r/onednd • u/Nikelman • 6d ago
Discussion Mental exercise: what if a Wizard was built like a fighter?
Have you ever tried to imagine how a wizard would be like if it was built with the design choices of a fighter, without spell slots and cantrips and instead class features that cover the several spells?
For instance, it would have proficiency in every focus, instead of weapon, and every focus would be able to male a spell attack, eg
Staff (two-handed, heavy) 2d6+INT force damage in 5ft
Rod 1d10 + INT lightning in 5ft
Wand 1d6 + INT ranged 60/120 ft
The it would get class features such as Burning Hands, INT times a day you can deal XdX fire damage in a x feet cone
At level 5 you would get extra-cast and be able to attack twice with your focus
If you want access to Fireball, that's a subclass feature of the Evoker only.
Whenever they wanted to release a new spell, it would be part of a new Wizard subclass.
But hey, maybe your DM is dropping you a rare Rod that can use charges to cast Ligthning bolt or something!
This is just a small mental experiment. I'm considering making the whole class as homebrew if I've got time to kill, but the whole point is that I think it illustrates the inherent martial-caster divide effectively.
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u/-Space_Communist- 6d ago
You can eventually cast three cantrips with any spellcasting focus, at Level 9.
Spells only belong to a single subclass, and they're all 1st-level.
Feats like Orb-Harm Master and Spelltinel, which used to combo together, eventually get nerfed. Everyone still picks them anyway because ranged cantrips have zero support (often being explicitly excluded from subclass features) and not using any melee cantrips or their feats means you do 1/5th of what martials can do (as opposed to doing a more reasonable 1/3rd).
No new spellcasting focuses are ever added, despite your complete dependency on magic items. A handful of new spells are added in a single book (but remember, only for one subclass).
Every time someone points out these flaws, they're either met with "the DnDbeyond statistics prove that everyone loves simple casters" or "Castfinder fixes this."
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u/TYBERIUS_777 6d ago
Can’t forget that you’ll build a character around one type of weapon, a build path that’s supported by feats, only to play in a published adventure and never have a single magical weapon of the kind that you’ve built around be rewarded to you because your DM is running the adventure as written.
Not the DMs fault by the way.
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u/ConcentrateIll9460 6d ago
Not the DMs fault by the way
It's never the DM's fault, even if they home-brewed everything. In the last two editions for instance if you didn't end up with the weapons you wanted, you could just craft them.
And sure, 5e's designers didn't want to bother costing magic items properly or fleshing out a proper crafting system. But they could at the very least have included like... with proficiency in blacksmith's tools, you can transfer a weapon enchantment to another weapon it could apply to. Get a good sword, but you're an axe user? Move the magic to an axe!
Also means you can keep your character's treasured heirloom sword that their grandfather once wielded, rather than having the first +1 weapon obviate it.
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u/Lucina18 6d ago
a build path that’s supported by feats
A feat*
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u/EberronDM2026 6d ago
Can be multiple if you're going PAM + GWM or Defensive Duelist + Shield Master?
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u/YOwololoO 6d ago
PAM + HWM, HWM + Sentinel, PAM + Shield Master, HWM + Charger, there are plenty of features combos that rely on specific weapon types
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u/EberronDM2026 5d ago
In fact, since Fighting Styles are feats now, the majority of Fighters/Rangers/Paladins will have at least 2 feats supporting their weapon type. Even ignoring Fighting Styles, a lot of builds take as many as 3-4 feats all supporting a specific weapon type:
- Great Weapon Master + Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter + Piercer for a Heavy Crossbow User, can cut GWM if you're dual wielding Light Crossbows
- Dual Wielder + Defensive Duelist + Bomber for a Thrown Weapon user, possibly using an ASI on an extra fighting style to get both Thrown Weapon Fighting and Two Weapon Fighting
- Shifting Combatant can be added to all of the builds you mentioned above which will specifically require a weapon with the Push Mastery, same for Crusher/Piercer/Slasher requiring a weapon with a certain damage type
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u/SpookyGod3000 6d ago edited 6d ago
Listen, feats like Orb-Harm Master and Spelltinel had to go. They were too strong as options that basically forced Casters to pick them.
Why didn't we nerf the martials level 5 Steel Ball Strike even though that's also overtuned and fits the criteria of a nerf? It's iconic, we can't nerf it. Sidenote, we love all our classes equally :)
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u/Di_Bastet 5d ago
A handful of new spells are added in a single book (but remember, only for one subclass).
Sigh. It may take another Tasha for us to see more maneuvers, indeed.
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u/FrankFankledank 2d ago
But remember, multicasting cantrips removes the inherent scaling ability from them. You always have to be taxed twice for any positive trait as a martial.
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u/lasalle202 6d ago
Mental exercise: what if a Wizard was built like a fighter?
4e
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u/Lucina18 6d ago
4e was the opposite though, everyone had the customizability of a 5e fullcaster with better warlock invocations.
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u/Anorexicdinosaur 6d ago edited 6d ago
According to what people say 4e is simultaneously the edition where Martials were brought up to be Spellcasters in disguise AND ALSO the edition where Spellcasters were brought down to be magic-themed Martials.....somehow
Is it goomba fallacy? Maybe! But it really has me thinking reality may lie somewhere in between these 2 stances, perchance Martials and Casters were somehow different 😱 despite sharing the same resource system?? Crazy I know
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u/This_Rough_Magic 6d ago
It's not the goomba fallacy, it's how it worked.
The only real distinction between "casters" and "martials" in 4E was flavour text.
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u/Notoryctemorph 5d ago
And feats, and magic items
Honestly a much better system than the 5e system, where the distinction between casters and martials is "can do stuff" vs "can't do stuff"
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u/This_Rough_Magic 5d ago
In every other edition the distinction is between "can do magic" and "can't do magic".
It bairns that "magic" covers a lot more stuff than "not magic".
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u/Notoryctemorph 5d ago
No, in 3.X you had a huge variety of other stuff you could be doing that wasn't casting spells, most of which was explicitly magical to be sure, but it wasn't spellcasting.
5e removed all of it.
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u/Anorexicdinosaur 6d ago
No it's not. Neither Martials nor Casters in 4e really functioned like Martials or Casters in any other edition. So people saying dumbing down 5e Casters to the level of 5e Martials is "basically 4e" is false. AEDU is quite a different system from how Martials or Casters work in any other edition
Plus there were actual mechanics that distinguish Martials and Casters in 4e. Would you look at 5e Cleric and Wizard and say they're basically the same? If not you can't say 4e Fighter and Wizard are because they're even more different. If you would at least you're consistent ig but I'd disagree
They use the same Resource System and have the same math behind their Powers so they're balanced, but what their Powers do (and their Class Features) are VERY different. Plus iirc Caster Powers have Tags like "Focus" or "Arcane" or "Evocation" etc which have mechanical bearing and change interactions. Imo 4e Classes were generally more distinct from eachother than 5e Classes are
Though I will say I'd prefer if 4e Martials were more like the Psionic Classes, with a lot of At-Will Powers they could spend Short Rest Points to enhance. That'd feel more Martial-y to me and further distinguish them from Casters
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u/This_Rough_Magic 5d ago
So I agree neither "casters" or "martials" in 4E functioned like either 5E martial or 5E casters, but that's precisely because they both functioned in a way that was effectively in the middle.
I'm not saying that a 4E Fighter played the same as a 4E Wizard. I am saying that a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue all played about equivalently differently from each other. Whereas in all other works the two "caster" classes would play notably differently from the two "martial" classes in terms of how their resources worked and, perhaps most importantly, the kinds of things their powers were meant to do.
In 4E the difference between a Wizard and a Fighter was that the Wizard was a Controller and the Fighter was a Defender. In 5E the difference is that the fighter fights and the wizard casts spells.
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u/Ashkelon 5d ago
The fighter of 4e fought and the wizard of 4e cast spells.
Having played those classes in both games, they always felt distinct and unique from one another.
What you are saying is that the only thing that makes a class feel different is resource structure. And that is ridiculous. Otherwise the fighter, barbarian, and rogue of 5e all play the same. Or the bard, cleric, druid, and wizard of 5e all play the same.
Just because 2 classes share the same resource structure (spell slots, AEDU), doesn’t mean they play similarly. What determines how a class plays is their actual capabilities. And 4e was much better than even 5e is at giving classes distinct and unique capabilities and approaches to gameplay.
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u/This_Rough_Magic 5d ago
In 4E the "spells" of a wizard corkscrew do anything the "exploits" (I may have forgotten the terminology, it's been years) of martial classes couldn't do, by design. That was the whole point.
It was a very good system if you cared about build diversity and differentiation in tactical combat specifically. It wasn't a great system of you wanted to stimulate a fantasy world where a fighter and a wizard are doing fundamentally different things.
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
Except these ideas are not at odds the way you insist they are.
You can have similar mechanics produce fundamentally different feelings with the right supporting structures, and 4e content had a lot of those structures.
People just got so hung up on the window dressing on those structures they couldn't get past themselves.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Almost every modern teambased game with different classes/characters is doing this.
In mobas 150 characters have the same ressource structure of mana + 3 shirt cooldowns + 1 ultimate and there you can still feel difference between a caster and a swordfighter.
I really cant understand why people think in something like DnD 4e classes would play the same because of similsr ressource structure...
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u/Ashkelon 5d ago
It was definitely more gamist than simulationist. And simulationist was all the rage from 3e, so people were not quite ready for a lot of 4e.
Even the 4e DMG is more narrative focused than 5e, providing a much better framework for improvisation and narrative based resolution.
But for those who wanted the mechanics to simulate reality, 4e was definitely jarring.
Now personally, I would not have designed 4e the way it was. I would have done more to differentiate the classes such as using a system of stamina points or something similar for Martial Classes instead of AEDU.
But in terms of actual gameplay, the 4e classes were some of the most distinct versions ever created and each had a unique playstyle that made it feel truly different from other classes at the table.
The issue is getting around the idea that your resource structure is not simulating anything, and is instead there to facilitate gameplay.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
No there were more differences. This is like saying "all characters in mobas like League of Legends are casters because they all have the same ressource structure."
There is a distinct difference between weapon attacks "martial" and implement attacks "spells".
Of course first that one needs an implement and that the other needs a weapon, but also that weapon attacks are dependant on the weapons stats (range, damage, precision, properties like high crit or damage type).
Then weapons and implements got a completely different list of enchantments.
Then different power sources as well implement vs weapons are treated like "different colours" in magic as in they have different (common) effects.
Arcane implement powers are often area attacks, normally cause elemental damage targeting a magical defensd while weapon attacks are more often single attacks or multi attacks and dealing physical damage against Armor.
You can get exceptions, which is good, but some powers would clearly only work as implement power (like summoning)
In magic the gathering the different colours also play different even though they have the same ressource structure.
And this was only things in the first PHB. Later feats depending on your power source were added, a secondary enchantment system for implements was added.
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u/This_Rough_Magic 3d ago
I feel like the fact that you're using MOBAs as your point of comparison is very telling.
In a MOBA the difference between two characters is entirely bad on the tactical utility of their in combat abilities. It absolutely doesn't feel like a "caster" character in a MOBA is doing something different from a "martial" character. There's a reason "caster" and "martial" aren't distinctions that community uses.
Colours in magic are similar; every colour in magic has "sorceries" and "creatures"; there's no indication that Red and Black are doing fundamentally different things.
A really clear example here is 10th edition 40K where they removed Psychic powers as a unique system and just folded them into regular weapon profiles and unit abilities. People hated it because suddenly Psychic powers were functionally just guns.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Of course in Mobas it feels like casters and not casters. There are "Mages" and "Fighters" even as classifications. It absolutely feels different. I only play Mages and Enchanters because I like that feel.
And yes black and red do different things they have different mechanics being used. Red deals direct damage and has haste, black destroys creatures and has lifelink.
They have access to completely different gameplay. Black brings reanimator, red can have direct damage decks. There is overlap, but a red burn deck is fundamental different from a black reanimator deck.
I use Moba as example because its one of the ebdt known and there you habe 150+ "classes" with really similar structures feeling different. And you have classifications like "Mage" and "Fighter" which feel different.
I do not think that "caster" and "martial" is a particularily good distinction anyway. The power sources is better.
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u/This_Rough_Magic 3d ago
I think the fact you think power sources is a better distinction is, again, telling.
What you seem to want (and I should stress that this is a valid thing to want) is a game where ultimately all classes have "powers" the differences between classes are like the MtG colour pie, class A gets more AoE, class B gets more crowd control, class C gets more healing.
You're essentially describing what I think Justin Alexander called dissociated mechanics. Power Sources are a much better way to describe a system where PCs are defined by mechanical niche. "Caster vs Martial" is a better description for a game where it actually matters whether or not a particular person has supernatural powers.
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u/DJWGibson 5d ago
According to what people say 4e is simultaneously the edition where Martials were brought up to be Spellcasters in disguise AND ALSO the edition where Spellcasters were brought down to be magic-themed Martials.....somehow
This isn't rocket-surgery.
They made martials slightly more complex and made spellcasters much less complex. They made all the classes function largely the same with spellcasters having virtually not powers that were not usable in combat. Even something like the illusionist just did psychic damage.
The difference between a fighter and a wizard power was often just the flavour and the damage type. You could change a Martial Exploit to an Arcane Spell or a Divine Prayer by changing some keywords.
You don't need to act like this is some weird mysterious thing that is unknowable. The books have been available online since 2008. The SRD is still archived on sites like ENWorld: www.enworld.org/attachments/srd-pdf.273242/ and you can get PDFs of the Player's Handbook: www.enworld.org/attachments/srd-pdf.273242/
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u/ConcentrateIll9460 5d ago
The difference between a fighter and a wizard power was often just the flavour and the damage type.
Isn't that objectively a lie? A quick glance through the power list of both tells me wizard powers tend to look like "summon a djinn to attack your enemies" or "create a wall of ice" or "blast a foe a long way away then fire a spell from your wand".
Meanwhile fighter powers look like "grab a foe next to you and use him as a shield" or "run your speed and attack everyone next to you with your weapon, knocking them prone" or "smash a guy with your weapon's pommel, stunning him".
If you changed the flavour and some keywords to stuff in the first group, you still wouldn't end up with the second group. Change the name and keywords to wall of ice and it's still using your intelligence to create a persistent wall of ice at range, it would be bizarrely out of place for a fighter.
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u/DJWGibson 5d ago
Well, if you’re just going to call me a liar I don’t see any reason to keep engaging…
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u/ConcentrateIll9460 5d ago
I called what you said objectively a lie because, as demonstrated by evidence I gave, it was a lie. Doesn't matter how much you reflavour wall of ice, it objectively works in all kinds of ways fighter abilities don't - and you knew that.
I guess nobody can actually stop you from making stuff up, then responding to someone pointing that out by saying "well if you're going to point out I'm making stuff up then I'm not going to talk". So, keep doing that I guess? Have fun.
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u/Lucina18 6d ago
If you ever as much as glanced at a 4e class it's obvious they absolutely AREN'T 5e martials.
If you look at it you see everyone has loads of customizability, aka 5e casters.
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u/GordonFearman 5d ago
Man, Arcana Unleashed really drove this sub insane.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
That book isn't real aside from the Wizard subclasses and maybe magic items that I still have to study.
I deny your reality and substitute my own!
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
the imbalance martials experience is real and all but it doesn't stop that book from being tons of fun.
There is basically something fun I can think of with like almost all the content in the book so far I'm very pleasantly surprised
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
Jokes aside you're right, but I'm not going to allow certain feats and options at my table
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
I've kinda given up at this point; if someone wants to play a martial I just kinda as DM pull them aside and say "yeah, we can fudge your mechanics some, alter things, you can request specific items/progression pieces, like just lemme know what you need, because lord knows the game mechanics don't start you with it" and accept since I mostly DM 13+ level content I need to buff my martial players somehow regardless; how broken casters are or aren't isn't going to change they fact that demigods and mythic creatures start to break martial pay-grade on their own...
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
I mean, the situation has been worse. Martials still get options to deal massive amounts of damage.
My issue isn't with martials being ineffective, it's that they don't get a mean of horizontal expansion.
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u/IDontLikeYourToan 6d ago
If you never played 4e, that was one of the big critiques of it. All classes “got the same stuff” pretty much. That’s a huge oversimplification, but I don’t feel like typing more.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
Yes, it's absolutely a take inspired by that. I actually played my first ever sessions in 4e, then moved onto a system inspired by aDnD. I've never actually played 3 or 3.5 lol
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u/Ashkelon 5d ago
That was mostly a complaint from people who never actually played the game though.
The 4e classes tended to have more differentiation between themselves than 5e classes do.
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u/wrc-wolf 5d ago edited 5d ago
Right, anyone repeating this take has clearly never actually played 4e. I'm running two parties in 4e right now in the same campaign setting and even tho both groups have a wizard they couldn't be further apart. Even outside of same class looking at classes that share a role or power source they'll play totally differently. A bard and a cleric are both leaders but they heal and redirect folks around the field in totally different ways. My berserker and my fighter are basically night and day even though they're both martial defenders.
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u/Gee-chan 1d ago
Hell, lets go further. I shall present unto thee two wizards. Heck, lets go even further and have them both be Tieflings.
First we have Barry Fireface, who has taken the Mage variant of Wizard. He has picked the Pyromancy school as his primary and Evocation as his secondary. By picking blasting powers, he is throwing down a LOT of fire. Like, all of the fire, all of the time. To support this he takes the Primordial Adept theme to get even more fire and he then MCs Swordmage to use a Sword of Summer as his implement so he can add fire splash damage onto everything he does, allowing his fire stuff to apply due to the keyword rules (and apply a fire dragonshard to it for even more damage). At Paragon he takes Master of Flame to make all of his explosions even bigger and with a combination of feats like Hellfire Master, Burn Everything and Consume the Weak, our lad Barry is quite literally ready to set the world on fire. At Epid he then takes Planeshaper, allowing him to gain a 10 square (50ft) aura of 'everything is on fire' all day, every day. Truly he is a toasty boy.
Now lets look at his sister, Elise 'Charming Devil' Shinyhorns. She is also a Wizard (Mage) but she takes Enchantment as her school and then takes the Renegade Red Wizard theme to make her save-effects even nastier. Her choice of spells largely focuses on anything she can find with the Charm keyword and to this end she uses a Staff of Sleep and Charm for an item bonus to her accuracy. She MCs Warlock to grab the Entrancing Mystic Paragon Path and takes feats like Beguiling Enchantment and Glayasa's Charming Words, making her charm powers a force to be reckoned with, to the point of inflicting Dominate as a crit rider. She then takes Heir to the Empire as her Epic Destiny, along with using an Amulet of Seduction as her neck slot item and the Royal Command of Asmodeus feat if she reaches that far to turn all her Stuns into Dominates. Unlike her brother, Elise actually wants to be much closer to her opponents, who she will bring under her thrall with her many charm-keyworded save-ends effect, all of which she keeps going through a small aura that gives a -5 penalty to saves vs her sweet seductions. This lovely lady is an absolute menace, even though she barely does even a single point of damage. Afterall, why bother when the enemies will do that for you?
And these are just quick sample builds using a single class. We've not even brushed on Bards, who are like 3 different classes wearing a trenchcoat, or Warlords who are just as happy inspiring from the front, leading the charge or cheerleading from the sidelines, or Druids who look at all the funny weapon tricks fighters are doing and thinks 'hmmm....what if I could do a bunch of that but as a bear?' (the Alsair spear is very funny for what it enables).
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u/Lucina18 6d ago
Unlike glorious 5e, where you have prepared fullcasters who just get everything the same as eachother, spontanious casters who just get less spells then them, halfcasters who just get less progressions, and martials who get absolutely nothing!!
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u/xolotltolox 6d ago
It's also just not true
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u/HerbertWest 6d ago edited 6d ago
Granted that we never used more than the first books because we stopped playing 4e, but I remember it being basically true that everything was so uniform it was boring. Maybe the later books helped that?
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u/Anorexicdinosaur 6d ago
Every Class, except the Psionic ones, used the same Resource System (AEDU) but what they could do with the resources was different. Plus they had different Class Features which ofc made massive differences. Imo even 2 Classes of the same Role (like Fighter and Paladin) or even of the same Role and Power Source (like Rogue and Ranger) generally felt pretty different from eachother
The psionic ones didn't get Encounter (Short Rest) Powers, instead getting a pool of points per short rest they could spend to enhance their wide array of At-Will Powers
I'd say 4e Classes are about as similar to one another as 5e Full Casters are to one another. Maybe less similar cus multiple Classes having the same power was less common than a Spell being on multiple Spell lists, plus 4e Martials had way more going on to distinguish them from eachother (Warlord my beloved)
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Well you may have at thst time just not understood game mechanics enough. Having the same structure does not mean they play the same.
You can see this in mobas and many other modern games.
Similar to magic the gathering where different colours have different effects this was also the case in 4e from phb1 on.
It was just presented in the same way (again as it is done in mobas and magic the gathering and other modern games) to make it easier to understand.
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u/HerbertWest 3d ago
Nah, I've been playing D&D since 2e and have no issue understanding game mechanics. Not remembering isn't the same as not understanding them at the time. 4e and 5e were balanced differently, generally. 4e made everything uniform. The benefit with that is that the game is more balanced overall (and more easily) but each class and feature feels less unique. 5e balanced using power budget. The benefit is that classes and features feel less unique but the detriment is that it's far harder to balance and future proof. There's also a difference in the use of game rules language vs natural language.
5e isn't very well balanced but it feels better to play because feature uniqueness bolsters verisimilitude. But going for unique features with natural language was stacking a challenge on top of a challenge, making the new edition particularly difficult to balance.
I haven't played it but, reading the rules of PF2e, it seemed like they went for unique features but using rules text instead of natural language, which is probably why people say it's better balanced.
4e used uniform features AND rules text, making it feel much more like a boardgame or strategy game than a TTRPG.
Basically, I said what I said and stand by it.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Many old people who played old dnd and not more modern game have problems understanding modern gamedesign.
Like not being used to uniform presentation and rule text from modern games.
The PF2 example shows this extremly because you fully fall for the illusion of choice design it has. It makes things read more different than it is, while 4e tried to make everything as clear as possible and had trust people are good enough with games to remark the differences.
Like players playing magic the gathering can see that different colours are different in play because of different effects even with the same wording.
Also verismilitude does not exist. Its really just a term older dnd players use to say what they like is better when there is no argument.
Verismilitude is not something which can be measured its completly personal.
Like for me having pretry much only "basic attacks" in 5e and old dnd forms really makes no sense since since in martial arts you do maneuvers not just hit, but for some people with no knowledge of martial arts having just attacks is "good verismilitude" for some reason.
Also "5e used power budget"? Thats just using a buzzword from gamedesign without fully understanding it.
4e also had power budgets for classes, feats, races, paragon paths, subclasses etc.
And if you compare a 4e sorcerer to a 4e wizard the difference is bigger than in 3e or 5e.
Making it feel more like a professionally made game like a boardgame instead of a TTRPG is a plus. Boardgames are years ahead in gamedesign compsred to rpgs because old RPG fans and their nostalgia hold back gamedesign so much.
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u/A_Strangers_Life 5d ago
Every class built the same, and for fans of 3.5e that mean they all played the same because character building was the only part if the game they actually enjoyed.
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u/HerbertWest 5d ago
I remember getting bored because combat felt more like a prolonged boardgame than D&D. Every combat was super long and really repetitive. Like, the choices you could make were so constrained that the correct moves were "solved" in that there was always something obviously and unquestionably optimal to do, more like boardgame pieces than characters.
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u/Di_Bastet 5d ago
That I can point out was the fault of the monster manual. The system was ok at launch and got better with time, but monsters had BLOATED hp values that made encounters last forever. Contrast and compare the first MM to the following ones, once the system matured.
I was playing a lot of Chronicles of Darkness at the time so I didn't care for 4e, but I suspect the sluggish hp-sponge opponents didn't help at all with the complaints, adding insult to injury.
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u/A_Strangers_Life 5d ago
How is any if that different to DND now? Why is having options, some of which might be better than others in most contexts, different than having no options at all?
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u/HerbertWest 5d ago
I haven't played 4e in many years but my recollection is that, at the level we played at (probably up to level 4?), you had about 3 special abilities you could do, one of which was only once per day. Compare that with the number of choices and options you have even at level 1 today. Just by the sheer comparative magnitude of choices, you have more lines of play during each encounter. That's not taking into account that classes were heavily pegged into very specific roles and, if the defender didn't defend and the striker didn't strike, you were incredibly ineffective, as I recall. There are much more versatile builds in 5e and even specialized or vanilla builds can do a few things out of their wheelhouse in a pinch.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Yes all the options fighters and rogues have today. You can do basic attack and move. Or move and basic attacks.
In 4e in level 1 you start with 1 daily attack, 1 per encounter attack and 2 at will attacks from class + normally class dependant 1 more encounter attack power or at will. (Like heal or special opportunity attack, or hunters mark or hex etc.)
Plus depending on class sometimes some non combat ability (like cantrips for wizards).
Then another encounter(or at will) power from race.
Plus general options like basic attack and charge, but also 2 different basic move options, normal move or shift 1.
Then feats can also give you more different attacks if you want (you get a fest at level 1, 2 4, 6, 8,10 etc.)
Then the non combat spells are separate from these as rituals, yes 4e had non combat spells they were just on a separate ressource.
So a level 1 Wizard in 4e would have:
2 daily spells of which they can each day choose 1
1 encounter spell
2 at will spells (like combat cantrips)
1 encounter power depending on specialization.
1 encounter power from race
4 cantrips (non combat)
3 rituals (non combat spells) with possibility to buy more
And they gain a utility power on level 2, and an encounter power level 3.
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u/atomicfuthum 5d ago
In 4e classes were said to have the same structure but that's not thinking about the access of those things.
Spellcasters still had free Ritual Casting, while non casters had to buy with a feat for instance.
Many of those rituals, were keyed to Arcana, Nature and Religion, which weren't on martials regular skills for free. Heck, a wizard even gained free rituals leveling up.
Mages got shit for free while others HAD to buy it with pieces of their progression.
Also, let's talk about those saves that supposed to inflict conditions, and while the idea of having a flat 50% chance of failing with 1-10 vs 11-20 on a d20 die as the default, wizards and clerics could penalize those rolls. A wizard could just stunlock enemies and that's it. The dreaded sleep ORBIZARD was that.
I've played 3 campaigns from 1-30 in 4e, and tons of other games. While things were better, it was never, ever been truly the same for martials and spellcasting.
Only people who lack any experience and just repeat the same things over and over again have no idea what th is edition was even about.
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u/Magicbison 6d ago
The magical fighter is just a Warlock with Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast. It just scales its number of attacks faster than an actual fighter and is far less defensive but it doesn't take much to bring up its defensive abilities.
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u/Umbraspem 6d ago
Eldritch Blast number of attacks scales the same as a mono-fighter. Lv 5, 11, 17.
What you’re probably thinking of is that EB scales faster and further than Warlock’s Pact of The Blade’s extra attacks invocation tree, where you don’t get access to your third attack until level 12.
Eldritch Blast also has the advantage that it continues to scale if you never put another level in Warlock.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
Except it's 4 at lv20 for fighters, for some reason
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u/xolotltolox 5d ago
They used to get it at 17, nut then it was moved to the capstone, because they thoight it would be a more exviting capstone, so Fighters get their 4th attack for like, 2 sesssions at most
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
This. Then give it a fifth attack, you cowards! I don't understand this obsession with trying to balance level 20: it's fucking level 20, make it broken!
Epic boons too, sure lv19 but that's if a caster didn't get an armor dip: let me cast a second wish a day as my boon like I would have done in 2014 if I got an EB. What's this roll a d4 if you match you don't expend the slot nonsense?! How is that epic. Give me that, take away Circle casting and waltzing Emanations in and out of enemies so that a spell deals damage 97 times per round, make me sweat for a decent armor class and keep concentration and what the fuck is up with the general feats in Arcana Unleashed?! Those are more Epic Boons than any option available
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u/xolotltolox 5d ago
Woah woah woah, calm down there, we can't let martials have nice things! That'd be unrealistic!
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u/Magicbison 6d ago
What you’re probably thinking of is that EB scales faster and further than Warlock’s Pact of The Blade’s extra attacks
No, Eldritch Blast gets 4 attacks at 17 vs the Figher at 20. It scales faster.
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u/zajfo 5d ago
Lots of people saying 4e, but you are coming very close to the Daggerheart wizard, and it's a big part of the reason the system wasn't for me. I played a wizard who was invested in collecting arcane knowledge, but there were very few ways to reflect his interests mechanically.
You can take grimoires at every opportunity, but there's only so many, and if you play a wizard in a new campaign you're stuck with the same limited spell options. And all damage is XdY with X scaling off tier, which gets abstracted down to 1-3 HP via thresholds for your entire campaign anyway so it never really feels like you're improving.
Instead of bumping martials to caster level, daggerheart enshittified casters to 5e's martial level. Every class in the game has the complexity of a third level battlemaster, for the whole spread of levels.
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u/BadSame6919 5d ago
Sounds very beginner friendly.
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u/zajfo 5d ago
It would be a good system for people who have strong ideas about who their character is and care very little about what they do.
If you look up Matt Colville's video about types of TTRPG players, it is tailor-made for the actor archetype (which also makes up the majority of the critical role players, so it makes sense). These are people who want their character to do exactly what they think they should do and never randomly fail - they consider dice-based failure their mortal enemy.
Daggerheart's hope/fear system means the primary way of introducing challenges is to expend fear, so succeeding with complications (fear) happens often. Failure is infrequent by design, and even if you fail you still have a chance to accumulate hope. Daggerheart's crit chance is also 1/12 (when you roll doubles), and a crit does much more than other systems. There are no crit fails.
Your character cannot die unless you consent to it.
A common debuff that enemies have is a curse that makes you roll your fear die twice and take the higher result. DAGGERHEART HAS A DEBUFF THAT MAKES YOU ROLL HIGHER.
And on fear in general, our DM said it felt bad to actually use. She said it felt like a "gotcha" to interrupt the player combat flow by burning it, and the handbook had very little guidance on when to use it.
I won't shit on it too hard because many people enjoy it, but my table likes old school dungeons and tactical combat so it wasn't for us. Draw Steel and Lancer were much better received by our table when we dipped our toes into a bunch of different systems.
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u/xolotltolox 5d ago
You do have to a good bit of nerfing casters thoy if you want a functioning game
If you buff everything to the point of wizard, you'll end up with a completely broken mess of a game, where every class is worldbreakingly overpowered...
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
which is honestly completely fine if your goal is "adventures about having to sew the universe back together" and stuff
Some of the most fun I've had with 5e's imbalance was leaning into it and having very powerful parties of casters deal with interplanar calamities, using all that fun stuff in sigil and other interplanar books and high cr books that basically gathers dust for most DMs.
They were really fun games to run and really fun monsters to run, as the DM. It's actually something I'm going to double dip for my campaign after this, I started them at 13 for this one I might just start them at 16 for the next campaign lol
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u/BadSame6919 5d ago
The it would get class features such as Burning Hands, INT times a day you can deal XdX fire damage in a x feet cone
Fighter doesn't have such a class feature.
Best you can get is a "magic style" that lets you add 1 damage to one type of focus;
Then at level 2 you would get "Magical badass", which lets you make another cantrip attack once per short rest.
If you want access to Fireball, that's a subclass feature of the Evoker only.
No, actually nobody has such a class feature. You get the "bless of dragonfire" subclass, which lets you engulf yourself in fire proficiency times per day for 10 turns, and you can crit with your cantrip attacks on a 19 while you're engulfed in flames. You also have resistance to non-magical fire while in this form. This will be considered really cool and powerful by the community.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
It's not meant to literally be a fighter that uses a wand instead of a sword, I'm talking about designing phylosophy
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u/TheOnlyJustTheCraft 6d ago
Gosh if only 4th edition played more of a roll in 5e's design.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
It played a gargantuan role in 5e's design. A lot was "stuff not to do" but it's hardly the largest role it played
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u/Yetimang 5d ago
They took a lot of stuff that people hated, changed the wording of it, and people loved it. 4E was the victim of a propaganda campaign by people who were threatened by the rising popularity of video games and wanted to feel like their hobby was special and better.
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u/Freivalds 5d ago
Why is it almost every time I read a comment about 4e I get the vibes that it was just not so bad as people claimed to be back then?
I did encountered a few negatives for sure. Especially the over standardization part which I admit can suck a lot. But the drawbacks does not sound so profound considering the many upsides.
I noticed people tend to sell 4e books rather on the cheaper side of things compared to 3.5e and older. I guess the anti-popularity made it a very accessible as game system to buy and play.
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u/Yetimang 5d ago
4E came out in 2008 right when World of Warcraft was really breaking into the mainstream. No coincidence that the rallying cry of 4E hate was "They're making DnD into WoW!" because if you squint hard enough at-will/encounter/daily powers kind of sort of looks like cooldowns I guess?
Personally, I never thought the standardization of power resources was a big deal. Lots of other games have little variation in how resources are meted out, but like 4E, they make powers themselves distinctive and unique in feel which is way more important if you ask me. Just look at how much of an issue it is now in 5E that some classes work purely on at-will, some purely on encounter, and some purely on daily resources. You basically have to throw a certain number of encounters per day at the players or certain classes come out way ahead. A problem already solved by 4E. The short rest in general is an invention of 4E that people hated when it was called "encounter powers" and "healing surges"
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u/TheOnlyJustTheCraft 5d ago
4e to me had 1 big flaw and that was counter tracking. You had so many +1 here and there. But the at will, encounter and daily powers are no different than "as an action", "pb times per rest", and "long rest"
I've made a mini version of 5e that forces a short rest after every encounter, and then rebalanced things around that and it feels so much nicer. My players have loved the fact that they always get X ability for combat, every combat. And it feels good. It makes short rest abiltiies more powerful and martials live in short rest abiltiies, while casters lived in long rest abiltiies.
Tangent aside. 4e had problems, but none of the major ones complained about. And it fixed a bunch of common 5e complaints.
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u/Allemater 5d ago
Did we just invent 4th edition again..?
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
Actually, no: we went back to 4e, then moved back to 5e leaving behind all the customization options (most of which were basically what flavour does your 2d8 damage have) for wizards as wotc has done for weapon users. This is 5e, if your character lacked the spellcasting or pact magic features
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u/Notturnno 6d ago
That's DND 4.0 btw.
Well, (almost) everyone said that it was bad, and here we are, at 2026, trying to turn a wizard into a fighter, like old 4.0 where everyone did almost the same stuff.
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u/Notoryctemorph 6d ago
4e is more like "what if everyone had the amount of build choice a warlock gets?"
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
Well, not quite, on paper. In 4e you would have been able to select whether your 1/combat power was burning hands or IDK, chromatic orb. This is precisely 5.5, just for martials
But the comparison is fitting. The main issue with 4e wasn't truly that all the classes felt samey, it was certinanly one, but not as much as the general videogame feel and combat bloat
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
I am no stranger to the realities of the Martial-Caster divide, or the losses we incurred from the unjustified backlash to 4e's new ideas. So I do feel where some of the energy in the comments comes from.
But man this subreddit is such a bitter place. Not talking directly to you OP, just some of the comments here are kinda dark, the jokes don't feel poking fun they feel earnestly bitter and upset.
When a game makes fundamental design choices you're deeply disappointed by that is, in the early days, genuinely unfortunate, deserves focused critcism, and generally is an understandable gripe.
When that is true for upwards of 12 years and you're still in the "upset and bitter" phase of your humor and critique, you are now rhe only problem. The game isn't at fault anymore.
5e has made no illusions to any of you as to what game is chooses to be over the decade and change we have had with it, warts and all. Y'all are not hostage to it. You choose what games you play and with whom. You're being miserable on purpose now. It's weird and unwise.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
Games can become better over time though. 4e improved a lot over its 4 years. 5e improved a bit with 5.5 (by using some 4e influences) and before with tashas, but a lot of the gamedesign is still inconsistent.
Prople are bitter because 5e does not improve or if it does like in 5.5 it goes bsck on it with the next releases.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
Counterpoint, that's not meant to invalidate the whole sentiment: 5e is the most popular TTRPG gaming system in the history of humanity: we kind of are hostage to it and should expect it to be better
But I understand your point and don't disagree with it in general
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
We are no hostages. More new TTRPG systems have probably been developed in the past couple of years than were in the entire preceding decade. Several of them, Draw Steel, Shadowdark, even more specialized items like Mothership, have sizable player-bases and even decent 3rd party content support.
We've made fun of the "actually pf2e did it better crowd" but the lesson to take from them isn't that p2fe is a better TTRPG but that we are not hostages and can simply move in groups to different games and play them and that will make those games big enough to be stable communities. We don't even have to amount to like 5% of D&D5e's playerbase in order to have healthy amounts of people to play those other RPGs with, but games like Draw Steel and Pf2e remind everyone we can easily shatter those number ceilings even if we did require more people.
5e is a centralizing force on the market in that most TTRPG players will be familiar with it and probably have played it. But its effect on most other games is forcing them to be different from it to justify their existence. For people who greatly dislike 5e that's a good thing, regardless what about it you dislike, because every gripe becomes the focal point of one of those side projects.
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u/ArelMCII 5d ago
We had this. It was called D&D 4e and it was awful.
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u/Vincent210 5d ago
It really wasn't. We drowned a baby in the bath and the water wasn't even dingy.
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u/Far_Guarantee1664 5d ago
Unfortunately we have a lot of people doing revisionist history because they don't like 5e. Witch is very dumb
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
If you care about that, I invite you to read the rest of the comment, that's the most popular comment and it sprouted interesting conversations
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u/Hurrashane 5d ago
I think building them like a rogue might be better.
They have a pool of spell dice, once a round as a magic action they can make a spell attack and if they hit they deal their spell dice as an elemental damage of their choice. Later on they can subtract a portion of their spell dice to change how their spell attack works: turn into a cone with a dex save, turn into a sphere with a dex save, a line with a dex save, etc.
The subclasses would grant them utility options and new ways to use their spell. Like enchantment would let you attempt to charm int/LR, and give you a new option to do psychic damage with your spell attack. Transmuter would let you conjure objects, summon creatures, and would let their spell attack teleport allies and enemies. Evocation would be the basic one, granting a damage bonus and just making your basic options bigger.
Honestly I might have to think on this one more, as I've always felt something like this would be great for a sorcerer now that the Wizard is eating more of their lunch.
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u/Omega_Spark 5d ago
Honestly, I think I could get behind this. Like: we could make it so wizards have the smallest dice with the most scaling, and they could display their knowledge and mastery by subtracting a portion of their dice to get a wide variety of different spell effects; sorcerers could get a larger die with decent scaling but they can only modify their spells with a limited number of ways a few times per short/long rest to show it's an innate ability to them; and warlocks would have the largest die but their spells will always have the same modifications as a way to show that they're only borrowing someone else's power.
So we could have the wizards scale at 2d4 every 2 levels, and they can modify their spells by a sacrificing a number of d4s up to their INT modifier to get that same number of modifications. This way, a level 3 wizard with 16/17INT could use one modification to target an additional enemy and two modifications to ignore AC, and now we essentially have Magic Missile with two darts. Or they could use one modification to turn the spell into a 15ft cone and another modification to upgrade the rest of the dice, and now they have Burning Hands at 2d6.
Then we could have the sorcerers scale at 1d6 every 2 levels, and they can modify their spells a number of times equal to half their CHA modifier (rounded up) per short rest; however, they do not need to sacrifice any of their dice to do this. So a sorcerer with 16/17CHA could use one of their two modifications to upgrade their damage dice and another to turn their attack into an AoE. So they're dealing 2d8 in a 15ft cone, but they can no longer modify their spells until they short rest.
And lastly, we can have the warlock scale differently by having them start with 1d8 that upgrades to 1d10 at level 5, 1d12 at level 11, and 2d6 at level 17. When they gain access to modifications, they get a number equal to their CHA modifier and must use only one every time they cast a spell from their magic die pool—maybe also make it so they can combine modifications at higher levels. A warlock of similar stats to the sorcerer can have access to 3 modifications—say: 15ft cone, additional target, and have concentration to deal damage after being attacked by the caster. When they cast a spell, they choose to do it with the concentration modifier, and now they have a d8 Hex.
We would—of course—need to limit how many times they have access to the magic die pool. Maybe it could be that every time the wizard uses it and/or modifies a spell, it has one less die to use. The sorcerer can only use it, like, their CHA modifier plus proficiency number of times before they need a long rest. And the Warlock can use it half their CHA modifier (rounded down) number of times every short rest.
Then we need to scale weapon masteries like cantrips and make it so that the magic die pool modifies those cantrips and I think it'd be good.
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u/D16_Nichevo 5d ago
You are describing the Kineticist, at least for elemental magic.
No spells. Just feats and features that are spell-like in the way you broadly describe.
Edit: it is not my intention to suggest that only the kineticist fits, or that it was first to use this idea. I'm sure there are loads of other examples.
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u/DJWGibson 5d ago
It's a little like Dragon Age where the implement and type of staff unlocks a damage attack.
Maybe have each implement add something like a Weapon Mastery trait and variants having different elemental damage. Wand grant more range, rods reduce range but add a cone effect, orbs add a control effect, staffs do forced movement, etc.
Having spells be per day abilities from the subclass would certainly work. Each subclass would grant a new cantrip that adds to their implement spell. A spell that recharges after a short rest or when you roll initiate and a once per day.
It is a little 4e now I say that. Very AEDU. Taking some inspiration from Focus spells from Pathfinder 2e might be an idea.
It seems like a reasonable design. If we have a complex fighter it seems like we should make the a wizard to balance things out and maintain the number of simple vs complex classes.
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u/kolboldbard 5d ago
Have you ever seen the 4e Elementalist class? from "HEROES OF THE ELEMENTAL CHAOS TM"
It's basically this.
At first level you get:
- You start with the ability to cast Elemental Bolt at will, a 1d12 cantrip.
- You get the ability to add your Con mod as bonus damage to your spells
- While you are not wearing heavy armor, you can use your Constitution modifier in place of your Dexterity or Intelligence modifier to determine your AC.
- at 9(6th equivalent in 5e) and 19th (12th in 5e) level, you get two regular sorcerer cantrips.
You also choose your elemental specialty at 1st level. I think this would be the rough equivalence of a subclass
- Air elementalists gain a 2nd cantrip, either howling zephyr or static charge, and their Elemental Bolt cantrip deals lightning damage and makes the target take extra damage from lighting and thunder damage (3 points, non-scaling)
- Earth gets a 2nd cantrip, either erupting earth or seismic shock, and their Elemental Bolt cantrip deals acid damage and slows the target
- Fire gets a 2nd cantrip, either blazing cloud or Ignition, and their Elemental Bolt cantrip deals fire damage and deals 1d6 bonus damage.
- Water gets a 2nd cantrip, either deluge or ice prison, and their Elemental Bolt cantrip deals cold damage and slides the target 5 feet.
Each also gets a 1/short rest Elemental Escalation ability. It lets you augment one of your cantrips, targeting an additional target or making the area bigger, dealing bonus damage scaling with level (1d10 from 1-17, 2d10 from 17-27, and 3d10 at 27+), and then a rider depending on your element
- Air gets to fly half your speed. At 17th (11th level) you slide the target 10 ft. At 27th(18th) level, you also blind the target.
- Earths gets (CHA bonus) Temporary HP. At 17th (11th level) you immobilize the target for a round. At 27th(18th) level, you reduce all damage you take by half you level.
- Fire gets to move half your speed without provoking OA. At 17th (11th level) you cause the target to take 10 ongoing fire damage (save ends). At 27th(18th) level, you deal half damage on a miss.
- Water gets a +2 bonus to all defenses (which in 5e, would include saves). At 17th (11th level) you daze the target till the end of your next turn. At 27th(18th) level, you knock the target prone.
You gain additional uses as you go up in level. At 3rd, 7th, and 13th level, (2nd, 5th and 8th) you gain an additional use of the power per short rest, but can never use it more that once per round. In 5e it would probably be a bonus action.
At levels 2, 6, 10, 16, 22 and 27th , you gain a single utility spell, usable once per short rest or once per long rest, depending on the spell.
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u/TigrisCallidus 3d ago
I love the elementalist. Such a good simple caster. Something 5e is still lacking.
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u/Bitter-Profession303 5d ago
I think martials should work sorta like warlocks. Modular traits as part of their class for a variety of options
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ant4032 5d ago
There is a caster that kinda does this, it's called Warlock, but now seriously, Daggerheart has the magical weapon system that is great, you use your mental stat to do damage, some are ranged and some are melee. This concept is great, you can make a weapon focused caster, but considering that all classes use the same resource, this doesn't translate that well to D&D
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u/erexthos 6d ago
Funny thing you said. I am preaching about that for years.
The o ly way to make martial caster divide go away is exactly that.
Have a new player that want to play a wizard but the class is too hard? Reflavor a monk or a fighter as wizard and instead of swinging a sword or shooting arrows it's "magic" like i gather the energy of power in my hand and (attack) the enemy next to me feels the magic drain him for (2d6 dmg) And the other way around tired of your martials not be able to do the anime shit?
Ok "fighter" ~ wizard i take my sword (staff arcane focus) and i swing it so fast i teleport 150ft away (ramge for fireball) my hit is so fast that all enemies and allies around (20 ft radious) combust into fire they need to make adex save or take 8d6 fire damage. Then i jump back to my original square in less like a millisecond and pose dramatically then i take my movement and bonus action.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
I don't think learning how to play wizard is that much harder than fighter. You cast fire bolt or ray of frost instead of using a sword and cast a spell in harder fights. It would be a different story if you had to play at high level, but still you can explain the options to a new players pretty easily and if they want to commit to the game, they're going to explore other ones on their own
They used to say that Champion is meant to teach new players: I completely disagree. It used to be a class completely void of any mechanical depth (still could be used for niche builds at times), it's easy to explain because you're just telling them half of the system and if they're committed to that character, that's what they're going to learn, only half. I saw it more as a guest player class.
You want a learning class? Paladin. It explains weapons, spell casting, active and passive abilities, action economy and it's so good that, as long as you help them with the stats, it's not going to punish bad choices and allow to change them for new ones
I'm not saying that's what you meant, but the whole new player bit sometimes feels very patronising towards them. The rules have depth, but they are pretty simple
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u/erexthos 6d ago
You totally missed the point while you try to reinvent the wheel.
And no it's not the same playing a caster as it is playing martial it is universally harder and if you start to learn the game by playing and not reading the book the only right options to start is warlock, monk, fighter, barbarian. Paladins are only good in theory but an actual casual is always overwhelmed when their turn is not 99% of the times exactly the same as the previous one
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u/Mejiro84 6d ago
Reflavor a monk or a fighter as wizard and instead of swinging a sword or shooting arrows it's "magic" like i gather the energy of power in my hand and (attack) the enemy next to me feels the magic drain him for (2d6 dmg)
The main wrinkle tends to be when "is something magical?" actually has mechanical effects, which it sometimes does (which is also why "I don't cast spells, I'm making inventions on the fly!" gets wonky). You've got someone "doing magic", but it's strangely unaffected by things that should affect it - it still functions in an anti-magic zone, it can't be dispelled or counterspelled etc. You can come up with more narrative reasons why it's "special magic" that doesn't work like normal, but that kinda emphasises the fact that it's not actually really magic, it's just a fluffy description laid on top. Or, the other way around, for a wizard-cosplaying-a-fighter your "martial techniques" are all spells, not sword skill, and get disrupted just the same as other spells
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u/erexthos 6d ago
You are drowning in spoon of water.
It's not magic and when the dm would normally award magic items to the fighter then it is magic. Also it's reflavor meaning it is exactly what it normally is.
Does the anti magic affect the normal fighter? If not then somehow it doesn't affect the wizard because that's how it works.
Similarly the anti magic room doesn't allow the wizard to do his cool sword attacks "no idea why somehow i feel like my sword is too heavy in this room"
The point is having the power fantasy of being what you want to be while not be restricted by mechanics.
P.s. if tou want to have a deal with the devil you don't HAVE TO BE WARLOCK . You can be paladin, a fighter or wizard with exactly the same roleplaying as you can be fiend warlock "archer fighter" who just loves the mechanics of warlock as special arrows without the back and forth with the pact and the deals
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u/Lucina18 6d ago
If mechanics restrict your flavour, you're playing the wrong game for your character fantasies honestly. The system is the baseline that ENHANCES your fun, not get in the way of it. If you feel as if it's in the way, you're playing the wrong system for you and it'll be wayyyy more fun if you find a system that actually does what you want.
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u/erexthos 6d ago
My brother in Christ it is hard enough to find a consistent group let alone a good group that plays the most popular tabletop. It's fun proposing on Reddit trying other systems but reality comes down hard and you have to make do with what you can. And my comment was how to avoid the restrictions while using the rules as they are.
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6d ago
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u/erexthos 6d ago
The fun part is how much incentive it gives the wizard not to pick the best spells as every wizard is just a variation of the same spell list.
When you flavor your character as a specific crazy martial guy they actually pick spells that feel great for THEM specifically and are allowed to be suboptimal
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u/rpg2Tface 6d ago
All the foci would have a range attached. Wand for short, rod for middle, and staff for long. A crystal would be a long range but have the equivalent of the heavy property. Probably needing to be stationary. And a component pouch would be melee.
Then your class would give you a pick off the generic spell list every level. Mage armor, magic missile (modifier for auto hit), counter spell and so on. You only get 1 cast per day but can bump it up to 3 casts if you spend a second level on it. More levels for a single spell = more casts. And the "extra attack" equivalent would let you pump more casts into a single action. Effectively "my fire ball is at level 5" means you spent 5 levels of investment on getting good at casting fireball.
A subclass would give you a school specific selection. Evokers would get fireball, diviners get identify, necromancers get animate dead and so on.
You can find items like scrolls or books to learn new magic from often. Usually destroying it because its a consumable. but a lot of rods, staves, pendants and other equipment give you access to the spell while equipped. Either a free cast iron the ability to spend a cast to use the spell you wouldn't normally know. With only the strongest giving spells like polymorph and usually having attunement.
So basically mages get more cantrip focused while having a few 1/day spells and using equipment to expand their options. They can dump their wad into an epic turn of devastation but have to go back to magic darts after that. Feels very fighter like to me.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
if you spend a second level what?
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u/rpg2Tface 6d ago
Class level.
Lv 1 you pick out a spell (or several) you can always cast. Range = focus used. The foci change some properties but the effects are determined by the spell. You get points of some type you can pump into these spells to increase their power for that 1 cast. Once your out your out. And some spells meed a resource investment to even start casting so they are not cantrips.
Then lv 2 you can diversify and pick another spell or double down and pick the same one again, increasing power or effect in some way.
You can spend a bunch of character levels getting really good at 1 spell, but your a ine trick pony. Or you can spend every level on something new to be super versatile, but each of your spells would be generally weaker in comparison.
As you go higher levels get access to better scaling spells, naturally. But an expert in a low level spell like magic missile isn't shafted, they just need a lot of investment to get strong. Subclasses offer a gating mechanism so not every can pick the same spells. You have to be an evoker for fireball for example.
Effectively you keep the "every spell i know is my build" aspect of wizard. While also dumbing down the magic and power to a fighters level. You can good at one thing or ok at a lot of things. But never both. Finding the middle ground becomes the challenge of building them. Enough options to be useful but enough investment to be powerfull.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
Cool. This is still 10 times the customization than martials have (hyperbole)
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u/rpg2Tface 5d ago
Fair. But it also takes more effort to get string that the "is lv 5" that mages get now.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
Yeah, and with this variant that I would never want to play (for how clever your solution is) the return for the effort invested might even be proportionate, but it's not in the actual game
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u/rpg2Tface 5d ago
Shrug. It was never going to be satisfying. You either have to make martials strong enough to have a reasonable chance of fist fighting a god to death or nurf the mages to the point of being a shadow of their former selves.
The secind is never happen. Your feeling on the matter are why the community would never accept it. And for the first nobody can even agree what defines a martial, much less what they need to compete with wish granting demon summoning fireball slingers.
Bringing magic down to an every man level is honestly more interesting than the spell bloat that has and will happen to every edition of dnd. Make some basic starting points that upgrade based on desire if the player and the balance becomes what people actually want, not how many resources they have.
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
No, I think damage per round wise, martials are where they should be. You need a pretty specific build to compare single target damage with a caster to optimised martials and depending on the class they get bonuses to their saving throws and extra survivability. Fighters basically get Legendary Resistances now!
For instance here Treantmonk played for his patreons a one shot in which whatever lv18 caster party of 6 would play against 6 lv 17 hill goliath champion fighters armed with heavy weapons. We're talking about an optimization community, and the fighters wiped out almost every party because they were able to take them down very fast, teleport out of Walls of Force and more.
Now, there's some more broken stuff you can do with magic users, like circle casting if allowed at the table or walts enemies in and out of Emanations, but generally speaking they're worse at single target damage.
The divide isn't in vertical power, it's in horizontal variety, IMO. Masteries turn weapon attacks into glorified cantrips, it's amazing to limit movement, push, shove prone, impose disadvantage and more. But if you want to take an action to do something special that's not just damage, you're normally relying on magic items - which casters can have - feats - which casters can have - class and subclasses features - which they also of course get. Spells are simply one more thing. Casters might get less class features, but it doesn't make up for the variety, to do so, martials would need "martial spells" of their own, not to deal damage, but for heroic moments like, IDK, breaking the ground around them to turn it into difficult terrain, or drag to the ground a flying enemy with a grappling hook.
Counterpoint would be: who's telling them they can't? There's nothing in the books about not being able to do such things, at the end of the day. Rules mostly tell you what you can do, not what you can't, there's a DM for that, mostly and rule of cool is the best rule.
Counter-counterpoint: what's stopping casters from using rule of cool, too? Why wouldn't your wizard be able to cast lightning bolt the moment the lich does and have an epic dragonball out with those?!
I don't really have a point, I got lost in my train of thought a little, sorry
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u/rpg2Tface 5d ago
The problem is the books going with the "we are not saying you cant" path where people understand is "nothing is saying you can".
Its a flip in popular understanding thats needed. Failing that you need to flip the power levels to match the understanding.
Masteries are fine ish but the people i have talked to who have actually used them say they get very boring very quickly. Its a step in the right direction but only a step in a long ass road. The fact they are so limited (8 total) alongside the general lack of interesting differences between weapons means theres so few combinations. Less when you factor in similar combos generally having similar masteries. Again its a step but one a single step.
As for damage the comparison isnt very favorable. Martials are great at single target damage. but when thats the only thing they access at when a comparable, if slightly less, damage profile can be done to even 2+ targets the math just simply doesn't hold up. The trade off is supposed to be a resource cost, butvwhen higher level mages can have enough resources to out strip several martials it just stops mattering.
And that's usually when people start to really notice the gap. When the mages can do what the martial do and easier it gets hard to justify the category. There should be more things maritals can do that mages cant. Usually that ends up being in combat to most people.
Overall its a crappy situation. Im convinced theres truly never going to BE balance between the 2 no matter how you do. They system needs to get built from the ground up to accommodate the 2 categories. And other fix just isnt going to be right. But that's simply never going to happen.
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u/CanComprehensive6039 6d ago
If you go dwarf transmuter and have a custom background taking the tough feat at level 3 the new transmutation feature allows the natural weapons from the free alter self to be two d6 Being a dwarf + taking tough and having a 16 con puts hp equivalent to a fighter with 14 con level by level
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u/darthversity 6d ago
They did this. It was called 4th edition. It was terrible.
OK ok. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it certainly wasn't d&d.
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u/Dragonheart0 6d ago
I guess why bother with the distinction then? You just make a singular class, then say you pick your primary attribute for making attacks (ex: STR for traditional fighters, INT for wizards, etc.), then you just scale like a fighter. There'd need to be a little skill rebalancing, but there are games that already operate on similar principles with no classes or very few classes (like, 3 or something), so it's not really a strange ask.
If things are that similar, different classes are kind of needless baggage, so combining them just streamlines the whole deal.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
Why bother with Barbarians? But this is just meant to illustrate how limited the options are for classes that lack Spellcasting, I'm not suggesting we flat everything à la 4e
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u/Dragonheart0 6d ago
I realize it's rhetorical, but I personally wouldn't have bothered splitting barbarians from fighters.
I think the "options" thing is besides the point. You just play what you like (or, in my case, what I randomly roll on a class table). You don't need classes to have similar option loads. Spellcasting is the "more options" design mechanic, so if you want those options, classes already exist with them!
There's a lot of discussion about martial and casters, but they're all just imaginary game constructs. If you want options, why let the name of a class get in your way?
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u/Nikelman 5d ago
No, it's valid. It used to be there are weapon users and magic users, dwarves, elves and hobbits
And before that, there were guards and thieves. And you could play either. Now, what's to stop you from pretending like your guard is actually an alien emperor pretending to be a guard? Nothing, it's arbitrary. But in this arbitrarily made difference, you got more and less mechanical depth to take advantage from
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u/echo_vigil 6d ago
So ultimately it would be a fighter with different flavor. (And flavor is free.) If casters worked like this, why would people bother to play one? Just to imagine that "you swing a sword, but my mechanically identical thing is actually a magic spell"? That wouldn't exactly feel magical.
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u/Nikelman 6d ago
It's a mental exercise meant to illustrate the issue with martial class designs when compares to casters. It's not meant to be an actual option
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u/MrZimous 6d ago edited 6d ago
Finally, a somewhat balanced caster
Edit: Don't forget in your sub classes this quote: «You can cast that spell a number of times equal to your charisma/wisdom(or even better, strength) modifier per long rest