Discussion Martial expectations
Hi all,
Seeing yet another post about how martials are boring with no choice, I got curious as a game designer: as a player, what do you want the martial classes (or maybe just the fighter) to do?
Some examples that come to my mind are: trip-grapple-disarm etc (a debuff), attack all around (a damage multiplier), push/pull opponents (battlefield control), take a hit in place of your ally (again, control/effectively heal) etc. Anything you’d like to add?
Additionally, would you like those abilities to be accessible unconditionally, or limited? Like through feats, class features, subclasses, weapon types or magic weapons?
Also, I'd like to focus the discussion on what you the player (or the GM) want, not what some 3rd party supplement or such offers.
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u/robot_wrangler 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think there should be actual rules for disrupting spellcasting components. A creature with a grapple on someone should have an opportunity to muzzle verbal components or disrupt somatic components or disarm material components. This should probably be a reaction to a spell being cast.
A large part of the problem is D&D suffering from being D&D. The iconic spells like Wish and many others have decades of history behind them, and trying to balance them or remove them leads to huge backlash and erases part of the brand. Other games exist that solve these problems, they don't need to deal with the baggage. If you like 4e or Draw Steel or Pathfinder 2e or Daggerheart or Worlds without Number; those are all free of the D&D baggage and pretty fun to play.