]

Tell me you didnt play pf2e without tell me you didnt play pf2e. Try it with a good GM and you will see how much better, in almost every way, is. Play it arround working with the team and you will see how is better designed

[@malkavthemad4249]

@@LuarL4581 I was talking about 1st ed, but yeah I have played second ed. It's better designed absolutely. I prefer other games that aren't as combat focused, but it is better designed than pretty much any edition of D&D.

[@lonelygiant]

They did this in 4e (make marshall and magical more on the same footing) and everyone hated it… well except for me and like 4 of my friends… we loved it

[@ts25679]

Makes me think they should try the OG design philosophy of having classes gain xp/levels at different rates. (I have been toying with the idea of having physical, mental and magical skills with different conditions to gain xp for each.) Originally, yes the mage could bend the fabric of reality, but it took a long time to gain new levels and spells, compared to other classes and their abilities. You spent a long time as a low level scrub with maybe one or two game changing spells, so you had to pick the best time, place and spell for that day; then you'd essentially become an unarmoured peasant with a crossbow. When they switched to a heroic high magic baseline they probably should have had martial use battle arts and stances that were lower powered but readily accessible, to make them magical and fun.

[@tomraineofmagigor3499]

The game system I'm making is designed with the understanding characters will not always be the same level. Also how I balance magic as compared to martial characters is having mana and stamina. You can take multiple actions in a turn but each action takes more stamina. Spells take a number of actions to cast equal to it's mana cost. If you want to cast anything more than the most basic of spells at the same speed as a DND caster then you'd eat through your stamina. At the same time you're rewarded to Take time with your spells giving 1 action towards a spell you're preparing at the beginning of each turn for free

[@tjack140]

I ran a campaign of 5e with varying xp progression and (maybe just my players) the spell casters hate it. But fixed the issue well enough.

[@tomraineofmagigor3499]

@tjack140 the issue is that cantrips also rely on level. Assuming higher spells were gatekept cantrips with proper build support can keep a caster in line with the average martial

[@danielbarnes1241]

The problem with this and the systems like it is that nobody who isn't a martial likes it. Remember how people absolutely despised how shifty makes used to be? Especially level 0 spells.

[@Merilirem]

This creates a disparity between players and is just a worse version of moving everything the spellcaster can do up levels. You are better off just moving all spells and features up one level. Not the best solution but still better than someone being lv1 while the rest of the party is lv2+.

[@emPtysp4ce]

The period talking about the 40k system had something going on in the background that gave me an idea. There was a percentage indicator on screen that kept getting bigger and more red as the player cast spells, and what if you did a mana point system but the more mana you spend in a single spell the higher a "magical static" gets, which reduces how much mana you can expend in a single spell next and gets you closer to some kind of overload? This static can be reduced mid-combat by an action, but you have to sacrifice your turn for it (and you can't take the action outside of combat), and short/long rests reduce it but maybe not necessarily all the way. This flattens their badass over the course of the day curve, you can buff or nerf their spells as desired.

[@calvinwarlick8533]

You are about half right, it's not just spell slots, it's the spell list too. There are what, 500ish spells in the game? And what do Martial characters have that's comparable? That's correct, nothing. That's where you need to start fixing things, by buffing Martials with more and increasing options.

[@Xplora213]

They were called Feats 😊 they had big problems of their own. Ultimately the game has to be built around magic OR the sword. Can’t really have a good outcome with both.

[@calvinwarlick8533]

@@Xplora213 Feats were neither exclusive to Martials, nor in anyway comparable to Spellcasting. The idea that they were is ridiculous. The game can absolutely be balanced, both mechanical and for storytelling purposes, just give Martials more and better options.

[@Xplora213]

@@calvinwarlick8533 so martials are spellcasters not using spells? They use “powers” or “tactics” or “surges” etc? You don’t want to walk that road. Or maybe you do. I don’t want to walk that road with you. The wizard is likely the only legitimate Super Hero class in the game as a person with crazy powers, but that’s their niche. I don’t think it can be mechanically balanced while maintaining the current conceit of equal levels at same XP etc. the reality is that Polearm Mastery is fundamentally weaker than a Shield spell at 5th level. Or 15th level. You rightly note the faults but they did indeed try to create some balancing in 3e and it failed badly because it missed the basic asymmetry of magic use. Doubling down on the flawed concept is not the way to resolve it.

[@calvinwarlick8533]

@@Xplora213 No, Martials are magical without casting spells. Which is already true, but the way. A mid level fighter can walk straight through an Adult Dragons breath attack and survive, that's massively superhuman. The asymmetry is simple. One group has a huge list of abilities to pick and choose from, and one doesn't. That's such an obvious balance issue that the choice to not address it makes it clear that there is no desire from the design team to actually balance the game.

[@Xplora213]

@@calvinwarlick8533 Not sure on the specific example, a lucky fighter has always been able to take a dragons breath attack, without the extra juice, but so could any 10 level character if they are very lucky. 🍀 but I do agree with your central premise, the wizard is a Swiss Army knife with a uranium depleted shell option, and the fighter is baseball bat and that hasn’t been addressed properly 👌 I think they have tried to bridge the gap a bit but I do prefer the ad&d 1e version. Just let the keeper of the sacred flame go full retard on the balrog and just accept that wizards that make it past 10th level are a walking apocalypse, and to hell with the balance.

[@DmitriyIDK]

17:00 nice to hear about Wrath&Glory! Also want to mention that the game limits you on learning spells. By default you can take spells from only one discipline and generic one, also some other disciplines locked by species(race) requirements. So even high level characters won’t have quantity of spells equivalent to full casters in dnd. Soulbound (similar to w&g but in WH Age of Sigmar setting) use the same approach to magic but have much broader spells traditions that also represent cultures and worlds. So if you liked w&g I recommend to try it too.

[@_Crunchy]

I'm someone who has never felt the classes to be unbalanced to the degree others seem to, but I imagine that's mostly due to gamestyle and typically being in a GM position (meaning I take in the overall more than what my PC did). In the games I run it's usually very easy to see that everyone contributed a near even amount, but it's actually the martials, generally Barbs or Fighters, that are the party's real glue. If only one PC was missing, it being a frontline martial would be the most damaging. Being a tank is a fairly invisible role, you don't notice what it's doing til it's gone, meanwhile I the GM feel the desperation of my NPCs trying to get past this guy so that we can turn the caster to paste and get rid of this firewall.

[@NeutralDrow]

"I'm someone who has never felt the classes to be unbalanced to the degree others seem to," TBH, 5e is still a lot better than 3.5. Individual Wizards and Druids could solo whole campaigns.

[@Hamisback]

Some of the pathfinder 1e 3rd party and supplemental content kinda gave martials methods of being impressively strong, by giving them cool abilities and skills that use point pools that are essentially nerfed versions of spells. Such as legendary classes or path of war.

[@insertname5371]

Its a hard sell for most people to say the solution is to give people a check to do something on their turn. Nobody likes getting their turn skipped and its gonna burn new players. Sure it may end up balanced but its totally not fun and nobody likes waiting 10-20 minutes to do something only to have to wait again.

[@Ramschat]

Isn't that the exact same thing as a fighter missing their attack(s) in their turn?

[@insertname5371]

@@Ramschat not necessarily fighters take multiple attacks that minimize the hurt of that but even then many spells call for suck or save effects/ attack rolls that can miss/ be avoided. adding another level to that would infuriate especially new players. people want to do things on their turn.

[@GlacialScion]

Best thing to do is rolling for degrees of success. Critical failure causes impediments for future actions or requires the caster to expend more resources for success, but the current spell still goes off at some minimum level of efficacy.

[@RiskofRusty]

@@RamschatNo, casters still have to make spell attacks or force opponents to make saving throws. This proposed rule basically gives casters disadvantage on every cast

[@sisyphusmyths]

Yeah, having spellcasters under the permanent effect of a Slow spell is such a funny balance idea. Why would anyone sign up for this?

[@martinwillfor1416]

Spell slots are more than just a balance issue. They're a real headache in terms of bookkeeping as well. A spellcaster that can cast 9th-level spells will have (at least) 9 separate resource pools to keep track of, and that's before even getting into the issue of having to select their daily loadout from a set of spells possibly numbering in the triple digits every day.

[@Malisteen]

late 4e was finally showing real progress, moving away from the forced symetry of everyone having the same power progression and system while still maintaining a commitment to every class having interesting things to do at will, per efight, and per day, to allow for similar scaling whether on a level basis or an encounters per day basis. The executioner assassin is my favorite example, with martial arts flavored at will attacks that were a bit more involved but not out of scale with more traditional at will attacks and a single big hitting per ancounter strike that scaled in damage but not in complexity or number of uses replacing the traditional encounter powers altogether. Then instead of daily powers they had poisons that could either coat their weapons for a combat buff or be snuck into a targets food or whatever for compelling play options outside of normal combat. Really compelling and innovative design. sadly 5e threw threw the whole system away to go back to something else. I do like 5e better than 4e overall, but I kind of wish I had gotten to see an alternate version of the game where the udeas expressed in late 4e were allowed to blossom into a full version of the game in their own right.

[@laylaalder2251]

We can blame all the people going "waah waah it's World of Warcraft now" for that. I'd have loved a proper followup to 4e. Best we'll get I think is 13th Age.

[@NeutralDrow]

That was going through my head went he was talking about 4e. Like, yeah, early 4e was pretty homogenized...surprise surprise, the first player's handbook of a new edition isn't the best. It was still a pretty good model of balance, and they even started reintroducing more unique class mechanics by Player's Handbook 3. I had plenty of problems with the presentation of the powers, but even before Essentials, it seemed like they were hitting their stride by PHB3. And if anything, the psionic classes' Augmentation system seems to have been one inspiration for later changes. And I still have a soft spot for Monk "full discipline" powers (especially since they seem to be the direct throughline to 5e monks' Step of the Wind...or rather, the version they're getting in 5.5).

[@alextseng3852]

No it's not spell slots, it's the combination of adventuring days and power fantasy. The power fantasy of a caster is inherently more powerful than of martial classes. At a lot of tables, bumping up the power of martials to that of casters is would face backlash because it's not what the players want out of their fantasy setting. They don't want to play Bleach or One Piece, where you can level mountains with a single sword swing. But there are a bunch of signature spells for casters that get to that level of strength and players will want to be able to use them. If it took them a week/month to regain the ability to do so it might've been fine, but that's not how adventuring days are set up.

[@TheMinskyTerrorist]

Roll to cast and mishaps are big mechanics in Dungeon Crawl Classics and other OSR games. As someone else said, slots come from Jack Vance's influence on Gary Gygax, though it's not exactly the same.

[@yurisei6732]

The problem isn't spell slots, spell slots work great at level 3. The problem is D&D's absurd scaling, which is something most classes face: 1. As characters gain levels, they become able to do game-breaking actions, like teleporting to another plane of existence at will or levelling a town with a thought. This makes it impossible to prevent PCs from becoming functionally villainous. 2. As characters gain levels, the range of actions they can take increases, leaving a DM fewer opportunities to meaningfully challenge a party, especially one with a wizard. 3. As characters gain levels, the number of resources they have available to spend taking actions increases, allowing them to nova much more often and requiring the DM to stretch out the adventuring day even beyond 8 encounters. Spellcasters have all three of these problems, other classes usually only have one or two. You can't make a system that fundamentally works without addressing all of them. You have to keep the power level of the strongest actions within reasonable narrative bounds. You have to keep characters specialised unless they're deliberately dropping their power level to become a jack of all trades. And you have to keep total resources relatively flat and matched up with the number of actions players will have per resource reset period to spend those resources.

[@celuiquipeut6527]

There has been a mana optional rule since dnd 2.5. But you can make your own homebrew rules. The creator of DnD always encouraged it.

[@3X3NTR1K]

I also always thought the real design solution for d&d is to learn and adapt what worked in 4E. Specifically taking it's At-Will / Encounter / Daily resource system and baking it into into the classes on a deeper level. Martials can incorporate and expand on hit dice and action surges, casters could lean into rituals and non-combat cantrips, and every class needs *something* adapted to work on an "encounter" basis. The trick is to provide these resources equally to each class option, but all in utterly different ways. And... to completely remove "short rests", especially as an hour long pause. We also don't need to define an "encounter", just say it takes a damn minute of not fighting to recover. Both of those were the same kind of ridiculous in their respective editions.

[@aodhfyn2429]

For a more spooky horror RPG I've been working on, Spells are free, but the vast majority of them require complex, time and physical, _material_ resource-consuming Rituals to cast. They also scale off of a stat that increases as you level, so we can balance them around other classes' by-level output. In another stranded project, I basically did the spell difficulty thing, with failure and rebound effects. You can actually mathematically balance this system by multiplying probability with output and comparing it to other systems' standard output.

[@anelbegic2780]

I had a similar ide but based it off of mana, a lack of it anyway, making you litteraly pass out for days if you aren't carefull how much you use as well as tying damage and size to the amount of mana provided.

[@aodhfyn2429]

@@anelbegic2780 interesting. We started off with a Mana points style design, but ditched it in our first revision.

[@anelbegic2780]

@@aodhfyn2429 I can understand why when I see my damage table and mana rules honestly, very complex looking.

[@EmeralBookwise]

My preference will always be the way 4e did it, but since this video at least mentioned that, I don't feel the need to elaborate. What, I'll talk about instead is that prior to 4e coming out, my homebrewed solution was to more or less turn all the caster classes into half casters. Which is to say, delay the levels at which they get new spell tiers and limit that max final tier, but to compensate I also increased the total number of spell slots they had available per tier. The end result was more or less the flattening the curve approach, and while it might not be the most elegant solution, I do at least think it works for more "grounded" settings.

[@spudsbuchlaw]

Something 5e players don't generally understand is the game's history, they neither know nor have played older editions and generally don't understand why those games do what they did. The entire point of the early OSR was reexamining the value of those rules. 5e players love the idea that the game isn't something you can win, or talking about balance, blatantly ignoring that these were not things in old school DnD, you could very well lose DnD, and what players want/think they're playing is more akin to a Story Game, or something like Daggerheart. When you inherit somethings history, you inherit it's flaws, and we all know what not knowing your history does. old school DnD had Magic Users start with 1 spell, only gain spells by finding scrolls/books (encouraging exploration), leveled up slower than fighters and thieves, you cant move while you're casting, cannot wear any armour, getting hit before your spell is cast fizzles it, And had fewer slots and hit points. Oh, and you must prepare spells to the slot. These were gradually reduced over the years to make Mages "more fun" without genuinely considering why those design decisions were made. And then have the gall to do a shocked pikachu face when Magic Users are overpowered lol I'm not saying you need to play these older editions, in fact I'd argue you should stick to retroclones like OSRIC or OSE if anything. A good system for 5e players is Shadowdark, especially with how its spellcasting system works. If you dont want an OSR game but dont want caster imbalance, sad to say but they fixed that in 4e and everyone hated it. Something about "not being DnD enough" but make no mistake, 4e was DnD's Breath of the Wild but without the warm reception. Games like Lancer, PF2 and Icon are your best bets nowadays, but all Neotrad systems are rough getting into them

[@gamelairtim]

Old guy here: Spell slots is part of the problem. But IMHO a major additional problem is that casting within melee range used to be straight up impossible or at least provoke an attack of opportunity. This made martial classes important because not only did they have 'unlimited resources', casters often had to be careful with their casting or waste spells. Nobody liked this (especially once DMs realized they could just ignore or outmaneuver tanks), but it did balance things out at character creation; an additional reason to play martials was so you did not have to deal with having your spells ruined.

[@Daehpo]

This would be fairly easy to re-implement in 5e with the house rule: "Every one has the Mage Slayer feat, sans giving Disadvantage on Concentration checks" (Opportunity Attack on creature casting spell & Advantage on Saves against spells cast within 5ft)

[@matheusmterra]

There was a thing in older editions that balanced things more imho. The idea of each spell you prepared required a certain amount of time to prepare, that was also tied together with each prepared spell was for a specific slot (you couldn't upcast a spell without metamagic feat). Higher slot spells required more time, it meant that if your 20 level wizard went full nova on a fight, he would require basically a full week's rest to restore all his spell slots.

[@kevingooley9628]

22 minutes to say you're comettely unaware there were any versions of D&D before WOTC.

[@Mordaedil]

It was still a problem in the TSR days.

[@simonjay9758]

You mean before 5e? He'd be shocked to learn 3e wizards could cast a minimum of 4 9th level spells with zero investment

[@troythomas1628]

Spell slots are not the main cause of class imbalance. 5e RAW and many home rules got away from what brought balance to DND in previous editions: 1) Different XP advancement tables for different classes. A fighter should reach level 20 way before a wizard does. 2). Allowing casters to wear armor (especially heavy armor). A barbarian in heavy armor loses class abilities but a wizard in heavy armor can still cast spells if they have heavy armor proficiency? 3). Casters had d4 and d6 HD. Yes a wizard could cast a 9d6 fireball, but then he was going to get cut down. 4). Spell foci and ignoring spell components. Strict requirement of spell components greatly limits the power of casters.

[@guamae]

Spell Point Variant rule still only lets you cast one spell let day of each level above 5.... Though the casters in my (13th level) game almost always cast everything at 5th level 🤷

[@philipliao4006]

9:50 Personally I'd say that we *should* just shift martial classes higher, you already acknowledged that DMs do not use enough encounters per day, so the issue of casters being underpowered at later points of the day won't matter as much.

[@adirmugrabi]

savage worlds has a nice alternative, where you have to roll every time you cast a spell, failing the roll gives you a wound. 4 of which is death. the higher the spell power, the harder the roll. and every wound makes all rolls harder. not as evil as 40k. but still cool.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

lol that sounds brutal still. Tho I do think I am a fan of spellcasting being physically dangerous. Having to give up health to cast more powerful spells could be a good way to both give it a downside as well as to help reinforce the 'squishy wizard' archetype

[@GlacialScion]

I think something like this has to be the solution in a Roll-to-Cast system. Having a check that's essentially "Do I get to play the game this turn?" isn't a good solution for anything, but having a roll that tells you how much you have to sacrifice to accomplish your goal is great, imo.

[@JamCliche]

​​​​​@@GlacialScionRoll-to-cast is my preferred method. But I feel that it necessitates changing how certain spells work. So I made a lot of core game changes at my table. To give them consistent blasting power, I changed attack roll spells to something I call investiture spells. Bonus action cast, 1 minute duration, can only have one active at a time (a parallel with concentration), and you get to make attack rolls each turn without subsequent rolls to cast. The investiture has charges that can be used up, and if has a rider effect, like Guiding Bolt, you can only use the rider effect once on a hit, and the investiture ends early if you use the rider. To balance the chance of failure, I moved to spell points. Many people find them OP, but you can blow a lot of points on spell failures if you always attempt your highest level spells. The difficulty to cast is 10 + the number of spell points cost. So a 9th level spell has a DC 23 roll to cast. These values can be tweaked if tables don't like that sharp increase. If you decide to simplify costs, one alternative I like is a spell costs 1 + lvl points to cast, and 10 + lvl DC. A healthy amount of points for full casters would be 4 spell points per level with that framework. Classes will get specific ways to focus on succeeding a cast. Not succeeding on ALL casts, but specializing in pushing through the roll to cast difficulty in certain ways. Like wizards of a particular school getting advantage on the roll for those spells, or sorcerers spending extra points to force a fail roll into a success. I'm also considering action economy changes, like DC20's action points, but for now I have a thing I call offcasting. If you fail a roll to cast, but you stil get a result of 10 or higher, you can cast a cantrip instead.

[@WolforNuva]

@@GlacialScion But also how is rolling to cast any different from rolling to hit? Isn't the fighter having a check of "do I get to play the game this turn?" when they make their attack rolls?

[@GlacialScion]

@@WolforNuva Yes. And I'd argue that's one of the most excrutiating aspects of playing martial characters.

[@keegancooke6438]

The easy solution is found in many games that aren't D&D. Shadowrun lets you cast any spell at any time, but it is a risk vs reward. You must resist stun damage (nonlethal damage), and if you choose to cast a spell at high power you may have to resist physical damage (lethal damage). You face the perils of the warp in 40k. In legend of the five rings your casters need high rings in the element of the spell they are casting, so you can't just rush to the top, and you can only cast spells up to your school rank. If you rush to spend all xp on your rings, you will slow down your school progression and thus you will slow your spell progression.

[@Pugmie]

Issue with priortising balance to this degree is that its merely a mathmetical analysis of a psychological problem. If you run an arena like simulator, casters wont have staying power that the short rest and renewable classes do. What needs to occur is martial classes achieving a level of extraordinary boons that make them the masters of combat or, introduce elements like having powerful retainers or even strongholds under their control that can affect the story on a similar literary level outside a mageocracy. The reason why PF2 has become so lackluster in ability scale is because the balance mentality surrounds "what someone else have that I don't" instead or "what I could have."

[@alegbh8713]

a. Warhammer isn’t high fantasy, if you want depressing grimdark, don’t play DnD. b. I played Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2e as a spellcaster. It just sucks. The math of the system is made so you can burn turns trying to cast an area control spell (which was me during most fights, until I realised it was pointless) and feel completely useless, or just try to spam the same boring damaging spells and ask yourself why the hell you’re playing a spellcaster to begin with when you’re a glorified archer. That system rewards tedium, because mathematically I just had a lot more impact in the fight if I just spammed damage (I wasn’t playing the Pyromancer equivalent, btw). Even your out of combat utility has too many caveats to how they work, even if you are successful at casting them. c. Most downsides to casting spells get you out of the fight immediately, make you a bit more insane (which will kill you) or just outright kill you. In summary: this system works if you want your players to feel as if the setting itself hates them; it makes their every action feel futile and in that sense, it is very good at achieving a grimdark feel. It makes you wonder why you even bother.

[@Subject_Keter]

So it makes you Khrone, angry and somehow less effective then a baby. But ya i hate this notion we got to reduce mages.. and it seens like everyone wants to go "clip their wings" instead of something that isnt just a more tasteful "hate me some wizards so i removed them!"

[@adamant6166]

The WFRP 4e casting system is much better than 2e. A wizard becomes quite powerful, but also retains risk (altough a reduced one, If skilled properly). However, you still wear no armour, so each fighter can kill you with one or two strikes. Wrath and Glory and other 40k systems run into the problem of the all powerful mage later, even though they use a similar risk vs reward system, because the casters can wear armour without restriction (e.g. your psyker becomes powerful and druable)

[@kathorsees]

Well said! I think many of these vids concentrate on numerical balance and miss a crucial roleplaying point. What if a player wants to experience being a real-ass wizard? To see what it's like to build a castle with servants and a garden out of thin air, or to blow up a whole mountain, or to grant someone a wish almost like a genie? No video game can give you that experience, they're too inflexible (at least with current level of tech). No movie or show I know goes that far with their magic - they mostly use "soft" magic anyway and just generally suck at making magic feel cool. Only a roleplaying game with a human DM is flexible enouh to give you that experience. And, well, it's something worth preserving imo. So I'm not even sure it's correct to treat this as just 1 problem. Mb it's actually two separate ones: 1. During fights, martials have less numerical impact on the fight. Starts at mid levels and gets progressively worse. 2. At high and very high levels, martials have less out-of-fight utility and cool fantasy roleplaying opportunities. IMO problem 1 is a lot easier to solve and is pretty much a balancing mistake. Problem 2, however, is a lot trickier, a high-level problem rooted in the inherent player fantasy ("what should it feel like to be one of the most powerful wizards in the world?"). How do you make a fighter who is similarly interesting to roleplay as, but doesn't break the feel of a typical medieval fantasy setting?

[@alegbh8713]

@@kathorsees thanks for wording it better than I could, but I don’t think the first problem you list is as solvable as you say. People expect some degree of realism from martials that’s not expected from casters (think people joking about lvl 20 fighters attacking 8 times in 6 seconds), whereas no one bats an eye at Sorcerers, Wizards and now Bards dropping 4 Meteors in the same time frame. Martials by design can’t attack multiple targets at once. They also can’t subject creatures to save or suck effects, nor can they really do any crowd control, or buffs, debuffs, etc. There’s a whole dimension of this game that can’t be explored by martials by sheer virtue of the class concept. The fantasy does not allow it, Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli couldn’t really measure up to Gandalf, could they. A true rebalancing of martials requires leaning into more mystical abilities (whilst not calling them magic, lest people whine), maneuvres, raining arrows from the sky… etc. Because as long as the Fighter has to be content with a second use of Action Surge on the same level Wizards get Wish… we’re screwed.

[@mitchhaelann9215]

I'm a strong advocate of spell-point systems, and I think DnD hit the nail on the head with the 3.5 psionics rules. Allow the casters the flexibility to cast what they want/can, without locking them into pre-set lists. Spells become an expendable resource that's easy to chart, like Ki points or Second Winds or [proficiency bonus]times/short-rest effects.

[@CalebWillden]

I've heard of a houserule for Spell Checks in 5e! Maybe from Dungeon Craft? I can't remember. Spellcasting ability check (DC 10 + spell level). On a 1, the spell backfires horribly (no rerolling a 1 unless you’re a halfling). On a 20, it's a Critical Cast: choose Double Dice, Double Targets, Double Duration, or Double Range. Spells still probably require adjustment, like damage amounts, for example, and isn't perfect, but sounds pretty interesting! Something I want to try. I have a friend working on house rules to adjust spell slots where you have fewer slots, but your relatively lower-level ones recharge on a short rest while your relatively higher-level slots only recharge on a long rest. I've also heard of using Minor and Major slots. Minor recharge on short rest. Major slots recharge on long rest. The level of the slots change as you gain levels.

[@andrewcarter9649]

I really don't like this, at low levels you basically have a 1 in 4 chance of not being able to do the one thing you should be able to do, cast spells.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

yeah to be honest despite how much praise I laid on W&G's spell system, I'm not a huge fan of just "roll this number or you lose a turn" spellcasting as it just tends to feel unfun. In W&G I think it works because they use a very different dice pool system, which basically statistically guarantees you can pass certain checks 99% of the time after a certain point, so it's really only a risk when you're trying to punch above your weight, which I think works really well. And like I said most of the real limitations come from things like Perils of the Warp risks which is far more interesting to me since it doesn't negate your spell even if it triggers.

[@Daehpo]

I think the houserule for spell checks was the House DM in his video "Why I Stopped Using Spell Slots in my 5e Campaign". Another rule in it was that on a failed check the caster can force the spell to be cast by taking damage equal to the spell check DC minus their result.

[@CalebWillden]

@@Daehpo Ah, yes, that's the one! Thank you!

[@JohnOlsen-dt9ek]

The more skill rolls you force on the players, the more likely something bad happens at in inopportune time in the narrative. I prefer to assume general competence and use Casting Rolls as a voluntary option only--creating both a spell crit and spell fumble chance. Then it's on the player "going for the gusto" if things go sideways. I also use level modifiers on all my crit and fumble tables to mitigate the results, as it feels like a more experienced warrior or wizard should be less likely to make rookie mistakes.

[@jobobminer8843]

You just have to give martials more magic items. In my setting, magic items for casters are rarer and more expensive to balance things out.

[@otterfire4712]

Perhaps this is why Martial classes are necessary in party building, they are there to provide clearance for caster classes till the boss so the caster may unload their power spells to neutralize the target. Alternatively, higher level monsters develop resistances and immunity to magic, devaluing casters. Abjuration magic also contains stuff like counter spell and dispell magic, things that can disrupt the ceiling of casters, requiring more care from the party before unloading powerful spells.

[@MultiCommissar]

The answer isn't to try and tie down spellcasters. The answer is to make martials more supernaturally impressive. Strength 24 for a level 20 Barbarian? That's pathetic for someone who should be as legendary as Conan or Heracles by that point. A level 20 Barbarian should be regularly arm wrestling Storm Giants, not just slightly hitting harder with his axe(which is now capped at a sad +3).

[@jaceg810]

Fighter: Does semi-impressive stuff Wizard: Clones the fighter, then turns a copper piece into a dragon for the clone fighter to ride into battle, slab some buffs on said fighter, add a bit of necromancy backups in there, and a wizard can have a better fighter as a "companion" while still being able to do classics as "gate summon" meteor swarm and "oops I am an ancient dragon now" I would personally like to disagree with the power curve of casters running out of resources over an adventuring day, and being less powerful at the end than at the start. Hear me out. When playing a caster, managing ones resources is important, for example, if I am in the dungeon of the mysterious spooky skeleton on some throne giving bad vibes, It is unwise to start blasting with my recently acquired 5th level spellslot on the first thing I see moving, and I might want to keep said spellslot for when the boss shows up. Generally, casters have the option to burn resources at a faster rate for more damage, however on most adventuring days, it is possible to throw one big concentration spell in the mix and mostly conserve resources. To this end, casters are less powerful if there are more encounters, however at what point they are the most powerful depends a lot on the player. When it comes to exhausted resources, that only really happens if the day goes on for longer than expected. I usually end up with a few leftover spellslots as I might be a bit too conservative. NOTE: the gritty realism rules just straight up do not work for certain classes, For example, the wizard has a once per dawn ability that can recover spellslots on a short rest. So, specifically in gritty realism rules, where a short rest is sleep, a wizard can still regain about 1/4-1/2 of their normal spellslots, and over the course of a traveling montage, regain all their spellslots up to level 5. I think the idea is that casters have "less defenses" which is a lie between defensive spells, range and features

[@nfrigano4028]

Defensive buffs have a duration. They also cost spells per day. A decent DM can punish a player for "buffing up then hitting the dungeon".

[@jaceg810]

@@nfrigano4028 It is true that defensive spells have a resource cost, the question is if the caster is likely to run out of resources. If not, its free real-estate. If they are, they might need to be a bit pickier, for example, only using shield for big hits. When it comes to a casters bread and butter defenses I think of: Mage armor, Shield, Silvery Barbs, Absorb elements and Counterspell. Most of these are not buffs applied before a dungeon, except mage armor, however since it lasts 8 hours, it generally lasts a full day. Then there is proper positioning, which is free, and since most casters are just as effective from 60 feet away as within swording distance, keeping that distance (preferably prone behind 3/4 cover) is another premium defensive tool. Alternatively, when it comes to my favorite, phantom steed, it is a ritual, thus no resource cost, and since you can spend 11 minutes every hour recasting it, there is no down time for it. Finally, if you mean catching a caster surprised, for example, during a long rest, martials are often just as ill prepared, for example, it takes an action to equip a shield, and long resting cannot be done in medium or heavy armor. I will fully admit though, casters are not invulnerable, especially at early levels (

[@nfrigano4028]

@jaceg810 the point i am making is that the adventure you are running isnt a scripted video game. The DM can and SHOULD throw curve balls to players/parties treating it as such. Thats the fix to all the complaints on this video

[@jaceg810]

@@nfrigano4028 You do have a point, and it makes the casters weaker. I think a practical example is that I currently play an 9th level wizard, and on most days, I always waste a 4th level slot by not using it until the long rest. Mostly because I want to have a backup slot in case something happens. This does make casters a bit weaker, since it obviously would be stronger if I was able to use all my spellslots in combat. However martials also have a resource pool in hp, and would encounter difficulty if the day was suddenly 2 encounters longer.

[@chongwillson972]

@jaceg810 the gritty realism rules, also fucks over barbarians who are known for raging but can only do it twice a week.

[@comment4t0r61]

I agree that Caster are to strong compared to Martials and that Spell slots are the reason for it (indirectly), but i disagree with your solution which would basicly make caster weaker and more risky to use. Taking something away is always abd game design wise and makes player unhappys (which is why power creep normaly also cant be avoided) I have a different solution: Keep Caster as they are, but give Martials someting similar to spell slot progression. My explanation: I dont think the Problem of spell slots is that spells are to strong, as ofc 1 Fireball can do mroe in 1 round then a Martial, but its also just 1 Fireball per day. The big problem are 2 things: 1: Most important: Strengths progression: A caster gets a new spell slot every lvl and a new lvl of spell slots every 2 Lvls, this means a Caster becomes stronger every lvl, and much stronger every 2 lvls, completly independent of their Class and ubclass features. A Martial on the other hand has very certain Power Spikes. Like Take a Fighter: A Fighter lvl 1 to 5 doesnt feel much worse then a Caster, as you get good subclass features (if you actually take a good subclass like battle master at least), good features like Action surge and extra Attack at lvl 5. but what then: Between lvl 5 and lvl 11 a Fighter gets basicly nothing. the next meaningfull feature is at lvl 11 with 2x Extra Attack. That is why Multiclassing as Martial is normaly mandatory, as after lvl 5 the onyl way to get meaningfull upgrades is tog et other class stuff. thats why the best Lvl 8 Fighter is actually a lvl 5 Paladin + lvl 3 fighter. The Caster how ever gets more and better Spell slots every lvl. 2: Action Economy with Concentration: Casters can apply permanent buffs on themself for a fight with spells like Spirit Shroud, Spirit Guardian, Hex, Darkness (for advantage) or just a simple Divine Favor for a low lvl Paladin. If we compare a Fighter lvl 5 to a Warlock lvl 5, then the Eldritch blast and the fighter weapon atatck are very similar in dmg. THe fighter actually should do more dmg, especially if he has a magic weapon. but sadly the warlock will always do more dmg then the fighter, bcs he can buff his Eldritch blast with Hex, the fighter cant. That is also why the Paladin is the only "martial" class that isnt as bad as a martial, bcs he has spell slot progression tog et stronger, and also has decent concentration spells like divine favor and elemental weapon (or haste as Vengence) to boost his Weapon. On the other Hand the Ranger, the only other Martial with spell slots has spell slots (which should help), but horrible spells, as he ahs no good spells to use, and hunters mark is just so much inferior then divine blessing. I rly belive if the Ranger would get a few better class features and spells like Divine Favor and Spirit guardian on his Spell list he would be easiyl as good as paladin. Now how to fix the Problem: Give Martials (except Paladin and Ranger, bcs these already have spells and can be balanced by having decent spell lists) some sort of "Fighter Spell slots". how would I do this? Lets give and example at the Fighter class: Remove the battle master sub class of Fighter and make it a basic feature for the class: Every Fighter has acces to Manuver Points. These Manuver Points either refresh on a short rest (but then have less in total), or long rest (but mroe in total). so stay with the feature of Martials being more consistant i give an example with short Rests: --> At lvl 1 the Fighter unlocks his First Manuver Point and 3 Manuver of his Choice of the batttle master Manuver list. additionally some new Manuvers exist which give 1 Minute long effects that require concentration called "Stances". a "Stance" can for example be "offensiv stance: every weapon atatck does +1d4 dmg (basicly divine favor) or "defensiv stance" which increases the AC by +2 (basicly shield of Faith). --> THen the Fighter unlucoks 1 additional Manuver Point every 2 Lvls. On the Milestones of Half Casters (5, 9, 13, 17) the Fighter Unlocks new Manuvers, which require more Manuver Points to be used. the Manuvers at lvl 5 are lvl 2 Manuver, costing 2 Points, the at 9 cost 3, the at 13 cost 4.... . Also the Manuver Die Increases like for the Batle Master from d8 to a d10 and d12 at the certain lvls it does atm. These better Manuver are then more Powerfull in effect, but not dmg. For example an upgraded Version of the Trip Manuver could be a Manuver at lvl 5 that gives the Enemy disadvantage on the Saving Throw. But the dealt dmg is the same and with that just the dmg of 1 Manuver die. This way to spend 1 d8 (or d10/12) of dmg for a higher chance to make the Enemy prone. Or a Manuver learned at lvl 9 could make the enemy stunned until the end of your next turn if he fails a saving throw for the cost of 3 Manuver Die. Obviously the "Concentration" Manuvers would also need to get stronger. For example at lvl 5 Casters have acces to spells like Spirit shroud, which does + 1d8 dmg, so either at lvl 5 or at lvl 9 a concentration manuver that gives +1d8 dmg for the cost of 2 or 3 die would be needed then to kep up with the power progression. THen also new Concentration manuvers like "evading stance" could be learned at lvl 9 and used for 3 manuver points, which makes you so good at evading that enemy attack rolls are made with disadvantage against you (basicly blur). This way the 2 big problems of Martials would be fixed, make them more interesting to play and still would keep them balanced, as casters would still have a higher peak with spells like Fireball or wall of force at the respective lvls, but Fighters could at least keep on with the Power progession and give them a lvl to invest lvls after lvl 5. For other martials without spell slots (Barbarian and rogue) you could invent a similar feature. Ofc just also giving manuvers could be a bit lame, as Manbuvers fit flavor wise much betetr to a fighter, but a progression system like this, which gives certain points at ceratin lvls, which then can be spend to either buff attacks or interactions with class featurs could be nice. For example: a Rogue is very reliant on sneak attack. this way we could give them soemthing called "finesse points" instead of manuver points and then simialr to the figther let them sue for thigns to do. for example for a rogue thigns like "spend 1 point to apply sneak attack even without advantage or a nearby creature" or become invisible until the start fo your next turn" or "your attacks apply vulnerable against either slashing or piercing dmg until your next atack hits" (this way a dual wilder rogue could atatck to make vunerable and then follow up with a sneak attack to do more dmg. ofc this wouldnt be a 1 point ability but at least 2 or 3). a concentration spell could let you get advantage on stealth checks or something like that. And Barbarian could Have "Durability points" with effects like "spend a point to half your dmg taken by the recived atack as a reaction" (for rage synergie) or "if you hit an enemy with an atatck you can grapple him by spending X points" or "if you would be reduced to 0 Hit points stay at 1 Hp by spending a Point" or what ever barbarin players would like and fit the theme of a strong enduring war machine. for concentration "durability aspects" or "acts of willpower" (how ever we name them) you could have things like "your attacks push an enemy 5 feet away" or "you add a Bonus of X to your Wisdom and Charisma checks " (to be an enduring warrior that falls less often to mental traps) and so on. It would be very easy to find fitting "manuvers" for every class as well for their thigns to do with them activly as well as for concentration buffs to be able to finally use their action economy together with having a normal power progression compared to caster classes. And tbh I also think its the only way to ever balance Martial charackters, as without giving them basicly "martial spell slots" the spell slot progression system will always overshadow Martials. I mean compare Fighter lvl 9 to a Sorcerer/ Wizard: 1 gets 5 lvl spells, the other gets indomibale.... yeah. you rly are happy when you reach lvl 9 as fighter or barbarian or rogue.... And as one last thing: The new scond wind rule or Dnd One sadly is completly useles. being able to heal 1d10 hp a few more times as bonus action adn then maybe move an additional 10 feet is completly useles compared to spell slot progression and concentration spells. and idk why they give Fighter 6 Weapon masterys and Paladins/ Ranger 2, as most players will only have 1 weapon they gona use, as they will have 1 best weapon. and as such most people will only use and need 1 weapon mastery (as you can change them anyways from time to time. and noone will not use their flameblade or +2 longsword with +1d4 fire dmg to take out their vainla mace for the weapon mastery effect. also by the rules to equip weapons in combat you cant even switcvh this much in between weapons without letting your weapons fall down all the time..... its not thought trough at all.

[@PlehAP]

I think this video has rather convinced me that the problem is more specifically Spell Levels, while Slots are just an imperfect way of trying to reign in the problems of balancing powerful spells. And part of that, too, is the fact that high level play is where it all really goes off the rails. The game doesn't really need to go past 10th level, or rather it's not suited to the same type of fantasy past 10th level. I have a rule of thumb that your characters get conscripted to deal with problems in the multiverse if you hit 10th level. No more wading around in the material plane with commoners; you're too valuable for such trivial pursuits (except on special occasions).

[@Youcancallmeishmaell]

High level play doesn't go off the rails. People try to shove veritable Demigods, into human scale stories and wonder why they trodover everything.

[@PlehAP]

@@Youcancallmeishmaell hm. Shoving demigods into human stories and seeing them bulldoze everything sure sounds like it could be described as going off the rails. You know, the rails of human story.

[@Youcancallmeishmaell]

@PlehAP The problem is Game Masters trying to run human scale stories, with player characters that have out scaled them. Have the PC fight enemies in their weight class.

[@Wyrmshield]

5e Spell slots already do function as mana, but each level of spells has their own mana pool and each spell costs 1 of that level's mana. So fireball costs one 3rd level mana and is boosted if you spend 4th level mana or more instead

[@nlb137]

Cantrips already remove the 'low end of the curve'. How much weaker is a caster spamming a cantrip vs. a martial attacking a couple times a round? Cantrips gave casters an "auto-attack" they can use between their big spells, but martials haven't gotten an equivalent of "big spells" in exchange. I made a 3.5 homebrew "onmyoji" class that I think has an interesting way to balance things; since you have to write some runes on a paper talisman for each spell, casting a spell 'from scratch' is inherently slow; you can only have a couple talismans already ready (in which case casting is a standard action), and once you use those up, it takes a full round to fire off a spell. Basically you make the the 'balance curve' apply *within* each fight. Don't let the wizard fire off 2 fireballs in one fight, then have none later. You get one fireball per fight; you can be stronger than the fighter for a big round, then weaker as the fight wears on.

[@harshpeter]

@@nlb137 Do you guys even play games or just hate casters by default. Cantrips (warlock eldritch blast excluded) don't do *neaaaarly* as much damage as attacks. They aren't even close

[@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917]

​​​@@harshpeter The issue isn't that cantrips do damage. It's that a Wizad can deal damage to 20 enemies on a turn, 10 on a "miss" and then turn around and spam 2d10 (avg 11 damage) afterwards. Meanwhile a fighter on the same level can deal 2d6+3 (10) damage to 2 guys if he's really lucky.

[@harshpeter]

@@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917 Have you ever seen a wizard deal damage to 20 enemies? what games are you playing?. Fighter has action surge but even if he didn't. I have never met a fighter that didn't get a magic weapon at high levels. there are SO MANY things that can buff weapon attacks and almost nothing that buffs spells. As I keep saying it sounds like people just "theorize" instead of playing the actual game

[@NeutralDrow]

Cantrips very rarely target more than one enemy at a time (just six, that I can see), don't natively get ability score-to-damage, and are much harder to damage buff than weapon attacks. There is no equivalent of GWM/PAM/SS/etc. for spells in general, and the only single-target cantrip with higher average damage than either a 20 DEX Rogue with SA or a 20 STR Barb with a greataxe (both achievable by level 8 with point-buy), does _poison damage._ And that's not even getting into Fighters. The only cantrips that can match a Fighter's round-per-round average damage are Eldritch Blast, and the three AoE cantrips (Sword Burst, Word of Radiance, Thunderclap) _if_ they hit at least three enemies. So...no, cantrips other than Eldritch Blast don't really raise resourceless-casters to the level of martials, even when those martials aren't using their own limited resources. They're there to keep casters from being useless, and to provide small utilities. (OT, but there was an official 3.5 onmyouji class: the shugenja. It functioned differently, though.)

[@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917]

@@harshpeter For some strange reason I've just been notified of your response as of now. ..... RESPONSE 1: Multiple times really. Both as a DM and player. If you use the mob rules in the DMG and roll initiative in groups you can keep combat relatively swift with up to 30 creatures in combat. As long as the enemies are CR1/2 and below it has no real issues. I've also ran many enemies with 4e's mob rules (initiative and actions as normal, but 1 hp). ..... RESPONSE 2: Wow, he has a chance to attack up to 4 guys every short rest. Such power, considering the info gathered that states most groups have only 2 short rests per session. ..... RESPONSE 3: At high enough levels no martial magic weapon is as useful as just regular combat spellcasting. A Flame-tongue Greatsword with a 20str 9th level fighter deals 4d6+5 (19) damage up to 2 times a turn, dealing slightly more damage (up to 38) if both attacks hit a single enemy, meanwhile a single casting of Cone of Cold deals 8d8 (36) to up to as many enemies fit in a 60ft cone (even if we say something like 4 enemies that's 144 damage). If the fighter has GWM then it's at least something close to comparable with 58 damage to a single enemy, or 29 to 4 (126) with AS, under the assumption that he hits all attacks with than -5 modifier. Notice how much effort and work has to go with dealing this level of damage, as opposed to the Wizard just casting a spell he picked up that level. Aside from that whether you get a decent magic weapon or a basic one is entirely dependent on GM generosity. A Magic weapon can range from this Flame-tongue to a simple +1 weapon and we know what's more likely to be chosen by the average DM. Now if this where the old days where the same things applied to a Casters spells that would be fair, as of now it doesn't. Though I will admit that if you play the rules as close to RAW as possible and roll for treasure this wouldn't really be a problem.... but then to turn your question back at you, how many times have you seen a group Roll for treasure? ..... RESPONSE 4: Perhaps the reason there's so much stuff to Buff Weapon attacks is due to how underwhelming they are compared to spells....why buff spells that are already powerful? What is worse overall though is that half the stuff used to buff weapon attacks in okder editions like various oils and stuff, didn't make it to 5e. If anything the best thing 5e ever did for the whole caster-martial divide is nerf the casters via concentration. ...... ...... ...... Look man, its not like people that complain about this are asking for much. Something like adding an extra die of damage at Lv 5 or 10, maybe only active during AS, or copying the Martial Advantage feature and letting it apply during certain conditions is enough. Will either of these 2 options really unbalance the game so much? The first matches the NPC fighters in the Monster Manual and DMG with their Brute feature. The second follows the progression of the most Martial Monster. As far as Utility goes, giving them an extra proficiency is good enough...most people are aware that they're sacrificing Utility for the fighter man shtick. Forgive me if this reads as too snarky Ar the end of the day my conclusion is Play Pathfinder.

[@WilliamRoop-xt6rp]

The original design of D&D created balance in casters v martial by front loading martials in lower levels while making casters extremely weak... Low HP, almost no armor or weapons, and only 1 or 2 spells KNOWN and cast a day meant that martial classes had to protect their caster and spells were a last resort or saved for "real" danger. As the editions progressed, equalizing can trips to be the "dagger and bow" equivalent for casters changed the balance. In 1ed a beginner caster with 2 HP was common. Now they tend to have 6 HP. Fighters weren't nerfed, casters were improved... This breaking the balance

[@LB_adventurer]

the biggest problem with DnD is that it's basically high fantasy super heroes. There is far to much power creep and you lose all balance when you do that. Then the only way to balance it becomes that 4e (or video game balancing) methodology which homogenizes the games. The second large problem is the anticipation of balance that everyone wants which is inherently a very video gamey concept and not good for role playing. DnD isn't supposed to be a tactical combat simulator, it's a game where people role play their characters in a variety of situations. But modern DnD has erased and/or altered a lot of the non-combat oriented abilities/skills. Prime example is that there shouldn't be a rogue... It's supposed to be a thief, who isn't the greatest fighter and can't cast spells is supposed to be a master thief with lots of underground connections in cities. Those are role playing skills that have value in a party where your emphasis isn't all on combat encounters. Conclusion = the problem is expectations vs actual table top game play

[@Glorious_Mane]

I'd suggest checking out the Genesys RPG magic system. Casters aren't really more powerful than gun, bow, or sword users in that system at a baseline, and the progression available to each character scales pretty cleanly across the adventure. The spells you get don't change from the beginning to the end, but your casting stats improve. Casting causes you damage to your stamina, but healing stamina is one of the things you can do with your roll result, as is activating extra effects on your spells. Putting those effects on your spells also makes the roll more difficult. So that creates an interesting risk/reward system where as the caster grows, they can get flashier spells, while the spells they used to struggle with become more likely to be free.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

I'll add it to the list!

[@dylanhyatt5705]

Spell casters and martials are very well balanced in Pathfinder - though I am not a fan of the spell-slot system. The balance derives from the mathematical approach the design team at Paizo took - where Feats for Martials raises the bar significantly, and spells on their own are unlikely to swing an encounter - team work is inbuilt in the design. Though obviously I am generalising here, check out sone of the Rules Lawyer's 20th level playthroughs.

[@MrSmitejr]

Which pathfinder? Certainly not 1e, their solution was to make a ton of 3/4th casters with excellent combat abilities and leave martials and half-casters in the dust.

[@Luckyleol]

​@MrSmitejr pathfinder second edition

[@triccele]

I love the magic system in a game I love but not to many people know called Grimm, there you also have to roll to cast a spell, if you go under the challenge of the roll, you fail, but if you "crit" a roll, then the magic takes hold over you and you become strange, you mutate or develope a personality quirk. You also get physically weaker every time you use magic until you can rest.

[@alexmiller1800]

“Dnd is not a pvp game” - Jeremy Crawford That’s a phase that’s been rattling around in my brain since I heard it, and it has changed my perspective on some things. I think the best way to balance a party is to have players who are willing to let someone else take the spotlight. If you’re playing a Wizard, let the Rogue do the sneaking rather than use teleportation and invisibility to do it for them. Better yet, use your spells to help the Rogue. Don’t just spam Fireballs to end a fight, cast Haste on your Fighter to help them fight better. Be willing to work as a team and share the spotlight so when the time comes for you to shine and start chucking Fireballs and Walls of Force around, the rest of your party will be happy to take a step back and root for you, rather than all fighting amongst each other for the spotlight. Course, I’d still love to see the gap between magical and non-magical classes narrowed, but dnd is a big, complex game and having good people at the table goes a long way to fixing the games issues.

[@vitorroda1163]

very pretty on paper and terrible in reality let's suppose we are playing curse of strahd: the warrior spent 100% of his resources in the fight against baba lysaga, however the wizard only "helped" the other players "for fun" and did not cast fireball or more appropriate spells, this results in the death of a player because the combat ended up being difficult. When it comes to story, it may even make sense for the character to hold back in battles, which however may NOT be the character's personality, however D&D has the old problem of economy of actions, as long as it is better to cast a fireball than to "help your little friends" players will continue to cast fireballs While casting haste on the warrior will give him a glorious +1 attack and make him move faster, a fireball will potentially cause 25 damage to 1 to 20 enemies. "So don't make combats that difficult, make them easier, where the combatants will be able to cope without the help of a fireball" The problem with this is that easy combats are boring for the GM and the players (I'm talking about important combats like bosses, not the 3 goblins at the entrance to the dungeon). And at the end of the day, the conjurer player wants to have fun like everyone else at the table. He doesn't want to be the caretaker for the other players (in general, there may be players who prefer this, the few times I've played conjurer I've done this). They want to cast fireball and see lots of dice rolling on the table. I usually play as GM, but the few times I've been a player I've alternated between warrior, sorcerer, ranger, and wizard. As I mentioned above, I played as a spellcaster who "helps" his teammates, and at the end of the day, there is no plausible reason to just help, at almost all times you have a better tool than the other players to solve their problems. Going back to the Curse of Strahd, the rogue could sneak in with good stealth rolls to snoop around some rooms in Strahd's castle, which could potentially in extreme cases cause a danger that the player might not want to run into knowing that the wizard can summon a companion to snoop around. The fact that the wizard exists and CAN do things better than literally everyone else ruins the atmosphere or the fun of playing with other things, after all, why would I, as a warrior, still do anything if I can just watch the wizard kill everything in existence, overcome any obstacle or travel the world with a fucking 6-second action.

[@davidhobbs6292]

It is so hard to believe that removing all a spellcaster's weaknesses and balancing elements over time lead to them being overpowered. What a crazy-random-happenstance. There are tons of systems out there that balance that stuff. I just assumed the people designing the game like OP spellcasters in their ivory tower of design.

[@xolotltolox7626]

Spell slots would be more fine if it was proper vancian instead of the weird halfassed "everyone is sponataneous"-system we have now If only DnD had come out after larry niven popularised Mana, if only adhering to legacy for no other reason than "it was like this in the past" wasn't such a high priority for wizards Because also, gettign rid of spell slots and introducing mana would also solve another big issue DnD design has: Concentration If you had mana you could replace concentration with upkeep costs, to limit pre buffing, buff stacking etc. without just going into a hard "no!" like 5E, where you only get to concentrate on your one busted spell and just spam cantrips for the rest of combat Edit: Also with the longer rest rules, that nerfs martials more, especially at higher levels, because martials(and the group in general) will run out of hit-dice before the casters run out of slots, the graph you showed is insanely wrong, only one the caster runs out of his last slot, should he actualyl become weaker than a martial, especialyl since if you are playing well, you will conserve high level slots, and not jus tcast the high level ones first, then peter out towards lower level ones

[@jeice13]

Yep, the abundant spell slots make much more sense when you often waste half of them on situational counter measures. Also its kind of dumb how powerful cantrips get now

[@xolotltolox7626]

@@jeice13 yeah, cantrips are stupid too, they basically deal weapon damage, but at range with also better damage types

[@jeice13]

@@xolotltolox7626 people wanted to play casters without any of the weaknesses that balanced there strengths. At least when pathfinder started the unlimited cantrips they were as weak as 3.5 0 levels but useable more often. Now they are on par with martials full attack action

[@JohnOlsen-dt9ek]

Yeah, I don't get how using simple cantrips like Color and Flavor got transformed in 5E into major attacks that put many warriors to shame. WAY too powerful IMHO.

[@vonnegutfrey8714]

Spell system idea for D&D. What if instead of having spell slots, you can only cast spells the level of what round of the fight you are on. So, on the first round, you can only cast 1st level spells, the second 1st and second-level spells (with upcasting), and so on and so forth until you can cast fight-ending ninth-level spells like meteor swarm or true polymorph on the ninth round. Then, noncombat spells have casting times and components based on their level to have a similar philosophy. Then, let Marshal and Skill Monkey classes get more cool stuff like 5.5e is trying to do, but with the balance difference, they can always do this cool stuff immediately. This way, spell casters can solve any problem, but they do so way slower than nonmagical classes, so skill checks still matter in desperate situations, and in fights, marshals protect the spell caster so they survive to cast bigger spells or charge right in and exhausting all their resources ending things early can still make a huge difference. The biggest issue with this is early levels, where casters are resourceless, which makes first-level spells broken and cantrips useless. This could potentially be solved by cantrips becoming the new first-level spells and all previous spells shifting up one level, with LV 10 spells now being the max. Alternatively, spell slots can still be used in addition to this, but I feel that would just make casters unhappy. Having resources to keep track of, in addition to the turn, would probably feel pretty bad and fitting. A common solution is having a manna system like JRPGS or Hearthstone, for example, where a spell level is how much mana it costs, and players have one mana on the first turn, then on the next, they have two, and so on. This would give more flexibility, allowing casters to cast two lower-level spells in one turn effectively, but it's still more fittingly and doesn't solve the resource problem. Other solutions include making marshals resources for real, but that makes the balance of things like Rage and Action Surge shaky. Ultimately, I'm sure there's a solution, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and this system as a whole.

[@jspsj0]

4e was ahead of it's time.

[@BDSquirrel]

It was a mash together of Shining Force, Diablo 2, and other video game elements. There was also the ripoff of Dragonewts from Discworld and a further name ripoff from the Elder Scrolls series by calling them dragonborn. There was already a half dragon template! It had NOTHING good or original.

[@simonjay9758]

@@BDSquirrel Dragonborn are pre- 4e

[@BDSquirrel]

@@simonjay9758 No. No they are not. Unless, they're part of that horrid toward the end of 3.5 release fecal matter that was prepping for raw sewage edition.

[@badnewsBH]

Magic users were better in the older versions because: 1. They were weak. Low HP, low AC, never good in combat, needed martial characters to keep them safe to cast spells. 2. Casting times for spells. Fireball and Lightning Bolt did more damage, but took a segment (equivalent of a round now) for each level i.e. three full rounds to cast. You needed protection to finish the spell, or else... 3. Interrupting spells were lost. No save, no partial damage, just gone. In other words, it was expensive to be a magic user. You really were a glass cannon, and without a party to help you, you weren't making it through one fight. Now, that doesn't mean it was perfect, but something closer to that is better overall.

[@ryanlarkin9783]

Simple answer. Give martial cool and fun feats. Then, bound spell damage better and better specify and control the effects of spells. Next balance the monster succeeding saves and introduces a stepped save system. You mention Pathfinder 1st which is really just a clone of DND 3.5, but fail to mention Pathfinder 2nd edition which by far fixed this very problem.

[@skylarstaten8752]

you may be too young to know this. But in 2nd Ad&d, the wizard was VERY weak and easily killed, a d4 hp with max +2 hp, so they would get one shot all the time, IF you could get them to high enough level, (which also took MORE xp) then you would be more powerful than the martial classes.

[@beowylfen]

It’s not a problem by accident it’s by design. The Grognards wanted it that way, so it is that way. Look at 4th, martials were doing goofy shit too, but the old guard hated it so we went back to a system they liked.

[@BDSquirrel]

Amen. I consider that last real D&D to be Pathfinder 1e. It still holds the spirit of the original.

[@andrecosta8680]

​@@BDSquirreljust play martials if that is you want

[@BDSquirrel]

@@andrecosta8680 You completely missed what I stated. I dropped the, as I see it, fake D&D since the horrendous 2008 release and went onto other systems. Pathfinder 1e is one of them. HackMaster 5e is another that came out a bit later. Both are superior to what whackjobs of the coast has put out. Also, HackMaster 5e uses spell points and not spell slots. It is also a low magic system as magic is potentially very dangerous to use in it. Thus, a dynamic balance was struck along with making all stats not dump stats. This helps to kill off the min/maxing in the game.

[@rommdan2716]

As always, the answer to all the problems with DnD is "Play another game", always, without exceptions

[@Julius-t4f]

There was never supposed to be balance. My father taught me a phrase when I was very small. "Until Fireball the party carries the wizard. Then the wizard carries the party". The entire point was to create a life lesson between the smart and the strong.

[@FuzzyGhost]

I'm kinda surprised (maybe you never encountered the rulebook) Mage: The Ascension. Each mage can pick a sphere of influence (entropy, forces, matter, life, time, etc) to invest in, which determines what kind of magic they can cast. The difficulty arises from the fact that the modern world doesn't believe in magic, and the more powerful effects increase the difficulty of even casting a spell. You can spend quintessence to reduce the difficulty, but you still risk getting paradox, which can cause any manor of inconveniences to your character. It could be as minor as suffering a slight injury, to reality police abducting you and hauling your character off to some mockery of a court. I do think that martial characters should get near-magical abilities to balance things out, but they should also cost a resource of sorts, like stamina or something. Either that, or every ability, magical or no, should just have a dice roll determine success and effectiveness.

[@ianmcguire5231]

While I agree with many of your points, I believe the desire to "balance" the classes, in and of itself, is anathema to the original intent of spellcasters and martials. This goes all the way back to the old: "Linear fighters, exponential wizards", where wizards started at lower levels being exceedingly weak and incompetent, i.e. having only one 1st level spell slot and no cantrips, and that this cost, of needing to play an originally weak character, is stabilized by the eventual power that comes at higher levels. In short, in this older version of play, a 10th level fighter doesn't, and I would argue shouldn't, be as powerful as a 10th level wizard. Modern D&D messes with this original idea in several ways, the most notable being cantrips. In an attempt to make the game more fun, they buffed the experience of early spellcasters. However, this throws off the "Linear fighters, exponential wizards" dichotomy, hence players such as yourself strive to find ways to balance something that needn't be balanced to begin with. I fully understand however, that this uneven class power level probably isn't conducive to a more modern, broad-appeal, roleplaying game, and so agree that the best thing to do, if we truly do want to ditch this old system, would be to throw away spell slots. However, it is incredibly unlikely that they will do so, because spell slots encourage older veterans to look upon the modern game with Nostalgia. Also, spell slots were originally designed to slavishly mimic the magic system presented within Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" series of short stories.

[@vyor8837]

Spell slots work fine. Just don't allow long rests after every combat or even at the end of every session

[@EpsilonRosePersonal]

Linear fighters, exponential wizards is a criticism, not something you should strive for.

[@vyor8837]

@@EpsilonRosePersonal ehh, it's rather hard to make casting linear in power. Other systems have tried and never had much luck. White Wolf, as an example, is forced to give everyone some form of magic to keep up... and even there, explicit spell casting is still above the more martial options. Thaumaturgy just beats most vampire disciplines, and it's not like those are weak either. Magic is just made strong by giving more options, martials are made strong by improving what they're already doing. In a dnd context, the spell Heat Metal does a lot less damage than a Fighter does, by quite a lot and uses a spell slot where the fighter can do that damage every turn until death. To compensate for this, Heat Metal has utility, forcing the Fighter to make a save or drop his weapon. There's even a weakness built into that, if they drop the weapon they take no damage. Heat Metal, for all of those drawbacks, is still one of the strongest spells a Druid can learn. It is not an exaggeration to say that Variety is infinitely more powerful than getting more damage.

[@LeFlamel]

Spell slots are a poor bastardization of Vance. In Dying Earth there was no concept of "spell levels," and the more spells you had prepared the more likely caster would go insane or have their head explode. That risk/reward is gone.

[@ianmcguire5231]

@@LeFlamel Indeed. I also found it incredibly incongruous from the modern day that these masters of the arcane were only able to memorize four spells at once. I really like that honestly, makes magic feel like a precious resource that even the most scholared find troublesome to get right. If I remember correctly, I could be wrong, Turjan had to rely on his sword-play to fend for himself just as much as his spells. In my own roleplaying game I did something very strange in order to fabricate this dynamic. I locked players to a certain spell level. So if you wanted to memorize 3rd level spells you can only memorize spells of 3rd level or lower, and you only have some number (say 4) spell slots. If that same levelled wizard were to opt for 1st level spell slots instead, they would get maybe 9 or so spell slots to make up for the fact that each individual spell is less powerful. This also is intended to create a greater emphasis on party cohesion, since different players might want to keep different spells memorized across the party. Obviously my attempt to mimic the fantasy isn't for every system/party/table, and it only really works because of the way combat is already so party-centric. I guess I originally wanted to just say that I agree with you, and we both recognize that sacrifices/changes have to be made in the process of porting fantasy to an interactive format.

[@garroshhellscream594]

After trying a house system with a "craft your own spells" with some rules for ranking them (which means they cost or less depending of that rank), I have observed something. Spells, when they simply don't use numerical values (number of heal or damages) but comes with special effects, are impossible to rank. My players have been searching the most cost efficient things possible and fucked many many situations with low levels spells in a way I couldn't expected and totally break the difficulty curves spells were supposed to have. My first lesson is to not let players create their spells, but the seconds comes to spells levels. Goodberry is an insane level 1 spell that nullifies one of the whole point of having a low level ranger in your party, for his ability to make sure your party doesn't struggle with eating in the wild. You can feed villages easily on a daily basis with this spell without the need to be especially high level. Hell, being a level 1 spell, we can just ask ourselves why hunger would even still exist, considering how easy it is to create quick and filling food from nowhere. But it doesn't do that much when you look at an adventure in general. Even if your party of 20 level characters locked in a dungeon into the depth of the abyss themselves are totally depending on it to stay well. There is a lot of spell like that that are insanely good for low levels, but at the same time feels like it will be complicated to raise them higher because they will not competitive. Thus, limiting your ability to cast spells based on level falls appart as much as you level up. They quickly grow out of control, and because each spells level have some usefull spells that can find a creative way to be used, you end up having level 20 magicians that still can used under some specific situations level 1 spells in priority compared to level 9 spells. There is not a clear power creep that makes those older spells weak, they are not. The power of a normal caster (not a min maxer that try to be both heavily armored with the best spells of the game) will still be extraordinarily high because optimizing your spellslots is the most natural things you do with some empirics data ("I dont use anymore this spell at all, let's try that one, oh, it works really well despite being 10 levels olds, ok cool, I keep it"). A caster should be above a martial with his actual max level spells and around the same power with the level behind. But this is not how it works, all casters can do some basics and obvious optimization to make even the level 1 spells worth a shot and better than what a martial can do in general in many situations. And so, they end up getting absurdly strong by the sheer amount of options for everything they. And there is no balance for those spell levels possibles. So the solutions are : - Drastically reduces the number of spellslots per day. TBH, I wouldn't mind spellcasters to have 10 slots in total with a limited amount of use for their highest levels, hell it would even make the warlock a good spellcaster. - Buff martials to give them a way to replicate casters. Balance the system pretty well but throw away the very concept of magic imho. This is why D&D4 is not liked, and why Pathfinder V2 didn't totally replaced V1 like you could have imagined. - Specialized casters, stop with a spellcaster being able to *breath* monotarget dpt, monotarget CC, multitarget dpt, multitarget CC, aoe dpt, aoe CC, hydridations of that, replicated skills, replicated class features, heal, resurrect, teleport, open portals, summons, buff, debuff, raise their AC, lower the enemy AC, damage in melee, improve actions economy, disable the battlefield, shut down buildings, find things hidden, identify magic, spells and items, talk any language, shapeshift... I'm not finished but martials do this "Mono target DPT, rather limited CC (like shove or grapple), high AC, relatively high hitpoints" and they generally don't do a lot of that. Casters can do a lot of what I mention at the same time in the same day with minimal preparations and many of them can adapt one day to another (divine and primal spellcasters and magicians, more or less everyone except sorcerer and warlock I think?). Spellcasters should have some specialization. The rare ones you find within archetypes just makes them insanely good at something (like Life clerics being able to max spells hitpoints healed) but they don't make their other spells weaker or limit them. I can play an abjuration wizard really solid and still control the battlefield, do high damages, teleport the party, influenced NPCs and replace half the skills of the party. They should commit into a direction or lose something, and for me, it would definitely be being way more limited on the number of spells/day (I don't like making them average jack of all trades because those characters are just bad in general in any party composition and end up being bad everywhere, especially in a binary systems where you either win or lose without a middleground with an "average" success). - Antimagic being common : not enough options can break magic in the game and they are generally a spellcaster options. I can't kick but face of a wizard summoning a spell with a reaction as a warrior, just hit it and pray it's enough to kill him. But any level 5th wizard can try to shut down the spells of a level 20 lich at range, and will have a good chance of successing at it. - Magic having a price : hard to find "what" price but magic being dangerous push players to limit it's usage. Imagine if each spells you cast reduces your total hit point for the day for twice the levels of spells. One level 9 spells cost you 18 hp you can't get back until tomorrow. I should mention the true vancian system, so you prepare a specific spells depending the number of slots you have, but D&D3.5 proved it didn't worked to balance. In fact, people were just taking the best spells that generally could work on almost any situations.

[@mos5678]

Meanwhile in more balanced systems.... the lvl 20 monk repeatedly kicks the dragon up higher and higher into the air before jumping after them and slamming them down with a suplex. And if the dragon still breathing you bet they gonna do it again.

[@harshpeter]

@@mos5678 Ain't no way you getting lucky enough to hit 3 times with pf2e MAP

[@mos5678]

​@@harshpeter in a vacuum against a creature on-level with the party Yeah, I would call it a waste of time. But you mean to tell me that a monk at that level has not taken something that reduces MAP to a more managable -3 -> -6. Or that the monk more likely than not has a +2-3 status bonus from a party member or magic item, and that the target is offguard to begin with? We sure we playing the same game here?

[@harshpeter]

@@mos5678 In my game dragons are usually hard to hit cause they are usually *boss* fights(even with the perfect situation bonuses you mentioned) . Maybe we play different games

[@christhiancosta1844]

Straight against an enemy on-level it would be almost impossible Now, with decent set up which should be a no-brainer at that level? Yeah can totally see that happening PS: not shilling for pf2e, actually don't like that system for ton of reasons, just saying how it plays

[@mos5678]

​@@harshpeter The situation i mentioned is pretty much the assumed default state of a level 20 martial in a functioning party. Before aid, status penalties and the highest status bonuses come into play. You still hit the last strike as long as you roll above a 7. But the dragons paizo have released arent boss creatures at level 20 either. The only ones above with the dragon trait are typically divine manifestations.

[@SomeoneElse-fr8yu]

One aspect of balanced being missed here is that in the older versions, being a caster was a high risk high reward style, you had to survive being the weak link in a very deadly game. As modern designers and playstyles have moved away from deadly play and thus casters surviving the early levels is no longer a gatekeeping feature, well that throws things off, and none of the modern designers seem to understand and account for this.

[@pyronicdesign]

The problem is not spell slots. The problem is that casters progress at the same rate as martials. Originally, casters progressed slower and, in fact, had to spend exp to create wondrous items. This was clunky but balanced in that the designers knew that spells were inherently more powerful than anything a martial could do. Edit: As an aside, in pathfinder one if the major complaints that 5e players have with casters is that they do not feel as strong as martials. This us because 5e players are used to being better strikers than martials with ac targetting spells that are just flat better than any martial attack. In pathfinder 2e, casters will never compete with martials for single target attacks. This makes them properly balanced with martials so that, while casters at the end of their progressions are doingvreduculous things, martials are still the best at what they are supposed to be doing. For the most part, there are edge cases that thevremastrr aims to fix.

[@FraternityOfShadows]

I think that it is completely riddiculous, that cantrips scale as well (and even better!) than fighter's multiattack...

[@danielbarnes1241]

Y'all keep recommending this while actively ignoring that casters hated it and that it existed at the same time as martial getting tons of stuff (including weapons with spells imbued into them) for free.

[@leotamer5]

I don't have much sympathy for spellcasters upset they don't do as much single target as people who specialize in single target damage or who completely undermine the need for skill monkeys to exist because they have that much utility. If you want to play a magical striker, Kineticist exists. Some of the caster classes are a bit underwhelming but some of the best classes are casters, in particular bard.

[@josephpurdy8390]

1e AD&D the DM had a lot more control over what spells casters got. Magic-users had to choose spells over levels in terms of gold expenses. Clerics had to pray for which spells they got and for what purpose they serve after 2nd level spells. 6th and 7th were directly assigned by the deity. Disobey and your wasting your turn casting it. Fighters had more gold to share with henchmen, and hirlings. Don't have to commit themselves to spending excessive time outside of adventuring. A group of fighters can engage in tatics together.

[@antoniusmaximus3174]

They way I do magic I feel is awesome. You get to choose from various disciplines and then you just come up with your own spells. You want a more powerful version of that spell you roll spell burn dice (d4s) with it. Say you are a fire mage. You can manipulate fire anyway you want to. You roll to cast but you roll a D4 with it and it takes points off of your spell burn pool you want a wall of fire? Go for it, you want it more powerful? roll another D4 and it doubles the power of it but you loose more spell burn. You go past your spell burn you can use your HP to keep it going. I like it in the sense that you just come up with spells in that discipline. Is it balanced? not at all but its dangerous and chaotic as magic should be. There is a risk of using it and the reward is worth the cost of life. It is also just faster when you have your wizard sitting there looking through all his list of spells for 50 fucking minutes to see what he wants to cast or you can say hey you can manipulate fire in anyway you want so they come up with their own situational ways of using their powers.

[@jonr4291]

If you make action costs of spells multiply by the level of the spell, then suddenly you really need those martials to hold the line while you get that fireball going.

[@mariomario-dy1kc]

And since most fights don't actually last that long, that means the martials don't just hold the Frontline but actually finish the fight, making wizards useless... Why is everyone so focused on nerfing the fun classes rather than buff the boring basic ones?

[@Matthias129]

@@mariomario-dy1kc Maybe because when martials got buffed to do fun heroic feats in the likes of Tome of Battle for 3.5 and 4e's power system all the mana-lovers cried that it wasn't "realistic" and whined that martials could do cool stuff like those dandies in fancy bathrobes could? If us sword-chuckers can't be at the same heights as the magic-flingers, they should wallow in the depths with us! For real though, look at the comments where people mention 4e's power system, or Tome of Battle, or letting martial characters be like the larger-than-life heroes of myth and legend and do fantastical feats of strength/dexterity and see how most of them are followed by replies of how it doesn't fit the "themes of D&D" or the "gritty/grounded realism of the setting." It follows that if the solution to the disparity between them isn't to bring the bottom up, it has to be the top down. That said, I'm not sure what "realism" they're talking about in a setting where _gods, monsters, and magic_ exist, and the whole "themes of D&D" where the theme is larger-than-life heroes in a high fantasy setting running around saving the world means that fighters/barbarians can't do crazy feats of strength. But, I'm of the opinion that martials should doing cool shit that doesn't just amount to "I roll a d20 and then two d6s" and relying on describing their actions in a "cool" way to get their fantasy fulfillment. Not too cool, though, lest the wizard complain about the barbarian narratively smashing a troll with a wagon it was ransacking, while the upstart magician is summoning volcanoes, opening portals to eldritch and unknowable locations, and melting the brains of every goblin in a two mile radius. Don't want the poor caster's immersion ruined by -someone else doing something awesome- -a hero doing something heroic- breaking the physics constraints of a mystical realm, do we?

[@afelias]

@@mariomario-dy1kc Well why would a spellcaster use a 5th level or higher spell for an encounter that didn't need it? If the Wizard was useless for that fight, that means the Wizard wasn't thinking. The Wizard thinking, is the Wizard's job.

[@mariomario-dy1kc]

@@Matthias129 I do play mainly as wizard, and as I have stated in another comment, the Tome of Battle was great, finally giving martial classes more options in combat than just attacking, with even some usable out of combat! My experience was different though, with people complaining they wanted to play martial classes, not mages. As for not fitting dnd, monks are already kung-fu classes with Ki, and samurai and Katanas also are a thing, not to mention space pirates via spelljammers, so that's a pretty ridiculous argument.

[@mariomario-dy1kc]

@@afelias Because if the encounter is tough enough to need it, then odds are the party won't be surviving 5 turns with one member out of commission.

[@simonpeter2024]

If your players were adversaries, your point would matter, but given that they are meant to act as a team, balance between classes matters less than balance against encounters. By design, fighters benefit from the spell power of party casters. I use the Democratic Method in my groups, which deals with inevitable imbalances by putting the unfavorable outcomes in the hands of the majority. Say for instance a boss fight is going too easy. The DM admits this and then puts it to the players to help find a story solution, which may include a mechanical fix. This way you aren’t letting imbalance hijack the fun, and everyone gets to participate in pushing the campaign in a direction they want. As a player from the 1e AD&D days, I promise you that no TTRPG is as algorithmically perfect as video game RPGs, but I don’t like video games, and you actually die more often, you just don’t worry about it because starting over is automatic. I recommend appreciating the imperfections, rather than “fixing” TTRPGs to be like those.

[@GlacialScion]

I personally don't think that making a game less fun is a good solution for balance problems.

[@Xplora213]

But balance IS fun? That’s the idea anyway… Because it’s not fun to be the fighter simply running defence all the time for someone else.

[@GlacialScion]

@@Xplora213 It's not a zero-sum problem.

[@Xplora213]

@@GlacialScion I don’t disagree with you, but that’s the remit for the design team. They wanted bounded accuracy. That means sacrifices must be made. I don’t think I’d like 5e, just too much maths. And I am an accountant 😂

[@PsyrenXY]

​@Xplora213 Balance is fun but it's one fun factor among many. If that's the most important one for you, that's great, games like 4e and PF2 exist. There's no need to turn 5e into them.

[@Xplora213]

@@PsyrenXY tell the design team LOL 😂 unfortunately WOTC is an “every child gets a prize” company so you can assume it’s not going to change.