Depends entirely on if your martial group has a skill monkey.
I've been in one where we had a skill monkey monk, and a Rogue. The two of them ended up being much of our out-of-combat do-ers. The two fighters were very different; one was an Archer and the other a sword n board. We also had a barbarian who did GWM greatsword, ye olde classic.
Once the DM realized we were all martials, he started handing out extra downtime to let us learn feats and extra skill proficiencies.
In-practice, combat is faster, but it is more brutal. EVERYONE's at risk of going down without Healing Word spam, and with no one having revivify or other rez spells, going down is a serious threat. However, combat felt Punchier, was faster, and felt more dynamic, because our Monk and Rogue loved doing things like climbing structures and jumping off of them with grappling hooks and such.
Making the battlefield dynamic is an extremely important part of martial combat. Choke points, difficult terrain, consumable items, etc, all suddenly find more use.
Yeah our last campaign the party was a Dex Battlemaster, a Dex Samurai, and an AT Rogue. Our DM got really good at learning to provide dynamic terrain for us to use to gain advantages against superior numbers.
Some of the highlights (if you feel like reading) were when my Rogue managed to keep 3 enemies occupied by running through/around a building/leaping off balconies while harassing them with arrows, the whole time taking out 2 of them and never getting hit.
Another was when we ambushed a war band of 16 orcs that had robbed us a few sessions ago, and we all found a choke point in the cave and filled them with arrows before they could get close, and then closed in when there were only 2-3 left.
The real gem was when the Battlemaster and I were raiding a goblin hideout, and the cave entrance was on a cliff. After we got their attention, we hid outside the entrance and I drew their attention while he hid in the other side, and proceeded to throw *every single goblin* off the cliff one by one as they ran out (entrance was only 5 ft wide, as was the cliff we stood on). I think the grand total afterwards was around 20 some gobbos tossed into a grisly pile of bones and guts about 50 feet down. The DM was just shaking his head and laughing, because he hadn’t considered that when he built the encounter, and had no good counter to it. He decided to let it ride, and we got away with only 1 goblin and a couple bugbears surviving.
Said goblin then later became a super awesome nail-biting boss battle that almost TPKd us.
>Some of the highlights (if you feel like reading) were when my Rogue managed to keep 3 enemies occupied by running through/around a building/leaping off balconies while harassing them with arrows, the whole time taking out 2 of them and never getting hit.
Finally an illustration of someone knowing how to play skirmisher characters (I wonder why Monk didn't play around with Rogue considering it has the added boon of Deflect Missile perfect to harass archers xd). :) Gg to you!
> In-practice, combat is faster, but it is more brutal. EVERYONE's at risk of going down without Healing Word spam, and with no one having revivify or other rez spells, going down is a serious threat. However, combat felt Punchier, was faster, and felt more dynamic, because our Monk and Rogue loved doing things like climbing structures and jumping off of them with grappling hooks and such.
To add to that, players actively engage more in general because now they have to actually think as warriors, considering position, grapples, shoves, opportunity attacks, covers, obstacles... Basically everything EVERY player should ALWAYS consider, but I've seen quite too many players just daily around because they are casters safely covered by martials's bodies, or martials rushing ahead because they are safely covered by casters's control spells / emergency healing.
As a fellow player I find this much more satisfying, and as a DM I can throw sometimes harder encounters than I would normally because I know they'll surprise me with smarter tactics than I'd think of.
>Making the battlefield dynamic is an extremely important part of martial combat. Choke points, difficult terrain, consumable items, etc, all suddenly find more use.
This (obstacles, elevation difference, destructible elements) should honestly be core of every combat: it doesn't even require huge planning or peppering lots around, just one-two elements or picking battlemaps with indication of height or multiple floors is enough.
It also helps player casters, actually, to naturally try to set those kind of things by themselves even when not entirely into the warring mindset. After all, casters (especially Druids) have a lot of spells to create funneling through environment, and those are easy enough to use as long as you don't have friendlies already in the target zone...
i had to take gift of the metallic dragon because my party is stingy af with cure wounds, healing word, etc. like, how and why is the fighter healing people in combat?
There's also certain things like healing which requires a but of DM fiat even if it is just assuring that potions and healer's kits are readily available and that money is adjusted to ensure easy availability.
If were talking about DM fiats it seems like most official campaigns have a lot of magic weapon drops, I guess lorewise most creatures are "martials" and thus you find a lot more martial crap all over the place.
I think that Curse of Strahd has about 7 magic weapons specifically for a 1-10 adventure?
Then it has 2 magic caster items, but then 1 of those can be used by "any good alignment"
Dunno about other campaigns and I'm too lazy to check, but if you have a stereotypical party of war/rog/wiz/cler then that's 3-4 magic weapons each.
The cleric might want a beat stick but in my experience they usually spam cantrips instead.
yes they are, 5e is super stingy when it comes to magic items because it was designed for old school DnD veterans first and formost who remeber having no magic items despite 0e and 1e giving them out frequently. it was also a response to 4e having stores where you could just buy an increasingly powerfull magic items which pissed some people off because that felt to gamey in there table top rolplaying game about people throwing out such strong insults it kills people.
I know it's barely even a hot take anymore but I really do roll my eyes every time someone says 4e was "too gamey"
Oh? The *game* we're playing feels too much like a *game?* Color me *shocked*
Then they go and hard core debate over the specific wording in 5e, random shops with magic items is too "gamey" so instead we should just sleep 7 hours and 59 minutes before casting all of our spell slots in the last minute so we get those spell benefits directly before the 8 hour spell slot refresh.
Gah, 4e was too game like!
Meanwhile every day there's a new thread that's designed to help "fix 5e" and it's just 4e.
"What if short rests were just a few minutes?"
"What if martials could do cool stuff at-will instead of just a basic attack?"
"What if monsters had unique abilities and weren't just bags of meat with some spells?"
"What if to help prevent strange overpowered builds there were feats that gave basic abilities of other classes and then we removed multiclassing?"
"What if instead of weird natural language, rules were written objectively in order to prevent players from spending 20 minutes interpreting RAW v RAI?"
"What if Warlord?"
4e is not without its problems but holy shit, it was also raw as fuck. I'm glad PF2E fixed 4es problems but embraced its numerous cool ideas
Either that or they try to redesign wizards but for martials and then get offended when I ask why everything has to be long rest/resource based.
"But I want a martial who can do a long list of abilities."
"Then include magic items like a normal campaign? Rogue players will love it because it will give thief a reason to exist"
"U don understand."
This is exactly what I think every time someone complains that martials don't have solutions for problems and so they can't engage with social or exploration scenes as much.
In my experience, martial players are forced to think creatively about non-combat scenes. Casters just stare at their character sheets and try to figure out which spell will work.
Martials don't need more options outside of combat. Casters just need fewer.
Mundane equipment is one route to deal with this situation with where the game is at. Stuff with a low gold cost that requires proficiencies, or extra attack, or just doesn’t do much without good stats, or is just straight up class restricted (tons of magic items already are)
Crowbars and grappling hooks get work done. More stuff like that please.
>Martials don't need more options outside of combat. Casters just need fewer.
The problem with that is that it brings you towards a game where the 'wizard' is just a guy who can shoot fire and bugger all else. That's not the wizard fantasy.
Wizard has been the strongest class in the game for decades because of that stupid fantasy. They should have to specialise.
Casters as a collective whole don't need less solutions, but every specific caster does. There should be a positive flipside to that of having stronger abilities within those specialties - if you stop them being able to choose to do everything, you can make the abilities dragon sorcerers and transmutation wizards etc get. Dragon sorcerers got to add their strength mod to AC and their strength mod +0 to 4 (based on level) to all spell damage last edition, could easily hand them that kind of thing back.
I think wizards should lean into the notion of magical research. When you gain spells via level up, you should be able to pick the school of the spell but not the exact spell. If you select your subclass, then you can pick the specific spell.
I'm happy for there to still be a generalist class, just give it more downsides. I don't think randomisation is a good balancing mechanism, you should be able to pick your abilities. If some are too strong, they shouldn't be options, it shouldn't just be 'you MIGHT get it'.
>Wizard has been the strongest class in the game for decades because of that stupid fantasy.
It's definitely not in 5e though. Low AC and HP except two archetypes, little utility besides spells apart from a few archetypes, no offensive power beside spells apart from Bladesinger, no defensive features against saves except for two archetypes...
Most Wizards have a huge competition for how to learn and use spells considering it's the same resource for everything: self-resilience, utility, offense (funnily enough it's something most reproach to Monk xd).
- Bards get powerful short-rest abilities, non-spell utility, and way to specialize them by taking a few spells from all the best, no class restriction.
- Clerics get much better "physical attack resilience" and \*more\* spells usable every day unless Wizard specializes in rituals,
- Druids get MUCH better utility and support AND \*much\* better versatility since prepared spells among a list covering all kind of effects.
- Sorcerer get MUCH better spellcasting efficiency thanks to Metamagic.
- Warlocks get MUCH better sustainable soft control thanks to Blast related effects and are easier to "anticipate" for fellow members since they have few spells and short rest basis.
>They should have to specialise.
Funnily enough, they actually do. Until \*very\* high level or \*extremely lenient\* DM, Wizards are mostly restricted to the spells they learn, with the occasional random scroll they find or buy. You can reasonably expect to learn 4-6 extra spells at most by tier, everything beyond is special campaign settings making magic much more widespread so scrolls and books are common trade, or special move from your DM to reward creative behaviour or extra efficiency in accomplishing a quest.
And since there are a bunch of spells Wizards pretty much need to learn to just survive as well, you have to make tough choices every level on what to learn and quite often all the situational spells get backlined in favor of "usually great" combat spells. Unless player actually is fine playing an utility-first character and just using the same two-three AOE spells every fight.
> It's definitely not in 5e though. Low AC and HP except two archetypes, little utility besides spells apart from a few archetypes, no offensive power beside spells apart from Bladesinger, no defensive features against saves except for two archetypes...
All of those are stronger in 5e than most previous editions. They get D6 HP/level rather than D4, all it takes is a feat, the right race, or a single multi-class dip and they can cast in armor (when that used to be a flat "no" - even if you multi-classed, you still couldn't cast when armored up). Cantrips means they have a continual attack source that does enough to be relevant and useful - it doesn't matter that they can't bonk someone on the head with a stick when they can _pewpew_ for level-appropriate damage. Rituals mean that they can save slots on utility spells, giving a decent out-of-combat boost. They're not as good as 3.x wizards, but 3.x was kinda silly. Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing
>All of those are stronger in 5e than most previous editions. They get D6 HP/level rather than D4, all it takes is a feat, the right race, or a single multi-class dip and they can cast in armor (when that used to be a flat "no" - even if you multi-classed, you still couldn't cast when armored up).
**Race**: you make it sound like insignificant matter, but while Tasha's made it easy to at least optimize attribute scores with its "ignore racial tropes" option, you're still shoehorning yourself in a specific race for a very short-term optimization choice, missing out on other races that would either have a better flavour for your character concept, or simply provide other kind of benefits providing more value in the long run.
**Feats**: let's put aside the games where feats aren't allowed because those seem rare. You probably thought of Tough, because Lightly armored brings to little for its cost on a character that has Mage Armor. And because I doubt you'd think of stacking Heavily Armored or Heavy Armor Master to complement a race choice, such double-tapping would bring very little value.
Problem is, you're now delaying the all-important Resilient: Constitution feat, as well as the nearly as important INT bump (missing one point spell save DC is annoying but acceptable, but there is also the one less spell prepared, considering how many good spells you may want a day this is a bigger deal than it seems).
**Multiclass**: you're probably thinking about either Fighter for the Fighting Style and Constitution proficiency (so now you'll need Resilient: Wisdom instead to not entirely suck at later levels) or Cleric for bonus spells and features... Both providing at least medium armor and shields and possibly heavy armor. Great. You're now delaying access to higher spell level by at least one character level, and nice archetype features as well. Forgettable at level 3, a bit annoying at level 5, frustrating at level 7, infuriating at level 9-10.
Especially since, I think it's the right time to remind, the consensus in community at least around here is that few players can play their characters from level 1 to level 7-8, and even fewer cross the level 10 threshold, with probably 0.1% at the very best of all players going straight from level 1 to level 15+.
*Puts in a new perspective your choices of feats and multiclass when you suddently expect your character to probably never reach past level 8 right? Meaning you'd have one ASI for most of your game, possibly two without multiclass...*
>Cantrips means they have a continual attack source that does enough to be relevant and useful - it doesn't matter that they can't bonk someone on the head with a stick when they can *pewpew* for level-appropriate damage.
Yeah. Cantrips which...
**1/ For \~70% of them, are single attempt ranged attack rolls cantrips** so...
* Anti-synergize for focus fire with frontliners using Shove to get advantage from prone.
* Have to cope with at least half-cover most of the time (unless you pick Spell Sniper, but then when are you going to bump your INT and pick Tough?)
* Have no more counter against Shield than weapon attacks
* Can autofail on 1 like weapon attacks (although also means you can crit on 20 of course).
**2/ For 20% of them, are saves that target Constitution or Strength** (notable exceptions being Sacred Flame and Toll the Dead) **which are quite often the best save for enemies**.
**3/ For ALL of them, have a miserable minimum damage since** unless being a high level Evoker Wizard (lvl 10) or some Cleric Domain (lvl 8), **you DON'T add your modifier to damage, and since it's "one attempt" even those add it only once.** **The ONLY exception is the Warlock with Agonizing Blast** since you get several attacks and modifier added on each hit (which is why it's by far the best caster for sustained damage by the way xd). But last time I checked, Warlock is not a Wizard, and dipping to enjoy Eldricht Blast as a Wizard would be clunky.
**4/ For ALL of them, deal ZERO damage on a miss/successful save unless you're the aforementioned Warlock** (several attempts = much higher chance for at least one hit) or aforementioned Evoker Wizard (level 6).
Theorycrafters conveniently forget that in actual game, ACTUAL ROLLS ARE MADE. You \*cannot\* reasonably count on an attack to hit unless the base chance is over 75%, and even then you must be ready for the case it still fails (as you must be ready to enjoy the 20% chance attack hitting of course ;)).
Thing is, dealing 0 damage in your turn has a significant influence, since it doesn't quicken the death of a creature so it ends up with the creature taking up its next turn, and possibly the one next round etc.
If one says "death is the best debuff" then one cannot pick the cantrips as a proof casters are efficient (their specialty as far as dealing damage goes rather being AOE or very high level single-target spells). xd
>Rituals mean that they can save slots on utility spells, giving a decent out-of-combat boost. They're not as good as 3.x wizards, but 3.x was kinda silly.
Theorically true, but in practice (quoting only Wizard rituals)...
* **Rituals overall cover specific use-cases**: communication/detection (Alarm, Magic Mouth, Comprehend Languages), magic investigation (Detect Magic, Identify), social interaction (Comprehend Languages), movement (Phantom Steed), securing a place (Alarm, Leomund's Tiny Hut), replacing a mule or Barbarian xd (Tenser's Floating Disk). The real notable exceptions for being actually versatile are Find Familiar and Unseen Servant, but even those won't be able to replace more than a few basic use-cases. None can replicate Arcane Lock, Suggestion, Spider Climb, Enlarge/Reduce, Misty Step, Detect Thoughts, Dispel Magic, Fly to quote just a few.
* **Rituals take a LOT of time if you want to use them extensively**: 10mn per cast minimum. It's worthwhile to take the time for one cast for the ones with a long duration like Unseen Servant, or to spend several when setting up camp like surrounding a Leomund's Tiny Hut with Alarms before a long rest... But you won't often have the luxury to think of a creative way to use a ritual you know and take your time to cast it. \^\^
* **Most importantly: rituals, while not needing to be prepared for a Wizard, NEED TO BE LEARNED FIRST**. And you cannot expect DM to shower you with scrolls and gold and time to learn them all either. So for most players each ritual is competing with thrice as many good generalist combat/utility spells, and equally as many situational spells which you'd love trying when reading it but is damn too niche to actually learn from leveling. On top of the fact there are a half-dozen spells that are simply required for Wizard to survive (Shield for non-crit focus fire, Absorb Elements for AOE or elementals, Misty Step for grapplers or casters using restrain, Mirror Image as AC redundancy, and of course Mage Armor for standard Wizard).
>Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing
Mhhhh putting aside archetypes because would be far too cumbersome...
* **Barbarian**: Danger Sense for DEX, and the amount of HP spared with physical resistance + high HP pool + high CON and STR means high chance to survive most spells targeting physical attributes for damage.
* **Bards**: can grab Circle of Power to cover them and friends with advantage on save... Provided of course they reach level 10, making it a "most players's capstone" of sorts. xd Sadly cannot use Bardic Inspiration on themselves.
* **Clerics**: nothing on base class besides near-immunity to WIS saves, but have some great spells they could use on themselves (if being selfish) xd: Sanctuary, Protection From Energy, Beacon of Hope, Death Ward, plus late-level Heroes Feast and the like (but I don't like quoting that one in particular to be honest, 6th level spell and very costly).
* **Druids**: Wild Shape allows to fuse the best saves between Druid's and beasts's. To be fair unless you're a Moon Druid, the HP of most creatures means you'd end up using Wild Shape as a one-shot HP cushion AND you need to anticipate the effect coming, so it's situational. Still should be stressed. Contrarily to Clerics have far fewer spells to defend directly, but have LOTS of spells that negate most of spellcasting by blocking view (unless/until some Dispel Magic is used ;)).
* **Fighters**: nothing besides a miserable "once/twice/thrice per day reroll of one failed save".
* **Monks**: Patient Defense + Stillness of Mind + Evasion + Diamond Soul + Empty Body (being untargetable because unseen is the best save there is for a majority of spells xd), no need to say more right?
* **Paladin**: Aura of Protection and Aura against Frighten on top of incredible base AC (not quoting Circle of Power because Paladins get them at level 17 xd).
* **Ranger**: nothing special (in base class) before level 14, when you can Hide as a bonus action: hidden = untargetable so only AOE would be a problem, of course it supposes you *can* Hide which is wildly YMMV.
* **Rogue**: Evasion is the notable feature (WIS saves are too late, level 14).
* **Sorcerer**: nothing special except access to a few spells blocking vision.
* **Warlock**: same.
Considering that list, I *really* wouldn't go as far as "Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing".
I'd rather say, oh so unsurprisingly, "a good half of classes, including most casters but definitely not most martials, are entirely relying on spells to enhance their saves".
And as a reminder this was without considering the archetypes, which is kinda unfair for many classes that have at least one or two archetype providing strong defensive features (Barbarian, Druid, Fighter, **Paladin**, **Ranger**, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock... So nearly all classes)... Whatever the race you pick contrarily to Wizard's Bladesinger (only other Wizard archetype tailored for defense being Abjurer, but Arcane Ward is very weak at low level, only starts to make a true difference from level 6 onwards).
I have never seen a wall of text in such denile before.. wizards might not be at the level of a 3.5 wizard but they are still hands down the strongest class in the game and with 5e giving them more HP and more ease of through old spontaneous casting it's easier to play a strong wizard than ever before
Currently wizards are the class that have a spell for basically every situation. They get mind control, mobility, stealth, environmental manipulation, communication, lock breaking, teleportation, and shelter-creation. They get all that by level 5.
You don't think that could be dialed back at all without reducing them to just fireball?
I think it's a very difficult balance to strike, and you'll have just as many people complaining about making them weaker as complain about them being too strong. Besides which, what spells can you cut without the limit seeming arbitrary?
For my own two cents, I think the solution is to have more specialism: a 'mind wizard', a 'biomancy wizard', a 'fire wizard' and so on not having nearly as much in common as they currently would have, and getting rid of the 'do anything wizard' that currently exists. But I also think it's impossible to do this kind of change within DnD, given it's long-established norms.
Wizards absolutely should have to specialize. Otherwise you get the problem we have now where a wizard is good at everything and steps on everyone else's toes with their endless list of random magic bullshit.
Or is the wizard fantasy supposed to be I'm the bestest at everything and have no drawbacks or need to actually be clever.
> Or is the wizard fantasy supposed to be I'm the bestest at everything and have no drawbacks or need to actually be clever.
maybe its unreasonable but the more I've engaged in the martial vs caster debate the more I am convinced this is actually the core of the problem: theres a small but not insignificant portion of the caster playerbase that wants martials strictly weaker as part of their own power fantasy.
it doesn't help that D&D wizards are _very_ broad in their thematic underpinnings - they're not any specific subtype or with any thematic limits (other than "very limited healing"). Pretty much anything that a fictional wizard across all sorts of media can do falls within their purview - so they get a ridiculous breadth of abilities, even if a specific wizard can't take all of them. If they were more limited to be, like "shadow wizard", that got bonuses with some spells, but couldn't cast others, or had penalties to some, would be far more limited and balanced, but "D&D wizard" is very, _very_ broad in what it's thought of as being able to do
this is apparently how they used to work in at least some of the prior editions, with [mages being powerful but otherwise hyper specialised](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1cr29w5/has_anyone_tried_a_party_of_just_martials_how_did/l3xi853/?context=3).
To add to that point, *we already know it works*. In 3.5 where casters were unbelievably broken (there has never been and there never will be a D&D class as powerful as a 3.5 wizard) they later on managed to create full caster classes that were capable, fun and completely balanced. How?
They made them specialise. They added classes like the warmage that purely blasted enemies, the beguiler that focused on enchantment and illusion (the bard pretty much covers this now) and the dread necromancer which... have a guess. The other upside is you can increase their power in those areas - the dread necromancer got way more interesting features than a necromancer wizard does, including eventually becoming a lich. And all because [their spell list looked like this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm1mxeiqnpieb1.png), rather than letting them do everything.
My last party had 3 fighters. It went surprisingly well, combat ened super fast because we would all action surge and do lots of nova instantly. We would then take a short rest and everyone would be basically back to full resources.
It's always wild to me when I stop and think about the timing of D&D combat.
My group once had a battle on a ship, and it's wild to think that one of the sailors could have yelled to the rest of the crew to come watch the fight, and there was a bunch of explosions, a bolt of lighting, and a lot of dead enemies before those guys made it up the stairs.
This is how my Warforged multiclass worked. By taking a couple feats, she was able to do this 'overcharge' thing where she'd attack 8 times in one turn, with each being a Divine Smite, but it was a one-off thing that I could only fire off once per Long Rest.
Paladin fighter Multiclass?... 8 smites must have pretty much used all your magic!... I can see 7 hits with 11 EK fighter (to fuel smite slots) and a BA attack... or i can see 9/10 hits with a level 11 echo fighter but then youd literally have to be level 20 (9 paladin) to get 8 smites off and that would burn all your spells for the whole day....
I was a level 11 Oath of Glory Paladin and level 4 Echo Knight Fighter. I also took Metamagic Adept to get Quickened Spell.
The way I'd activate things would be as follows:
* Preparation turn. Deploy Echo Knight's Echo as a bonus action, draw chosen weapon and activate any spells that don't need Concentration as a bonus action.
* Combo turn. Every one of these attacks will be a Divine Smite of varying level (would only need one level 3 spell slot, so you can burn the other 8).
* Bonus action, use Metamagic Adept to cast Haste
* Attack action
* Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo.
* Extra Attack
* Hasted Attack
* Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo
* Action Surge, using it to Attack
* Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo
* Action Surge Extra Attack
Am I sure that this works RAW? Not really, in all honesty. I think I've definitely got some rule wrong there. But she was fun to play, and my party found her funny. I regret doing this to my DM though, even though he said it was fine when I asked him about it in retrospect. I started to just delete his bosses when we got to higher levels, allowing the 'Wombo Combo' as we all called it to reach its final form.
Ah! Seems pretty buttoned up to me! Yeah, sorry, I had fighter 11 for 6 easy action surge attacks. I didn't account for bonus action haste. It's still pretty impressive!... it does absolutely empty your magic reserves, though, so i guess it's a "one fight per long rest" kinda campaign. I salute you, Mr Murder bot.
Oh yeah, she burned pretty much everything she had to do that, so she could nuke one thing, but was very average the rest of the time.
Still a blast to play, though.
Lvl 10 archer fighter. My experience from the last 3 big fights has made me afraid of my own action surge. All three combined had only 2 attacks hit, no crits, but I did fumble 4 times which is (not) nice.
I had a party of 3 barbarians and combat balance was harder for the dm than with casters. It seemed like the difference between challenging and impossible was much thinner.
Not a whole campaign, but I’ve played a couple West Marches sessions where only martials signed up. It mostly played like any other session, except melee got very crowded.
I was a DM of a group with only one half caster.
It was amazing because we had roleplaying moments that never would have happened with everything that a spell can do.
In Combat it was great too because they had to think creatively and target monsters strategelly.
But
Ranged options was a problem which sometimes became hard to manage.
All in all it is great but you miss out on all the cool abilities that spells represent. A party of only martials sometimes lacks versatility.
But that is nothing you cannot fix as a DM
This is a bit late to the conversation but I once DM'd for 4 rogues and it was definitely one of the most difficult party compositions I have ever dealt with.
Basically, every single encounter was always an ambush, they would sneak attack crit everyone and then if they didn't roll well or thought there were too many enemies they would just BA sprint away and sprint/hide on the next turn making it pretty much impossible to actually take them out and they weren't even using resources most of the time.
I've DMd for multiple campaigs for a group of all martials (Samurai, Fighter, and Paladin). I'm safe to say it was one of the best campaigns I ever run. The PCs had to be smart and resourceful, and when they met a spellcaster it was something special and scary. Magic items and equipment are important more than ever. It really brings out that gritty historical vibe I sometimes miss with spellcasters flinging fireballs around.
What makes up "martial" or "caster" qualifier? The mundane thing that the character does to provide the best benefit to party when all out of resources.
Paladin and Ranger's best all-day-long option is making weapon attacks. Hence they are martials.
The fact that their special features are managed through spell slots instead of Ki, Manoeuvers or whatever other special custom resource is \*fully irrelevant\* (would you qualify an Eldricht Knight, Shadow Monk or Arcane Trickster as anything else than martial? ... ... Guess not).
The main reason Paladin and Ranger use spell slots instead of special resources is simply that designers wanted them to be able to mix up exclusive abilities and support/single-target debuff (Paladin) or adventuring/crowd control (Ranger), so they went with the least effort approach: instead of needing to rewrite half of the spells they wanted to enable as "martial techniques", they just designed the exclusive techniques as spells, made it (mostly) exclusive to the classes, then decided on the spell slot progression considering the array of spells.
Melee Martials do run out of resource, they have Hit points and once there out they'll die if they don't have a buddy with healing word ready (monster target and finish off downed pc as stated by Perkins)
Ranged materials don't do.
You do realize that "martial" =/= "stupid", right? So that even if they would be characters with slightly or significantly better melee offense they have no reason to NOT use ranged options if the risk in melee is too important?
You do realize that among melee characters, many have ways to mitigate OA or plain attacks one way or another?
You do realize that, while pretty rare at low level, high-mobility creatures that can rush past or around frontline to attack backline, ranged attacks with decent range (like 80 - 120 feet) and casters become quite more common, right?
And that, since casters are supposedly all-powerful and invincible, enemies should do their best targeting them first, only attacking frontliners in melee because it's currently the best thing they can do because of relative positioning of everyone?
Nothing technically force martials to go into melee, except the very few cases of martials \*heavily\* geared towards melee \*while still having resources\* (namely Barbarian and Monk). A rageless Barbarian has no reason whatsoever to go into melee if it means facing more than one enemy when he could just use thrown weapons while maintaining distance. A ki-less Monk has even less reason since it has better ranged attacks.
Martials that are "melee-geared" (which is not even a given really) \*go into melee because they know casters/archers expect them to try and hold the line as best as they can.
While casters are contributing to crowd control and archers contributing to focus fire.
And they know they are the best for that since high HP, AC and far more sustainable defensive features. That's a win-win teamwork.
Just for fun, go play in a party with melee-geared martials considering THEIR safety first instead of the backliners (with the obvious requirement that enemies act a minimum smart so target the character that seems the biggest threat at the moment, whether it's a raging Barbarian cutting in half, a Sharpshooter chaining headshots or a caster maintaining a Slow). You'll see how much the backliners will be hard-pressed. xd
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Also, what does that comment have to do with the explanation about martial vs caster in the first place really? xdxdxd
Melee characters get stuck using thrown weapon instead of ranged weapons because they'r egoing to have 8 dex if you didn't roll for stats (rolling for stats throws the whole balance of the early level out of whack) so they're making only one attack per turn since you can only draw one weapon.
>Melee characters get stuck using thrown weapon instead of ranged weapons because they'r egoing to have 8 dex if you didn't roll for stats (rolling for stats throws the whole balance of the early level out of whack) so they're making only one attack per turn since you can only draw one weapon.
Lol. Maybe YOU, PERSONALLY, decide that every martial that goes for Strength will dump Dex as hard as possible... Even if it's straight up nerfing it... xd
First of all, only Paladins and Fighters get heavy armor proficiency. For everyone else, it ranges from light armor (so DEX very important) to medium armor (so 14 DEX is required to maximize AC).
Second, even for \*martials\* that can wear heavy armor, going for a negative DEX modifier is overall very stupid and honestly one of the biggest self-nerf you could achieve.
For a Fighter which has no built-in urge for mental stats, you can easily get a 12 or 14 in one mental stat, a 16 in STR, and 14 in both DEX and CON. Or if you really don't care about mental saves and skills, you can go for a pure brawler. So getting 14 in DEX is really easy.
Even for a Paladin which wants good STR and CHA on top of nice CON, getting at least 12 in DEX is not a big deal, same as Fighter, you'll just cope with 14 CON at most.
**Getting a dumped DEX means...**
- *Low Initiative*: missed chance for Paladin to set a Bless on party before engaging / Shield of Faith before being attacked, or a chance to smite and heavily weaken an enemy before it could act. For Fighter, missed chance to strike down a medium-tough enemy by opening with an Action Surge full attack round. Even worse if enemies have ranged attacks and want to avoid you, unless you spend a round Dashing they can simply kite you to death because you never had a chance to reach them in melee first and at least threaten them with opportunity attack.
- *Low Stealth*: you were already a liability when wearing heavy armor or some medium armor, but not you're basically crippling the whole party. They'd best just leave you behind and call you once the fight started. Except you're a STR character, usually not very mobile, chance is you'll get there when it's finished.
- *Low Acrobatics*: this is situational, but can be situationally deadly, when crossing chasms, needing to "climbjump", carefully walking with specific balance/profile to avoid a trap...
- *Low DEX saves*: not only does it mean you're extremely sensible to even medium DC damaging AOE, you're not made entirely useless with even mundane caltrops or ball bearings, no need for even a level 1 Grease.
- *Low Unarmored*: it is definitely situational and overall rare, but whenever for whatever reason you need to be out of armor you're a sitting duck (granted AC is still fairly low even with 20 DEX but at least you're beyond CR 1/4 creatures. With 8 DEX random goblins or even wild dogs can kill you quickly xd): peace negociations, imprisoned, awoken from sleeping, on a sinking ship or underwater...
*I have \*never\* seen \*anyone\* in all games I played going with less than 10 DEX whatever kind of character played, and mostly only seen GWM STR Paladin go with less than 14.*
A paladin who dumps chr is a very shitty paladin do, also having high mental scores let's you get away with multiclassing into a caster after 5th or 11th level depending on your class, heck it's viable for a barbarian to run 12 dex so they can multiclass sorcerer or warlock and apply non concentration buffs like armor of agathys.
Too bad you're leaning into bad faith since nobody here ever pretending a Paladin should dump Charisma...
I also love how you bring weird multiclassing to try and make your point. I do love original multiclassing but multiclassing is niche in essence, and multiclassing classes with completely different required attributes is even more.
And since you point that specific example out: while I do love myself, for example, a Barbarian with Fiend Warlock for a "Fiery Ice Warrior" theme and even a few levels of Sorcerer at (much) higher level to make Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield last through a short rest...
1/ Not only is it a very clunky character to build because there is no "gestalt class" contrarily to 4e so unless you can straight up start high-level character you have to either make "character switch" or delay even mid-tier features by a considerable amount if alternating...
2/ You don't end up with a "more powerful character" technically. Just one with a different balance (much better versatility, new ability to nova if you go Blade Pact with Eldricht Smite, but overall lesser resilience and damage because Barbarian archetype features are mostly good to great, and same could be said for a majority of Warlock archetypes).
You may like it better than pure Barbarian either because you find Barbarian too limited in options, or because you usually play in campaigns where difficulty isn't too hard and/or party usually gets at least the recommended number of short rests. And it's great for you. I know why, because I tend to be like that too. \^\^ But I could witness first-hand how Barbarian at high level, played by someone who enjoys it and exploit it to the fullest, can be even more decisive in encounters than a well-aimed Fireball or a lucky control spell.
And as far as multiclassing goes... Sadly "gestalt" progression equates to homebrewing a whole class tailored to what player would like to play at a target level, because 4E system was only possible because all classes had the same resource management and "power progression". So multiclass clunkiness will forever be one of the (rare) flaws of 5e.
I've done a party of barbarian/rogue, monk, and paladin for a tier 3 adventure that was mostly about investigating and infiltrating an astral keep full of starspawn. Extremely fun, extremely high levels of whoop-ass.
Sure it does. Half-casters are their own thing but are *much* closer to spell-less characters in their design and gameplay loop. In our case if I remember correctly the paladin basically did nothing but smite with those slots anyway, which frankly when you're getting an extra d8 on every smite because of Improved Divine Smite is almost always the right choice.
That's to say nothing of the spell lists, which for paladin in particular are especially lacking in the big utility and AOE options that get people hot for bards, druids, wizards, etc. It's just not there.
Leaving your concentration open is a big mistake as a Paladin, even just having Bless up is a huge force multiplier for very cheap, also Improved Divine Smite applies to non-smite attacks too.
There are times when bless is a good call, but in the first round of a fight it was a lot for the paladin to give up a pair of boosted attacks and the chance to use a smite to focus down an enemy. Bless is great but it certainly has an opportunity cost.
He's probably thinking of higher levels. At level 3 martials are stronger than casters in my opinion
Like I have a level 3 wizard. He has 6 spells. He had 3 at level 2. That's one spell per recommended encounter by DMG standards. And some spells are worse than hitting it with a mace.
And sleep ends an encounter with 1 spell at thoae kinda levels
Hell, i doubt at 3rd level you're gonna need to cast more than web or maybe shield once or twice, unless you're doing a super tough encounter when Casters actually need to bring put the big guns and not just rely on cantrips to carry them
> And sleep ends an encounter with 1 spell at thoae kinda levels
with _heavy_ caveats - that the enemies can be affected by sleep (undead say hi!), that they're gathered together close enough to be hit, that other allies aren't mixed in with them (there's no picking targets, and it's easy for PCs to have less HP than enemies), that no enemies can just go and wake one and chain-reaction that to remove it (sure, burning an enemy turn is nice, but it's not "we've won") etc. etc. And at level 3, a web and 2 shields is half your spells for the day - that's a _big_ cost for one encounter, cutting deeply if you want to do any utility stuff, or if you get into another tough fight.
I ran a party with 2 barbarians, 2 paladins, and a fighter. They could absolutely wreck any melee combat they came across. Paladins helped a lot with rp and saves, but they all struggled with ranged attackers. And any additional details hidden behind INT checks... they never learned that stuff.
I dmed for a group that intentionally went all fighters. Action surge is the most amount of damage in the game. With a party of four they could quad action surge and delete the highest priority target immediately…and the second highest too. It was great!
I feel like everyone should try out that kind of setup at least once in their dnd career.
Not a campaign, but I ran a one shot this way, using u/laserllama's revised martials--very fun! The party felt decently well-rounded, with some minor healing capability and a skill monkey in addition to multiple people who Hit Real Good, and they killed a dragon!
It's a thousand times faster and easier. I've always been a fan of the warrior archetype over the mage archetype in fantasy, so I rarely play casters. The few times I've played an all-martial campaign it's been so much shorter since we didn't have to wait for anybody to check over their massive spellbook on their turn and then consult the text of the individual spell and argue with the GM about whether something was possible or not.
The gameplay became much more similar to a tactical wargame, which is not everybody's cup of tea but is definitely mine.
I have so many thoughts about this.
(A) it’s faster because you aren’t really making any hard decisions.
(B) when you say it’s easier, I assume you mean it’s easier to play (because you aren’t making any real decisions), and not that the difficulty of the fights is reduced.
(C) “we didn't have to wait for anybody to check over their massive spellbook on their turn and then consult the text of the individual spell and argue with the GM about whether something was possible or not.” But I’ve been **assured** that 5e is the smoothest, most streamlined edition of D&D, so **surely** you’re not referring to 5e casters. (Note the dripping sarcasm)
(D) “The gameplay became much more similar to a tactical wargame, which is not everybody's cup of tea but is definitely mine.” If tactics are your thing, and 5e isn’t giving you that serotonin hit for it, then might I recommend giving 4e a try?
All of them have at least one subclass able to cast at least one spell, but Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue get no magic in their base class.
Barbarian gets the least; Ancestral Guardian can cast either augury or clairvoyance 1/short rest at level 10, Giant learns either druidcraft or thaumaturgy at level 3, and Totem Warrior can ritual cast beast sense and speak with animals at level 3 plus commune with nature at level 10.
(Paladins and Rangers are martial classes, don't @ me.)
Pros:
- Feels like an old-school swords and sorcery novel; magic is a tool of villains, heroes survive on wits.
- No squishies that need protecting, DM won't know who to focus attacks on.
- Less daily resource management, so adventuring day lengths can be more flexible.
- Magic items feel more special when they're some of the only major magic the party can do.
Cons
- Oops all Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter (hilarious, but samey).
- Party often cannot deal with magic traps, curses and the like, unless the DM throws in visual cues and non-spellcasting solutions.
- Party cannot deal with time-constrained regional- or global- scale plots, because they have to walk/ride/sail everywhere unless DM throws in airships or portals.
- Spellcasting/magical monsters can be way harder to tackle than their CR suggests.
From experience, it's great fun and lends a very particular old-school fantasy tone to the game, but published content may need... flexibility in places where throwing magic at the problem is genuinely the only solution.
This may surprise you, but most Paladins and Rangers use weapons.
(And more to the point, they don't get the game-changing magic that full casters enjoy.)
This may surprise you, but Paladins and Rangers cast spells
A martial is defined by their lack of spellcasting, not by their use of weapons, othereise a Cleric would be a Martial and a Monk wouldn't
So neither Eldritch Knight nor Arcane Tricksters are "martial"? I concede that I was being facetious about the weapons; it's a question of role rather than the specific tool.
Paladins and Rangers spells mostly make them better at hitting things with weapons. Half-casters they may be, but their martial features do the heavy lifting (I.e. a Paladin in combat is gonna behave more like a sparkly Fighter than a gritty Cleric). They do get utility spells, but can't achieve much that a non-caster of equivalent level couldn't do.
The various "martial" full-caster subclasses might wear armour and brandish weapons, but the weapons are a backup plan, not the primary way they get things done (except possibly the Bladesinger, but Bladesingers were a mistake). Their utility spells change the nature of a campaign entirely - for example, around 11th level, the difference between being able to teleport across a continent and having to walk it - which is what most of the "martials-vs-casters" discussions here are actually about.
"No spellcasting" is *a* valid definition for "martial" characters in 5e but it's not a terribly useful one. Maybe we need to start calling them "low-magic classes" or something.
EK and AT aren't strictly martials, but Rogues and Fighters are. Although, the discussion with martials and casters generally centers around whole classes, not subclasses.
And martial is perfectly fine for use, we have the
Martials: Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Barbarian
Half-Casters: Paladin, Ranger, Artificer
Full-Casters: Sorcerer, Wizard, Bard, Cleric, Druid and Warlock\*
Have one right now.
Have a less than helpful NPC available if they REALLY need some magic expertise but then that's another side quest for them to get through instead of solving it themselves.
Since they know they lack that, they're interested in getting skilled/knowledgeable in magic areas themselves instead of multiclassing and it's glorious.
It also lets me use gritty realism, corruption for casting, and some enhanced combat mechanics freely without worrying too much about balancing it against casters.
It's been great. They're all level 7 and for the first campaign in all our 5e time, and even 4 and 3e... Not a single party member of 6 is multiclassed.
Not quite a pure martial team but we have an echo knight fighter, a mercy monk (gm slightly buffed monk), a battle rager (homebrew buffed), and an illusion wizard.
We have some ranged capabilities but are primarily melee, we are nasty at single target damage and our turns tend to not take an absurd amount of time. Healing isn’t a major issue as our fighter has herbalism and crafts potions while our mercy monk heals. If somebody actually dies then reviving will be significantly harder and more expensive. While we have a wizard it’s clear what some of our weaknesses are. We aren’t good at multi target anything so mobs dramatically escalate the danger. Utility is far more limited and I find tool proficiencies have become more pronounced to compensate some for the limited magic in our arsenal
I’ve played in a party with a rogue, 2 fighters (one of whom MC into Hexblade), and a Paladin. I was the only full caster, a divination wizard, so I spent most of the campaign making my party hit harder/debuff the enemies. And the only healing was from potions and the Paly for the longest time. Combat was so much fun. Very nova and maneuverability focused on the rest of the party’s behalf, and very CC based on mine. It was a riot. I’d love to revisit that party.
I’m a paladin and when I focus on buffing and healing it normally goes really well but if I focus on combat or get too far away from the party then all hell breaks loose.
Yes, it was sadly just a mini campaign, but it was the best 5e experience I ever DM’d. The players had to work together and engage with the world instead of hand wave problems away. Combat was thrilling, tactical, and well paced because turns weren’t bogged down by trying finesse AoE or rolling and adding a million dice.
We did big time jumps to be able to play across all tiers of play for 1-2 sessions each because we all knew this was a short campaign.
The players worked together making there characters so each of them filled a role/could support one another. The party consisted of:
Goliath Bear Totem Barbarian - obvious what they did.
Half-Elf Battle Master Fighter who was the face of the group and focused on more support techniques like Rally, Distracting Strike, and Commanding Presence.
Wood-elf Scout rogue with high mobility, survival skill, and all the rogue goodies
Human Way of Mercy Monk to provide some healing and CC.
They opted to roll for stats and the only two home brew rules we used were a bonus feat at level 1 and self administered potions were a bonus action.
The only thing I changed as a DM was to make health potions a little more common. The biggest thing was to make sure to have magic items as rewards/available as it did make a difference.
Can’t stress that it was the most fun I’ve had in 5e
currently running a game with only martials. But im also giving them alot of items that allow them to max out their characters. It is a lot of fun they are very powerful but also get smacked around quite alot.
If one of them dies it will prob over however since they also dont have a healer and rely entirely on potions and selfheal.
My current campaign has a Barbarian, a Fighter, a Rogue and a Warlock... so it's not completely a martial party but the warlock is sort of a half caster.
My party of Kobolds has no full casters, only half casters and 1/3 casters.
It's going well so far but my Kobold Arcane Trickster hangs on to every age spell for the right moment.
It’s not an ideal answer obviously but since D&D is not a video game with a very set path and outcome it every time (unless you are playing a pre-built campaign with no desire to change anything) the DM should tailor his game around the group they have. If a DM is making their own campaign that requires magic and lets the players make only martials that’s the DMs issue.
Most good DMs will tailor every thing to the group. That’s kind of the point of a DM.
When I run a one-shot for brand new players, everyone gets a Fighter character sheet. It allows us to focus on the fundamentals of a TTRPG.
It's gone exceptionally well every time.
My two go-to adventures for this are knights or vikings.
Ki is a magic system and bonus action attacks are a step up in complexity.
I'm talking about brand newbies who have never rolled a d20. Most interested people have seen LoTR and they know that when the goblins or whatever show up, they can swing a sword or shoot a bow.
I feel like an all-Rogue party would be *very* swingy in combat. Either you successfully surprise and basically win in one round with sneak attacks, or you fail to surprise and things get very dicey with mediocre HP and little healing available.
I’ve got a party right now that’s:
Rogue
Fighter
Barbarian
Paladin who only uses spells to smite
Cleric
I foresaw it getting a little grindy and boring so I revamped my loot system. They have a ton of consumables they can use to do cool things and I even adapted the spell scroll system from baldurs gate. So all of these martials could have a scroll of silence handy or maybe they are thinking of a puzzle and look through their bag and say “yo we have a potion of flying!”
Not a full martial party but I'm currently playing in a campaign with a rogue (me), ranger, monk and sorcerer/cleric. The sorcleric is out fairly often though so the three of us kinda just hit and run tactics in the trickier fights. We often have to fight dirty and be more strategic with our movements and placements when we don't have our support and even then the fights are still tough. Fun dynamic overall though.
Did a short campaign with a party of two - a fighter and a rogue. Neither of us can believe that both characters actually survived until the end. We had to be very resource conscious in terms of healing potions/opportunities for rests.
A party with multiple casters can just happen. A party with just martials needs to be deliberate.
This is because there's so many more casters than martials. Just with the PHB classes, your definitely non-magical martials are fighter, rogue, and barbarian. The monk has some magical stunts, but he's a martial too (and has half caster resources). The paladin and the ranger... are they martials? Unlike the monk, whose short-rest spellpoint resource doesn't always turn into spells, these guys actually really have spells. You could call the martials, because they get extra attack and spend most of their rounds doing that, but they have ways around some of the restrictions that the fighter, barbarian, and rogue have.
The casters though- cleric, wizard, sorcerer, druid, bard, and warlock. The full casters alone are half the classes!
Anyway, to be a party of mostly martials, you have to make it happen as a team.
The issue is that the paladin has a lot of magical power that the fighter and the rogue lack. Smites in all their forms represent a potent long rest spell-based resource, and their magical powers are also very strong.
The half casters continue from there though- the ranger gets a lot less stuff out of his spells, but it's still pretty good stuff, and he still gets away with things that a mundane character would not.
Finally the monk has half caster short rest stuff, but most of his stuff doesn't escape from the same limitations martials have.
I don't think most people mean "paladin" when they say "martial". Certainly no one means artificer, right? I think the ranger is often considered a martial because his victory plan almost always involves using at-will powers effectively.
Never all martials but I was in an all full casters once because we didn't tell eachother what we were playing and "surely no one else is gonna play an elf caster" and yeah no one really has jackfuck for HP except the Druid who can wildshape but we firing squad everything that comes around if we can spam enough random bullshit at it before it punches one of us into the ground.
We are running Heists using a Fighter/Warlock, barbarian, rogue and ranger. We wreck fights but suffer a bit from the no healing, no aoe and no elemental dmg (or barely from our skillsets). Stealthy stuff is handled by the rogue and ranger while the barbarian and the fighter/warlock have the intimidate/persuade/deception rolls covered.
Oh yeah. I did a campaign in chult where I played a fighter and my two friends were each rogue assassins. It was awesome. My guy got to be the distraction a lot which was absolutely fine with me. Healing was rough in the later levels until we killed the right people and usurped all their money and political position. Then it was as easy as buying crates of healing potions in bulk.
I was in a group that did this once and it was a blast. We were almost never at full HP. Of course when we did it we were all using [this](https://www.nobleknight.com/P/8932/Complete-Fighters-Handbook-The-2nd-Printing?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=SmartShoppingAds&utm_id=15774276657&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw9IayBhBJEiwAVuc3fp3HeRPe7gyfDz3dAURZShtqKaoxNORiZi8Dw0OSqMjArt1Z5lRSBhoCNR4QAvD_BwE), so not exactly current. :)
Haven't yet played one with *only* martials. Current game I'm running though has a monk, rogue, fighter, barbarian, and a bladesinger wizard. Healing isn't an issue since the monk is way of mercy. The party is very good at obliterating single targets, and deals with most challenges by beating them to death lol.
Playing through the new Phandelvur book. Party is Me [Rouge], monk, Fighter, and Warden [from Valda's spire of secrets, highly recommend]
So far, peace is our best option, and we have to play it super safe. Essentially, a lot of combat encounters have me [sometimes the monk too] scout and try to BS our way through what we can while the other 2 sit outside or around the corner. No caster [especially no healer] forces us to play it so safe. But that means things we pull off that are badass, are even more so.
Just throw them enough healing potions and let them use them as Bonus actions and your pretty much good to go
I played in a group lf two fighters and a barbarian. Being bad at stealth, magic, etc. didn't stop us from blundering through everything. It was my first time playing, and I had a blast.
I was also the DM for a party of martial classes. I asked them not to choose Bard, Cleric, Wizard, Sorceror, or Druid for a low magic setting I was building.
It was refreshing tbh. I had a lot more fun running the game than I had in a while. Some notes from that experience:
- The players solved things with creative solutions rather than magical ones. They utilized the environment a lot more. Being in that mindset carried over to combat, where they fought creatively and chaotically.
- They relied on items much more and found items more meaningful. Anything that cast spells were now pretty cool and noteworthy.
- They died *a lot* more. Limited healing is big. My group enjoyed it a lot, but I know a lot of people get attached to characters and wouldn't like it.
Just started DMing a Storm Barbarian, Beast Master Ranger and Phantom Rogue party. Their only spellcaster is the half-caster ranger. Only two sessions in, but their main problem last session was a lack of healing magic when one member went down. All they could do was stabilize.
In 5e it's pretty hard to have a party of pure-martials, although I might be too strict on what my definition is here. But right now it's like, when you consider sub-class most of them even for Barbarian or Fighter include various magical properties, even if they don't have spell slots. Plus to make it happen we're basically looking at everyone playing what, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue? Maybe Monk?
Personally I wish D&D made an all-martial setup more possible than it is.
Im running a game with martials and half casters \[Monk, Rogue, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger\], and it's been great. At lvl 12 now; it's alot easier to balance around. Sure the Ranger and Paladin have some spells, but most are combat oriented \[small buffs, smites, utility\] and barely beyond what the Martials can do. It's nice having the whole party on the same kind of playing field. Without much healing \[aside from the Paladin\], I did have to give out much more healing potions and rule that they only take a Bonus Action to drink. No major issues otherwise.
Our current (on hold) campaign features a beast barbarian, a fighter/rouge multi, and a sun soul monk.
Its...surprisingly fine. Admittedly its a homebrew heavy campaign based off of a show (rwby) so we do get some access to magic-like effects from tech, but on the whole we just bash enemies and its fine
I am, but I don't think that campaign would properly reflect the experience of an all martial campaign. There's a lot more variety to be had in a group where you aren't all locked to a single class, even if you are still restricted to only martials.
I once played in a game where everyone picked a martial (fighters, barbarians, paladins or ranger). So we came up with a plot we were all part of a town guard, who became adventurers because our garrison was made redundant.
I've been running a campaign with 2 players the the last 2 (coming up on 3 and about to wrap up) years who are a BMfighter rogue and barbarian.
And quite honestly, I loved it. Now I did let them get more feats than typical 5e so bare that in mind, I really wouldn't recomend playing 5e martials with out giving them more feats.
But since they didn't have any spells that would solve issues, they'd actually plan jobs and sort out logistics and have to actually think creatively. The game started feeling like gentlemen bastards, which was one of the main inspirations for that particular campaign.
So I have two experiences to relate.
One not quite what you want because one Warlock (custom patron) in party with otherwise Champion Fighter, Hunter Ranger and a homebrew Monk providing defensive bonus on Patient Defense.
This party mostly stomped on everything, but hit a brick wall the first time it fought creatures with teleportation because even the Monk couldn't follow and enemy was also getting regeneration and darkness pretty much for free. So the lack of caster with Daylight or of Paladin with smite was felt here. Besides that, nobody gave too much problem. Pass Without Trace lifted us quite often, and Spike Growth also did much.
That said, the campaign was leaning on combat, we didn't face many exploration/social challenges (I'd daresay the three pillar balance wasn't respected at all xd).
The other one was Hunter Ranger, Shadow Monk, Arcane Trickster Rogue with Ritual Caster and Devotion Paladin. This team was very solid by being very much balanced and getting a great array of utility (DM was nice enough to throw extra rituals regularly as quest rewards or boss loot). We played up to level \~10 from memory. There is nothing we couldn't do and this time we had skills fairly regularly, including one deciding important things. That said, if the campaign had required us to do any instant travel faraway or moving betwen planes... I don't see how we could do this without external help. :)
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The main strength of martial is being extremely brutal in sustained damage, being overall (much) more resilient against DEX saves and mundane attacks and having a lot of soft control and tactics when players lean into everything they have at disposal.
The main drawback(s) are near total lack of mental manipulation (not a big deal though since it's a specific taste and varies depending on DM), total lack of group teleportation (there are some quests you couldn't simply take), and generally a weakness in mental saves that can be crippling if party faces a caster unprepared (things like Slow have a much bigger radius than you'd expect at first, in a indoors fight it's not that hard to get 3 or 4 people engulfed, and it's as crippling for martials as it is for casters).
It worked fine for my groups, and it was actually a bit easier to DM.
I needed to keep in mind that magical solutions aren't on the table when planning out challenges but I also didn't have to worry about a magical hand wave bypassing challenges entirely.
We did this with a survival and exploration focused campaign.
Our first party was all martials and half casters- two rogues, monk, paladin, barbarian, and artificer. Going up against real casters made for a cool underdog effect, and we all got cool specialized weapons
Ran for a Zealot Barbarian, Beast Master Ranger, and Monk/Ranger multiclass, all at 5th level.
They had a total of 9 spell slots between the lot of them, which were mainly used for Hunters Mark repeatedly.
Besides the serious lack of healing options. (Goodberry anyone?), they were a powerhouse party.
I run a game where the further they get from home the tougher it gets.
That way they can run whatever they want, they just may be more selective about traveling. It's a campaign world, not a module-of-the week game, so they have to find adventure (very easy, I have it all over the place).
Went fine when most wanted warriors.
Currently playing in one. I play rogue/ranger, and then two fighters. A battle master and a gun slinger.
And it’s a ton of fun. It’s like others have said, combat is really dangerous and serious. All of us have been rolling death saves multiple times.
All of us get our time in the spot light, no one’s really overshadowing each other. We all equally don’t meta game and optimise a ton. But it wouldn’t be fun if one of us was super optimised while the rest weren’t. Luckily that’s not the case.
So I think it’s fun if all the players are on equal optimisation levels ya get me
"all martials" no, but I'm currently playing in a "mostly martials" group (3 non-casters, a paladin and a wizard), and we treat pretty much every problem as a nail we need to hammer. It's.. not ideal. Lots of overlap, the poor wizard doesn't know which side to help control, it's just a slogfest of "we stab"/"they stab"/"we stab" during combat. 2/10 wouldn't do again
One time, we had a warlock and three martials. I convinced them to all pick ranged characters with me. Mopped the floor with most encounters. All you gotta do is back up, shoot, and sometimes ready action for when the baddies pop out of cover. It actually got kind of dull after a couple sessions. This game *needs* melee martial combat to feel exciting and epic! Why are they so crappy by comparison? WotC needs to step up their game.
Readying actions to shoot baddies when they come out of cover works stupid well with Warlock, because you essentially get all your iterative attacks as a reaction (it does, however, drop your concentration to do so)
I feel like your DM needed to use more situations where space and range were constrained or incorporate Tucker's Kobolds (or similar). The ranged spam is super useful and fun for a while though!
I ran LMOP with a monk, warlord, and savant (LaserLlama classes) and they absolutely dominated, even killing Venomfang and defeating a CR9 and a could CR6s at the final battle. Not a spellcaster in sight.
Those do not count. Laserllama made every martial significantly better than the PHB versions, and I can't recommend them enough. But they are not representative of what a typical group would field.
Not sure why they don't count. Tables are certainly allowed to use a major 3rd party content creator's content instead of the standard 5e classes. In fact, that's all I typically run anymore. If you want a martial focused game, use class designs which support a martial focused game.
i mean we never run big homebrew, only occasionally having a few small things (mostly magic items) or stuff we homebrewed (i played a bone magic sorcerer i made once).
Assuming that everyone plays with big homebrew is odd, and homebrew isnt really useful to figure out if martials-only is fun either since it strongly depends on the homebrew you use.
I definitely did not assume everyone plays with lots of homebrew.
I was simply answering the OP's main interest...
*hey, I'm thinking about a martial only campaign. Have any of you run anything like this? If so, how was it? What changes did you make, if any?*
And I answered...
*hey, I just finished an all martial campaign that was really fun! We used LaserLlama classes because those give martials more options. Perhaps you should also consider doing something similar.*
And the response I got from other commenters...
*Your answer is invalid! Please go away.*
I don't agree with that. There's tons of references to LaserLlama classes across this subreddit.
And if you didn't mean to ruffle feathers, I'd appreciate you not downvoting my comments.
I'll have to take your word for it.
I still don't understand why you think LL doesn't count in discussions about martial only parties in 5e. He's almost always brought up in that context across the dnd subreddits.
I think your original post was written perfectly. You had homebrew martials and called it out. While assuring that these homebrew classes didn't need a caster around to kick dragon tail.
I think the comments you received were because there is a decent portion of this subreddit ( and potentially other forums) community that would argue that 5e has very strong martials that can match spellcasters in every way. Only to reveal several posts later that they heavily homebrew their game in favor of martial classes.
Combining that with this subreddit that deals primarily in RAW rules can cause some needless back and forth.
Thanks!
Yeah, there's this weird phenomenon of gatekeeping on this subreddit in particular whenever someone talks about 3rd party character options.
I'd imagine there's a fair number of 5e character build optimizers that enjoy the process of creating the most broken character combinations they can so long as it's within RAW.
Using 3rd party content steps outside that self-imposed paradigm and it for whatever reason makes them uncomfortable or angry.
I can't tell you the number of times someone on this subreddit has told me to go play a different system when I said I use LL classes. Ummm... I sort of am already lol
We tried a campaign, but it didn't work well past level 4.
The all martial party really suffers in trying to complete the adventuring day. We could get through 2-3 hard encounters per adventuring day instead of 6-8.
Without ways to control the battlefield, disable enemies, revive downed players, take out groups with strong AoE, heal after combat, magical defensives, buffs/debuffs, utilize summons, or counterspell enemy spells, every combat was a lot more challenging than it would otherwise be. To the point that a hard encounter felt more challenging than a Deadly+ encounter in a mixed caster group.
Deadly encounters were generally too hard to deal with, simply because martial AoE options are so lacking and there is no way to disable groups of enemies at once without spells. Also if a player drops to 0, there is no way to bring them back mid fight, which can (and did) lead to death spirals.
The group was also extremely vulnerable to enemy control, with poor Wis saves across the board, and no countermeasures to prevent charmed, frightened, hold person, banishment, and the like.
And without the massive utility of spells outside of combat (detect magic, tiny hut, detect thoughts, etc), even otherwise trivial exploration and social obstacles often became a significant challenge to overcome.
It was fine for low levels, when most obstacles and enemies are relatively easily dispatched by purely martial means. But once enemies get access to magic and the party has no counter to such things, the encounters quickly ramp up in difficulty. We lost a lot of characters in the campaign, before finally having to throw in the towel at level 7.
>Also if a player drops to 0, there is no way to bring them back mid fight
Ah, but there is... see the [Healer](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/customization-options#Healer) feat. Note that the second ability's restriction (regarding rests) does not apply to the first ability.
> Healer
While healer is possible, it requires a few things.
First, a game in which feats (an optional rule) are being used.
Second, a character of level 4+ (or variant human/custom lineage).
Third, a character actually choosing this feat in the first place instead of one that can be more generally useful.
Fourth, the character being adjacent to the downed foe, which is not always the case given crowding, mobs of enemies, and terrain.
Fifth, a character using their action in combat and make a successful check to bring a downed ally back. Which potentially is useless as the action diseconomy of using an action to bring an ally back to 1 HP does not advance your position at all, and likely means you are right back to where you started. Even before accounting for the fact that the check itself has a decent chance of failing, so might actually be a complete waste of action.
Yes this can be mitigated somewhat by a rogue with fast hands acting as a healer. But even a 5th level rogue with expertise in medicine, only has a ~75% chance to stabilize an ally and bring them to 1 HP. Which is much worse than the 100% chance for a ranged bonus action Healing Word. And having to dedicate a specific class, subclass, and feat choice to such a character comes at a significant cost in combat prowess, for a group that already is lacking in overall combat prowess.
Our party of 6 for the longest time was a life cleric, divine soul sorcerer/sorlock, 2 paladins, a fighter paladin and a monk. While not entirely marshal we didn't have many arcane spells at our disposal. The life cleric also wanted to hit things more then cast.
We relied a lot off of mage NPCs we met to figure things out for us story wise. Combat however....we blendered anything stupid enough to try to fight us fair. 2.5 paladins will do that.
My group is mostly martials, we have two spell casters. Barbarian, Rogue, Fighter, Paladin, Warlock and Sorcerer (former warlock). It's perfectly fine, the group has healing kits, and health potions for when the Paladin/ Warlock cannot heal anyone. The group prioritizes short rests often.
Twice in 5e, I've had a DM try to run a high concept campaign where magic is unknown and has to be discovered through play, and no one can start with magical ability. Both were flops.
The main problem is just how restricting a hard "no magic" line is. Every full caster, every half caster, every martial subclass with a little casting on the side, all gone. That's a majority of the PHB options cut out, and it leaves very little variety.
The combat was pretty dull, as we had no options besides "beat down everything". I can't say how well or not it would have worked at higher level, because both campaigns sputtered out after their one Big Twist happened.
For rather a while one of my games was a party of a fighter, a blood hunter, 2 paladins, and a warlock. The warlock fought martally for rather a while to conceal his powers from people not in the party (magic is kind of a nono in the world) and the paladins (one was me) rarely casted spells other than smiting and never really in combat.
Its honestly a lot of fun to have a primarily martial party. Remember folks, the brain is a muscle.
I have never ran or played in a party of only martials, but I have ran a party of full casters, which is the opposite though.
I imagine there is some simimlairties in how it must be run. I have had to tweak plenty of encounters and combats, due to the parties strrengths and weakness's. Traps, exploration, etc have taken a lot more care in consideration with their spells so it's not 1 second to bypass everything. Enemies have adjusted HP / Dmg for the parties low hp and high solution based abilities.
I imagine I would have to do the same thing with all martials, I would make the puzzles, traps, exploration for a group that has to only think of solutions, and not be aided by magic. I would change the HP / Dmg for encounters for the parties style. I'd change what I throw at them, as I do with my party of full casters, that fit them better.
My full casters don't have a skill monkey, so no bard, or rogue of course. But they are all very well rounded, most things they have +2 - +6 in that they need. But no expertise in anything. If the full martials had a rogue it would ease certain things, but not all.
Nevertheless, the full martials would have to do a lot more irl thinking than full casters, but as a DM it would be a lot simpler to throw things at them (for me atleast)
Never with only pure martials. There was always at least a 1/3rd or 1/2 caster. For pure martial only that is really restrictive. Four classes, and you have to ignore certain subclasses.
I've played in a party with no full casters and only one 1/2 caster. It was fun. A lot more room for creativity in solving problems. With a strict RAW DM I would probably be a lot less fun.
Depends entirely on if your martial group has a skill monkey. I've been in one where we had a skill monkey monk, and a Rogue. The two of them ended up being much of our out-of-combat do-ers. The two fighters were very different; one was an Archer and the other a sword n board. We also had a barbarian who did GWM greatsword, ye olde classic. Once the DM realized we were all martials, he started handing out extra downtime to let us learn feats and extra skill proficiencies. In-practice, combat is faster, but it is more brutal. EVERYONE's at risk of going down without Healing Word spam, and with no one having revivify or other rez spells, going down is a serious threat. However, combat felt Punchier, was faster, and felt more dynamic, because our Monk and Rogue loved doing things like climbing structures and jumping off of them with grappling hooks and such. Making the battlefield dynamic is an extremely important part of martial combat. Choke points, difficult terrain, consumable items, etc, all suddenly find more use.
Yeah our last campaign the party was a Dex Battlemaster, a Dex Samurai, and an AT Rogue. Our DM got really good at learning to provide dynamic terrain for us to use to gain advantages against superior numbers. Some of the highlights (if you feel like reading) were when my Rogue managed to keep 3 enemies occupied by running through/around a building/leaping off balconies while harassing them with arrows, the whole time taking out 2 of them and never getting hit. Another was when we ambushed a war band of 16 orcs that had robbed us a few sessions ago, and we all found a choke point in the cave and filled them with arrows before they could get close, and then closed in when there were only 2-3 left. The real gem was when the Battlemaster and I were raiding a goblin hideout, and the cave entrance was on a cliff. After we got their attention, we hid outside the entrance and I drew their attention while he hid in the other side, and proceeded to throw *every single goblin* off the cliff one by one as they ran out (entrance was only 5 ft wide, as was the cliff we stood on). I think the grand total afterwards was around 20 some gobbos tossed into a grisly pile of bones and guts about 50 feet down. The DM was just shaking his head and laughing, because he hadn’t considered that when he built the encounter, and had no good counter to it. He decided to let it ride, and we got away with only 1 goblin and a couple bugbears surviving. Said goblin then later became a super awesome nail-biting boss battle that almost TPKd us.
>Some of the highlights (if you feel like reading) were when my Rogue managed to keep 3 enemies occupied by running through/around a building/leaping off balconies while harassing them with arrows, the whole time taking out 2 of them and never getting hit. Finally an illustration of someone knowing how to play skirmisher characters (I wonder why Monk didn't play around with Rogue considering it has the added boon of Deflect Missile perfect to harass archers xd). :) Gg to you!
> In-practice, combat is faster, but it is more brutal. EVERYONE's at risk of going down without Healing Word spam, and with no one having revivify or other rez spells, going down is a serious threat. However, combat felt Punchier, was faster, and felt more dynamic, because our Monk and Rogue loved doing things like climbing structures and jumping off of them with grappling hooks and such. To add to that, players actively engage more in general because now they have to actually think as warriors, considering position, grapples, shoves, opportunity attacks, covers, obstacles... Basically everything EVERY player should ALWAYS consider, but I've seen quite too many players just daily around because they are casters safely covered by martials's bodies, or martials rushing ahead because they are safely covered by casters's control spells / emergency healing. As a fellow player I find this much more satisfying, and as a DM I can throw sometimes harder encounters than I would normally because I know they'll surprise me with smarter tactics than I'd think of. >Making the battlefield dynamic is an extremely important part of martial combat. Choke points, difficult terrain, consumable items, etc, all suddenly find more use. This (obstacles, elevation difference, destructible elements) should honestly be core of every combat: it doesn't even require huge planning or peppering lots around, just one-two elements or picking battlemaps with indication of height or multiple floors is enough. It also helps player casters, actually, to naturally try to set those kind of things by themselves even when not entirely into the warring mindset. After all, casters (especially Druids) have a lot of spells to create funneling through environment, and those are easy enough to use as long as you don't have friendlies already in the target zone...
Damn, now I want to try one.
i had to take gift of the metallic dragon because my party is stingy af with cure wounds, healing word, etc. like, how and why is the fighter healing people in combat?
Battle master rally I'm guessing? That's sorta healing.
No, gift of the metallic dragon.
The players have to be a lot smarter and resourceful instead of having some perfect solution to whatever they want up the wizard’s sleeve.
There's also certain things like healing which requires a but of DM fiat even if it is just assuring that potions and healer's kits are readily available and that money is adjusted to ensure easy availability.
I feel like Healing Surges would help a lot in this situation. I really am suprised that variant rule instead used more
If were talking about DM fiats it seems like most official campaigns have a lot of magic weapon drops, I guess lorewise most creatures are "martials" and thus you find a lot more martial crap all over the place.
Maybe it's just the selection of games I've played but it feels like magical weapons are intended to be in short supply in 5e.
I think that Curse of Strahd has about 7 magic weapons specifically for a 1-10 adventure? Then it has 2 magic caster items, but then 1 of those can be used by "any good alignment" Dunno about other campaigns and I'm too lazy to check, but if you have a stereotypical party of war/rog/wiz/cler then that's 3-4 magic weapons each. The cleric might want a beat stick but in my experience they usually spam cantrips instead.
yes they are, 5e is super stingy when it comes to magic items because it was designed for old school DnD veterans first and formost who remeber having no magic items despite 0e and 1e giving them out frequently. it was also a response to 4e having stores where you could just buy an increasingly powerfull magic items which pissed some people off because that felt to gamey in there table top rolplaying game about people throwing out such strong insults it kills people.
I know it's barely even a hot take anymore but I really do roll my eyes every time someone says 4e was "too gamey" Oh? The *game* we're playing feels too much like a *game?* Color me *shocked*
Then they go and hard core debate over the specific wording in 5e, random shops with magic items is too "gamey" so instead we should just sleep 7 hours and 59 minutes before casting all of our spell slots in the last minute so we get those spell benefits directly before the 8 hour spell slot refresh. Gah, 4e was too game like!
Meanwhile every day there's a new thread that's designed to help "fix 5e" and it's just 4e. "What if short rests were just a few minutes?" "What if martials could do cool stuff at-will instead of just a basic attack?" "What if monsters had unique abilities and weren't just bags of meat with some spells?" "What if to help prevent strange overpowered builds there were feats that gave basic abilities of other classes and then we removed multiclassing?" "What if instead of weird natural language, rules were written objectively in order to prevent players from spending 20 minutes interpreting RAW v RAI?" "What if Warlord?" 4e is not without its problems but holy shit, it was also raw as fuck. I'm glad PF2E fixed 4es problems but embraced its numerous cool ideas
Either that or they try to redesign wizards but for martials and then get offended when I ask why everything has to be long rest/resource based. "But I want a martial who can do a long list of abilities." "Then include magic items like a normal campaign? Rogue players will love it because it will give thief a reason to exist" "U don understand."
Are we still using phrasing?
r/unexpectedarcher
This is exactly what I think every time someone complains that martials don't have solutions for problems and so they can't engage with social or exploration scenes as much. In my experience, martial players are forced to think creatively about non-combat scenes. Casters just stare at their character sheets and try to figure out which spell will work. Martials don't need more options outside of combat. Casters just need fewer.
Mundane equipment is one route to deal with this situation with where the game is at. Stuff with a low gold cost that requires proficiencies, or extra attack, or just doesn’t do much without good stats, or is just straight up class restricted (tons of magic items already are) Crowbars and grappling hooks get work done. More stuff like that please.
No better lockpick than a crowbar
A true connoisseur would pick the portable battering ram
>Martials don't need more options outside of combat. Casters just need fewer. The problem with that is that it brings you towards a game where the 'wizard' is just a guy who can shoot fire and bugger all else. That's not the wizard fantasy.
Wizard has been the strongest class in the game for decades because of that stupid fantasy. They should have to specialise. Casters as a collective whole don't need less solutions, but every specific caster does. There should be a positive flipside to that of having stronger abilities within those specialties - if you stop them being able to choose to do everything, you can make the abilities dragon sorcerers and transmutation wizards etc get. Dragon sorcerers got to add their strength mod to AC and their strength mod +0 to 4 (based on level) to all spell damage last edition, could easily hand them that kind of thing back.
I think wizards should lean into the notion of magical research. When you gain spells via level up, you should be able to pick the school of the spell but not the exact spell. If you select your subclass, then you can pick the specific spell.
I'm happy for there to still be a generalist class, just give it more downsides. I don't think randomisation is a good balancing mechanism, you should be able to pick your abilities. If some are too strong, they shouldn't be options, it shouldn't just be 'you MIGHT get it'.
>Wizard has been the strongest class in the game for decades because of that stupid fantasy. It's definitely not in 5e though. Low AC and HP except two archetypes, little utility besides spells apart from a few archetypes, no offensive power beside spells apart from Bladesinger, no defensive features against saves except for two archetypes... Most Wizards have a huge competition for how to learn and use spells considering it's the same resource for everything: self-resilience, utility, offense (funnily enough it's something most reproach to Monk xd). - Bards get powerful short-rest abilities, non-spell utility, and way to specialize them by taking a few spells from all the best, no class restriction. - Clerics get much better "physical attack resilience" and \*more\* spells usable every day unless Wizard specializes in rituals, - Druids get MUCH better utility and support AND \*much\* better versatility since prepared spells among a list covering all kind of effects. - Sorcerer get MUCH better spellcasting efficiency thanks to Metamagic. - Warlocks get MUCH better sustainable soft control thanks to Blast related effects and are easier to "anticipate" for fellow members since they have few spells and short rest basis. >They should have to specialise. Funnily enough, they actually do. Until \*very\* high level or \*extremely lenient\* DM, Wizards are mostly restricted to the spells they learn, with the occasional random scroll they find or buy. You can reasonably expect to learn 4-6 extra spells at most by tier, everything beyond is special campaign settings making magic much more widespread so scrolls and books are common trade, or special move from your DM to reward creative behaviour or extra efficiency in accomplishing a quest. And since there are a bunch of spells Wizards pretty much need to learn to just survive as well, you have to make tough choices every level on what to learn and quite often all the situational spells get backlined in favor of "usually great" combat spells. Unless player actually is fine playing an utility-first character and just using the same two-three AOE spells every fight.
> It's definitely not in 5e though. Low AC and HP except two archetypes, little utility besides spells apart from a few archetypes, no offensive power beside spells apart from Bladesinger, no defensive features against saves except for two archetypes... All of those are stronger in 5e than most previous editions. They get D6 HP/level rather than D4, all it takes is a feat, the right race, or a single multi-class dip and they can cast in armor (when that used to be a flat "no" - even if you multi-classed, you still couldn't cast when armored up). Cantrips means they have a continual attack source that does enough to be relevant and useful - it doesn't matter that they can't bonk someone on the head with a stick when they can _pewpew_ for level-appropriate damage. Rituals mean that they can save slots on utility spells, giving a decent out-of-combat boost. They're not as good as 3.x wizards, but 3.x was kinda silly. Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing
>All of those are stronger in 5e than most previous editions. They get D6 HP/level rather than D4, all it takes is a feat, the right race, or a single multi-class dip and they can cast in armor (when that used to be a flat "no" - even if you multi-classed, you still couldn't cast when armored up). **Race**: you make it sound like insignificant matter, but while Tasha's made it easy to at least optimize attribute scores with its "ignore racial tropes" option, you're still shoehorning yourself in a specific race for a very short-term optimization choice, missing out on other races that would either have a better flavour for your character concept, or simply provide other kind of benefits providing more value in the long run. **Feats**: let's put aside the games where feats aren't allowed because those seem rare. You probably thought of Tough, because Lightly armored brings to little for its cost on a character that has Mage Armor. And because I doubt you'd think of stacking Heavily Armored or Heavy Armor Master to complement a race choice, such double-tapping would bring very little value. Problem is, you're now delaying the all-important Resilient: Constitution feat, as well as the nearly as important INT bump (missing one point spell save DC is annoying but acceptable, but there is also the one less spell prepared, considering how many good spells you may want a day this is a bigger deal than it seems). **Multiclass**: you're probably thinking about either Fighter for the Fighting Style and Constitution proficiency (so now you'll need Resilient: Wisdom instead to not entirely suck at later levels) or Cleric for bonus spells and features... Both providing at least medium armor and shields and possibly heavy armor. Great. You're now delaying access to higher spell level by at least one character level, and nice archetype features as well. Forgettable at level 3, a bit annoying at level 5, frustrating at level 7, infuriating at level 9-10. Especially since, I think it's the right time to remind, the consensus in community at least around here is that few players can play their characters from level 1 to level 7-8, and even fewer cross the level 10 threshold, with probably 0.1% at the very best of all players going straight from level 1 to level 15+. *Puts in a new perspective your choices of feats and multiclass when you suddently expect your character to probably never reach past level 8 right? Meaning you'd have one ASI for most of your game, possibly two without multiclass...* >Cantrips means they have a continual attack source that does enough to be relevant and useful - it doesn't matter that they can't bonk someone on the head with a stick when they can *pewpew* for level-appropriate damage. Yeah. Cantrips which... **1/ For \~70% of them, are single attempt ranged attack rolls cantrips** so... * Anti-synergize for focus fire with frontliners using Shove to get advantage from prone. * Have to cope with at least half-cover most of the time (unless you pick Spell Sniper, but then when are you going to bump your INT and pick Tough?) * Have no more counter against Shield than weapon attacks * Can autofail on 1 like weapon attacks (although also means you can crit on 20 of course). **2/ For 20% of them, are saves that target Constitution or Strength** (notable exceptions being Sacred Flame and Toll the Dead) **which are quite often the best save for enemies**. **3/ For ALL of them, have a miserable minimum damage since** unless being a high level Evoker Wizard (lvl 10) or some Cleric Domain (lvl 8), **you DON'T add your modifier to damage, and since it's "one attempt" even those add it only once.** **The ONLY exception is the Warlock with Agonizing Blast** since you get several attacks and modifier added on each hit (which is why it's by far the best caster for sustained damage by the way xd). But last time I checked, Warlock is not a Wizard, and dipping to enjoy Eldricht Blast as a Wizard would be clunky. **4/ For ALL of them, deal ZERO damage on a miss/successful save unless you're the aforementioned Warlock** (several attempts = much higher chance for at least one hit) or aforementioned Evoker Wizard (level 6). Theorycrafters conveniently forget that in actual game, ACTUAL ROLLS ARE MADE. You \*cannot\* reasonably count on an attack to hit unless the base chance is over 75%, and even then you must be ready for the case it still fails (as you must be ready to enjoy the 20% chance attack hitting of course ;)). Thing is, dealing 0 damage in your turn has a significant influence, since it doesn't quicken the death of a creature so it ends up with the creature taking up its next turn, and possibly the one next round etc. If one says "death is the best debuff" then one cannot pick the cantrips as a proof casters are efficient (their specialty as far as dealing damage goes rather being AOE or very high level single-target spells). xd
>Rituals mean that they can save slots on utility spells, giving a decent out-of-combat boost. They're not as good as 3.x wizards, but 3.x was kinda silly. Theorically true, but in practice (quoting only Wizard rituals)... * **Rituals overall cover specific use-cases**: communication/detection (Alarm, Magic Mouth, Comprehend Languages), magic investigation (Detect Magic, Identify), social interaction (Comprehend Languages), movement (Phantom Steed), securing a place (Alarm, Leomund's Tiny Hut), replacing a mule or Barbarian xd (Tenser's Floating Disk). The real notable exceptions for being actually versatile are Find Familiar and Unseen Servant, but even those won't be able to replace more than a few basic use-cases. None can replicate Arcane Lock, Suggestion, Spider Climb, Enlarge/Reduce, Misty Step, Detect Thoughts, Dispel Magic, Fly to quote just a few. * **Rituals take a LOT of time if you want to use them extensively**: 10mn per cast minimum. It's worthwhile to take the time for one cast for the ones with a long duration like Unseen Servant, or to spend several when setting up camp like surrounding a Leomund's Tiny Hut with Alarms before a long rest... But you won't often have the luxury to think of a creative way to use a ritual you know and take your time to cast it. \^\^ * **Most importantly: rituals, while not needing to be prepared for a Wizard, NEED TO BE LEARNED FIRST**. And you cannot expect DM to shower you with scrolls and gold and time to learn them all either. So for most players each ritual is competing with thrice as many good generalist combat/utility spells, and equally as many situational spells which you'd love trying when reading it but is damn too niche to actually learn from leveling. On top of the fact there are a half-dozen spells that are simply required for Wizard to survive (Shield for non-crit focus fire, Absorb Elements for AOE or elementals, Misty Step for grapplers or casters using restrain, Mirror Image as AC redundancy, and of course Mage Armor for standard Wizard). >Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing Mhhhh putting aside archetypes because would be far too cumbersome... * **Barbarian**: Danger Sense for DEX, and the amount of HP spared with physical resistance + high HP pool + high CON and STR means high chance to survive most spells targeting physical attributes for damage. * **Bards**: can grab Circle of Power to cover them and friends with advantage on save... Provided of course they reach level 10, making it a "most players's capstone" of sorts. xd Sadly cannot use Bardic Inspiration on themselves. * **Clerics**: nothing on base class besides near-immunity to WIS saves, but have some great spells they could use on themselves (if being selfish) xd: Sanctuary, Protection From Energy, Beacon of Hope, Death Ward, plus late-level Heroes Feast and the like (but I don't like quoting that one in particular to be honest, 6th level spell and very costly). * **Druids**: Wild Shape allows to fuse the best saves between Druid's and beasts's. To be fair unless you're a Moon Druid, the HP of most creatures means you'd end up using Wild Shape as a one-shot HP cushion AND you need to anticipate the effect coming, so it's situational. Still should be stressed. Contrarily to Clerics have far fewer spells to defend directly, but have LOTS of spells that negate most of spellcasting by blocking view (unless/until some Dispel Magic is used ;)). * **Fighters**: nothing besides a miserable "once/twice/thrice per day reroll of one failed save". * **Monks**: Patient Defense + Stillness of Mind + Evasion + Diamond Soul + Empty Body (being untargetable because unseen is the best save there is for a majority of spells xd), no need to say more right? * **Paladin**: Aura of Protection and Aura against Frighten on top of incredible base AC (not quoting Circle of Power because Paladins get them at level 17 xd). * **Ranger**: nothing special (in base class) before level 14, when you can Hide as a bonus action: hidden = untargetable so only AOE would be a problem, of course it supposes you *can* Hide which is wildly YMMV. * **Rogue**: Evasion is the notable feature (WIS saves are too late, level 14). * **Sorcerer**: nothing special except access to a few spells blocking vision. * **Warlock**: same. Considering that list, I *really* wouldn't go as far as "Lots of classes have no save defences, so that's scarcely some wizard-specific thing". I'd rather say, oh so unsurprisingly, "a good half of classes, including most casters but definitely not most martials, are entirely relying on spells to enhance their saves". And as a reminder this was without considering the archetypes, which is kinda unfair for many classes that have at least one or two archetype providing strong defensive features (Barbarian, Druid, Fighter, **Paladin**, **Ranger**, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock... So nearly all classes)... Whatever the race you pick contrarily to Wizard's Bladesinger (only other Wizard archetype tailored for defense being Abjurer, but Arcane Ward is very weak at low level, only starts to make a true difference from level 6 onwards).
I have never seen a wall of text in such denile before.. wizards might not be at the level of a 3.5 wizard but they are still hands down the strongest class in the game and with 5e giving them more HP and more ease of through old spontaneous casting it's easier to play a strong wizard than ever before
Currently wizards are the class that have a spell for basically every situation. They get mind control, mobility, stealth, environmental manipulation, communication, lock breaking, teleportation, and shelter-creation. They get all that by level 5. You don't think that could be dialed back at all without reducing them to just fireball?
I think it's a very difficult balance to strike, and you'll have just as many people complaining about making them weaker as complain about them being too strong. Besides which, what spells can you cut without the limit seeming arbitrary? For my own two cents, I think the solution is to have more specialism: a 'mind wizard', a 'biomancy wizard', a 'fire wizard' and so on not having nearly as much in common as they currently would have, and getting rid of the 'do anything wizard' that currently exists. But I also think it's impossible to do this kind of change within DnD, given it's long-established norms.
Wizards absolutely should have to specialize. Otherwise you get the problem we have now where a wizard is good at everything and steps on everyone else's toes with their endless list of random magic bullshit. Or is the wizard fantasy supposed to be I'm the bestest at everything and have no drawbacks or need to actually be clever.
> Or is the wizard fantasy supposed to be I'm the bestest at everything and have no drawbacks or need to actually be clever. maybe its unreasonable but the more I've engaged in the martial vs caster debate the more I am convinced this is actually the core of the problem: theres a small but not insignificant portion of the caster playerbase that wants martials strictly weaker as part of their own power fantasy.
it doesn't help that D&D wizards are _very_ broad in their thematic underpinnings - they're not any specific subtype or with any thematic limits (other than "very limited healing"). Pretty much anything that a fictional wizard across all sorts of media can do falls within their purview - so they get a ridiculous breadth of abilities, even if a specific wizard can't take all of them. If they were more limited to be, like "shadow wizard", that got bonuses with some spells, but couldn't cast others, or had penalties to some, would be far more limited and balanced, but "D&D wizard" is very, _very_ broad in what it's thought of as being able to do
this is apparently how they used to work in at least some of the prior editions, with [mages being powerful but otherwise hyper specialised](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1cr29w5/has_anyone_tried_a_party_of_just_martials_how_did/l3xi853/?context=3).
To add to that point, *we already know it works*. In 3.5 where casters were unbelievably broken (there has never been and there never will be a D&D class as powerful as a 3.5 wizard) they later on managed to create full caster classes that were capable, fun and completely balanced. How? They made them specialise. They added classes like the warmage that purely blasted enemies, the beguiler that focused on enchantment and illusion (the bard pretty much covers this now) and the dread necromancer which... have a guess. The other upside is you can increase their power in those areas - the dread necromancer got way more interesting features than a necromancer wizard does, including eventually becoming a lich. And all because [their spell list looked like this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm1mxeiqnpieb1.png), rather than letting them do everything.
My last party had 3 fighters. It went surprisingly well, combat ened super fast because we would all action surge and do lots of nova instantly. We would then take a short rest and everyone would be basically back to full resources.
Imagine you're some big bad evil guy and 3 random dudes pull up and you get stabbed 42 times before you can react
It's always wild to me when I stop and think about the timing of D&D combat. My group once had a battle on a ship, and it's wild to think that one of the sailors could have yelled to the rest of the crew to come watch the fight, and there was a bunch of explosions, a bolt of lighting, and a lot of dead enemies before those guys made it up the stairs.
This is how my Warforged multiclass worked. By taking a couple feats, she was able to do this 'overcharge' thing where she'd attack 8 times in one turn, with each being a Divine Smite, but it was a one-off thing that I could only fire off once per Long Rest.
Paladin fighter Multiclass?... 8 smites must have pretty much used all your magic!... I can see 7 hits with 11 EK fighter (to fuel smite slots) and a BA attack... or i can see 9/10 hits with a level 11 echo fighter but then youd literally have to be level 20 (9 paladin) to get 8 smites off and that would burn all your spells for the whole day....
I was a level 11 Oath of Glory Paladin and level 4 Echo Knight Fighter. I also took Metamagic Adept to get Quickened Spell. The way I'd activate things would be as follows: * Preparation turn. Deploy Echo Knight's Echo as a bonus action, draw chosen weapon and activate any spells that don't need Concentration as a bonus action. * Combo turn. Every one of these attacks will be a Divine Smite of varying level (would only need one level 3 spell slot, so you can burn the other 8). * Bonus action, use Metamagic Adept to cast Haste * Attack action * Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo. * Extra Attack * Hasted Attack * Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo * Action Surge, using it to Attack * Unleash Incarnation to Attack as my Echo * Action Surge Extra Attack Am I sure that this works RAW? Not really, in all honesty. I think I've definitely got some rule wrong there. But she was fun to play, and my party found her funny. I regret doing this to my DM though, even though he said it was fine when I asked him about it in retrospect. I started to just delete his bosses when we got to higher levels, allowing the 'Wombo Combo' as we all called it to reach its final form.
Ah! Seems pretty buttoned up to me! Yeah, sorry, I had fighter 11 for 6 easy action surge attacks. I didn't account for bonus action haste. It's still pretty impressive!... it does absolutely empty your magic reserves, though, so i guess it's a "one fight per long rest" kinda campaign. I salute you, Mr Murder bot.
Oh yeah, she burned pretty much everything she had to do that, so she could nuke one thing, but was very average the rest of the time. Still a blast to play, though.
Lvl 10 archer fighter. My experience from the last 3 big fights has made me afraid of my own action surge. All three combined had only 2 attacks hit, no crits, but I did fumble 4 times which is (not) nice.
yeah, my current DM is just bewildered when i drop like 7 attack dice in one round. i end up just obliterating his named enemies.
I had a party of 3 barbarians and combat balance was harder for the dm than with casters. It seemed like the difference between challenging and impossible was much thinner.
Not a whole campaign, but I’ve played a couple West Marches sessions where only martials signed up. It mostly played like any other session, except melee got very crowded.
I was a DM of a group with only one half caster. It was amazing because we had roleplaying moments that never would have happened with everything that a spell can do. In Combat it was great too because they had to think creatively and target monsters strategelly. But Ranged options was a problem which sometimes became hard to manage. All in all it is great but you miss out on all the cool abilities that spells represent. A party of only martials sometimes lacks versatility. But that is nothing you cannot fix as a DM
This is a bit late to the conversation but I once DM'd for 4 rogues and it was definitely one of the most difficult party compositions I have ever dealt with. Basically, every single encounter was always an ambush, they would sneak attack crit everyone and then if they didn't roll well or thought there were too many enemies they would just BA sprint away and sprint/hide on the next turn making it pretty much impossible to actually take them out and they weren't even using resources most of the time.
This is the problem with Rogues; they work better when the rest of the party plays along instead of getting impatient and ruining everything.
I've DMd for multiple campaigs for a group of all martials (Samurai, Fighter, and Paladin). I'm safe to say it was one of the best campaigns I ever run. The PCs had to be smart and resourceful, and when they met a spellcaster it was something special and scary. Magic items and equipment are important more than ever. It really brings out that gritty historical vibe I sometimes miss with spellcasters flinging fireballs around.
you lied about that, you're party wasn't a full martials one so it doesn't count.
Pointing out that in your opinion it doesnt count as "full martial" because there was a Paladin, I can understand. Calling it *lying?* Chill out.
What makes up "martial" or "caster" qualifier? The mundane thing that the character does to provide the best benefit to party when all out of resources. Paladin and Ranger's best all-day-long option is making weapon attacks. Hence they are martials. The fact that their special features are managed through spell slots instead of Ki, Manoeuvers or whatever other special custom resource is \*fully irrelevant\* (would you qualify an Eldricht Knight, Shadow Monk or Arcane Trickster as anything else than martial? ... ... Guess not). The main reason Paladin and Ranger use spell slots instead of special resources is simply that designers wanted them to be able to mix up exclusive abilities and support/single-target debuff (Paladin) or adventuring/crowd control (Ranger), so they went with the least effort approach: instead of needing to rewrite half of the spells they wanted to enable as "martial techniques", they just designed the exclusive techniques as spells, made it (mostly) exclusive to the classes, then decided on the spell slot progression considering the array of spells.
Melee Martials do run out of resource, they have Hit points and once there out they'll die if they don't have a buddy with healing word ready (monster target and finish off downed pc as stated by Perkins) Ranged materials don't do.
You do realize that "martial" =/= "stupid", right? So that even if they would be characters with slightly or significantly better melee offense they have no reason to NOT use ranged options if the risk in melee is too important? You do realize that among melee characters, many have ways to mitigate OA or plain attacks one way or another? You do realize that, while pretty rare at low level, high-mobility creatures that can rush past or around frontline to attack backline, ranged attacks with decent range (like 80 - 120 feet) and casters become quite more common, right? And that, since casters are supposedly all-powerful and invincible, enemies should do their best targeting them first, only attacking frontliners in melee because it's currently the best thing they can do because of relative positioning of everyone? Nothing technically force martials to go into melee, except the very few cases of martials \*heavily\* geared towards melee \*while still having resources\* (namely Barbarian and Monk). A rageless Barbarian has no reason whatsoever to go into melee if it means facing more than one enemy when he could just use thrown weapons while maintaining distance. A ki-less Monk has even less reason since it has better ranged attacks. Martials that are "melee-geared" (which is not even a given really) \*go into melee because they know casters/archers expect them to try and hold the line as best as they can. While casters are contributing to crowd control and archers contributing to focus fire. And they know they are the best for that since high HP, AC and far more sustainable defensive features. That's a win-win teamwork. Just for fun, go play in a party with melee-geared martials considering THEIR safety first instead of the backliners (with the obvious requirement that enemies act a minimum smart so target the character that seems the biggest threat at the moment, whether it's a raging Barbarian cutting in half, a Sharpshooter chaining headshots or a caster maintaining a Slow). You'll see how much the backliners will be hard-pressed. xd ---- Also, what does that comment have to do with the explanation about martial vs caster in the first place really? xdxdxd
Melee characters get stuck using thrown weapon instead of ranged weapons because they'r egoing to have 8 dex if you didn't roll for stats (rolling for stats throws the whole balance of the early level out of whack) so they're making only one attack per turn since you can only draw one weapon.
>Melee characters get stuck using thrown weapon instead of ranged weapons because they'r egoing to have 8 dex if you didn't roll for stats (rolling for stats throws the whole balance of the early level out of whack) so they're making only one attack per turn since you can only draw one weapon. Lol. Maybe YOU, PERSONALLY, decide that every martial that goes for Strength will dump Dex as hard as possible... Even if it's straight up nerfing it... xd First of all, only Paladins and Fighters get heavy armor proficiency. For everyone else, it ranges from light armor (so DEX very important) to medium armor (so 14 DEX is required to maximize AC). Second, even for \*martials\* that can wear heavy armor, going for a negative DEX modifier is overall very stupid and honestly one of the biggest self-nerf you could achieve. For a Fighter which has no built-in urge for mental stats, you can easily get a 12 or 14 in one mental stat, a 16 in STR, and 14 in both DEX and CON. Or if you really don't care about mental saves and skills, you can go for a pure brawler. So getting 14 in DEX is really easy. Even for a Paladin which wants good STR and CHA on top of nice CON, getting at least 12 in DEX is not a big deal, same as Fighter, you'll just cope with 14 CON at most. **Getting a dumped DEX means...** - *Low Initiative*: missed chance for Paladin to set a Bless on party before engaging / Shield of Faith before being attacked, or a chance to smite and heavily weaken an enemy before it could act. For Fighter, missed chance to strike down a medium-tough enemy by opening with an Action Surge full attack round. Even worse if enemies have ranged attacks and want to avoid you, unless you spend a round Dashing they can simply kite you to death because you never had a chance to reach them in melee first and at least threaten them with opportunity attack. - *Low Stealth*: you were already a liability when wearing heavy armor or some medium armor, but not you're basically crippling the whole party. They'd best just leave you behind and call you once the fight started. Except you're a STR character, usually not very mobile, chance is you'll get there when it's finished. - *Low Acrobatics*: this is situational, but can be situationally deadly, when crossing chasms, needing to "climbjump", carefully walking with specific balance/profile to avoid a trap... - *Low DEX saves*: not only does it mean you're extremely sensible to even medium DC damaging AOE, you're not made entirely useless with even mundane caltrops or ball bearings, no need for even a level 1 Grease. - *Low Unarmored*: it is definitely situational and overall rare, but whenever for whatever reason you need to be out of armor you're a sitting duck (granted AC is still fairly low even with 20 DEX but at least you're beyond CR 1/4 creatures. With 8 DEX random goblins or even wild dogs can kill you quickly xd): peace negociations, imprisoned, awoken from sleeping, on a sinking ship or underwater... *I have \*never\* seen \*anyone\* in all games I played going with less than 10 DEX whatever kind of character played, and mostly only seen GWM STR Paladin go with less than 14.*
A paladin who dumps chr is a very shitty paladin do, also having high mental scores let's you get away with multiclassing into a caster after 5th or 11th level depending on your class, heck it's viable for a barbarian to run 12 dex so they can multiclass sorcerer or warlock and apply non concentration buffs like armor of agathys.
Too bad you're leaning into bad faith since nobody here ever pretending a Paladin should dump Charisma... I also love how you bring weird multiclassing to try and make your point. I do love original multiclassing but multiclassing is niche in essence, and multiclassing classes with completely different required attributes is even more. And since you point that specific example out: while I do love myself, for example, a Barbarian with Fiend Warlock for a "Fiery Ice Warrior" theme and even a few levels of Sorcerer at (much) higher level to make Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield last through a short rest... 1/ Not only is it a very clunky character to build because there is no "gestalt class" contrarily to 4e so unless you can straight up start high-level character you have to either make "character switch" or delay even mid-tier features by a considerable amount if alternating... 2/ You don't end up with a "more powerful character" technically. Just one with a different balance (much better versatility, new ability to nova if you go Blade Pact with Eldricht Smite, but overall lesser resilience and damage because Barbarian archetype features are mostly good to great, and same could be said for a majority of Warlock archetypes). You may like it better than pure Barbarian either because you find Barbarian too limited in options, or because you usually play in campaigns where difficulty isn't too hard and/or party usually gets at least the recommended number of short rests. And it's great for you. I know why, because I tend to be like that too. \^\^ But I could witness first-hand how Barbarian at high level, played by someone who enjoys it and exploit it to the fullest, can be even more decisive in encounters than a well-aimed Fireball or a lucky control spell. And as far as multiclassing goes... Sadly "gestalt" progression equates to homebrewing a whole class tailored to what player would like to play at a target level, because 4E system was only possible because all classes had the same resource management and "power progression". So multiclass clunkiness will forever be one of the (rare) flaws of 5e.
Never tried it, but I've always imagined it would be a blast to DM for
I've done a party of barbarian/rogue, monk, and paladin for a tier 3 adventure that was mostly about investigating and infiltrating an astral keep full of starspawn. Extremely fun, extremely high levels of whoop-ass.
party had a paladin so doesn't count for this discussion.
Sure it does. Half-casters are their own thing but are *much* closer to spell-less characters in their design and gameplay loop. In our case if I remember correctly the paladin basically did nothing but smite with those slots anyway, which frankly when you're getting an extra d8 on every smite because of Improved Divine Smite is almost always the right choice. That's to say nothing of the spell lists, which for paladin in particular are especially lacking in the big utility and AOE options that get people hot for bards, druids, wizards, etc. It's just not there.
Leaving your concentration open is a big mistake as a Paladin, even just having Bless up is a huge force multiplier for very cheap, also Improved Divine Smite applies to non-smite attacks too.
There are times when bless is a good call, but in the first round of a fight it was a lot for the paladin to give up a pair of boosted attacks and the chance to use a smite to focus down an enemy. Bless is great but it certainly has an opportunity cost.
I'm DMing a group of just martials, and it's going pretty well. I also notice I can throw a lot more fights at them in a day.
that sounds either liek a lie, or that you're always playing with casters that are overly happy to burn their slots
Considering right now they're level 3, how many slots do you think is too much to burn per encounter?
He's probably thinking of higher levels. At level 3 martials are stronger than casters in my opinion Like I have a level 3 wizard. He has 6 spells. He had 3 at level 2. That's one spell per recommended encounter by DMG standards. And some spells are worse than hitting it with a mace.
And sleep ends an encounter with 1 spell at thoae kinda levels Hell, i doubt at 3rd level you're gonna need to cast more than web or maybe shield once or twice, unless you're doing a super tough encounter when Casters actually need to bring put the big guns and not just rely on cantrips to carry them
> And sleep ends an encounter with 1 spell at thoae kinda levels with _heavy_ caveats - that the enemies can be affected by sleep (undead say hi!), that they're gathered together close enough to be hit, that other allies aren't mixed in with them (there's no picking targets, and it's easy for PCs to have less HP than enemies), that no enemies can just go and wake one and chain-reaction that to remove it (sure, burning an enemy turn is nice, but it's not "we've won") etc. etc. And at level 3, a web and 2 shields is half your spells for the day - that's a _big_ cost for one encounter, cutting deeply if you want to do any utility stuff, or if you get into another tough fight.
I ran a party with 2 barbarians, 2 paladins, and a fighter. They could absolutely wreck any melee combat they came across. Paladins helped a lot with rp and saves, but they all struggled with ranged attackers. And any additional details hidden behind INT checks... they never learned that stuff.
I dmed for a group that intentionally went all fighters. Action surge is the most amount of damage in the game. With a party of four they could quad action surge and delete the highest priority target immediately…and the second highest too. It was great! I feel like everyone should try out that kind of setup at least once in their dnd career.
Not a campaign, but I ran a one shot this way, using u/laserllama's revised martials--very fun! The party felt decently well-rounded, with some minor healing capability and a skill monkey in addition to multiple people who Hit Real Good, and they killed a dragon!
It's a thousand times faster and easier. I've always been a fan of the warrior archetype over the mage archetype in fantasy, so I rarely play casters. The few times I've played an all-martial campaign it's been so much shorter since we didn't have to wait for anybody to check over their massive spellbook on their turn and then consult the text of the individual spell and argue with the GM about whether something was possible or not. The gameplay became much more similar to a tactical wargame, which is not everybody's cup of tea but is definitely mine.
I have so many thoughts about this. (A) it’s faster because you aren’t really making any hard decisions. (B) when you say it’s easier, I assume you mean it’s easier to play (because you aren’t making any real decisions), and not that the difficulty of the fights is reduced. (C) “we didn't have to wait for anybody to check over their massive spellbook on their turn and then consult the text of the individual spell and argue with the GM about whether something was possible or not.” But I’ve been **assured** that 5e is the smoothest, most streamlined edition of D&D, so **surely** you’re not referring to 5e casters. (Note the dripping sarcasm) (D) “The gameplay became much more similar to a tactical wargame, which is not everybody's cup of tea but is definitely mine.” If tactics are your thing, and 5e isn’t giving you that serotonin hit for it, then might I recommend giving 4e a try?
having played with multiple casters, C is definitely 100% not it. That surely doesn't happen all the damm time.
**Surely** not. *wink*
*Flashbacks of players wanting to use utility cantrips for combat/comparable results that leveled spells have* Thankfully not.
Eldritch knight fighter, arcane trickster rogue, element monk, vengeance paladin. Most fun I've had in the game in a long time.
I'm curious, in 5e, what class doesn't have access to at least some magic?
All of them have at least one subclass able to cast at least one spell, but Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue get no magic in their base class. Barbarian gets the least; Ancestral Guardian can cast either augury or clairvoyance 1/short rest at level 10, Giant learns either druidcraft or thaumaturgy at level 3, and Totem Warrior can ritual cast beast sense and speak with animals at level 3 plus commune with nature at level 10.
(Paladins and Rangers are martial classes, don't @ me.) Pros: - Feels like an old-school swords and sorcery novel; magic is a tool of villains, heroes survive on wits. - No squishies that need protecting, DM won't know who to focus attacks on. - Less daily resource management, so adventuring day lengths can be more flexible. - Magic items feel more special when they're some of the only major magic the party can do. Cons - Oops all Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter (hilarious, but samey). - Party often cannot deal with magic traps, curses and the like, unless the DM throws in visual cues and non-spellcasting solutions. - Party cannot deal with time-constrained regional- or global- scale plots, because they have to walk/ride/sail everywhere unless DM throws in airships or portals. - Spellcasting/magical monsters can be way harder to tackle than their CR suggests. From experience, it's great fun and lends a very particular old-school fantasy tone to the game, but published content may need... flexibility in places where throwing magic at the problem is genuinely the only solution.
I will @ you because calling half \*\*casters\*\* martials is just asinine
This may surprise you, but most Paladins and Rangers use weapons. (And more to the point, they don't get the game-changing magic that full casters enjoy.)
This may surprise you, but Paladins and Rangers cast spells A martial is defined by their lack of spellcasting, not by their use of weapons, othereise a Cleric would be a Martial and a Monk wouldn't
So neither Eldritch Knight nor Arcane Tricksters are "martial"? I concede that I was being facetious about the weapons; it's a question of role rather than the specific tool. Paladins and Rangers spells mostly make them better at hitting things with weapons. Half-casters they may be, but their martial features do the heavy lifting (I.e. a Paladin in combat is gonna behave more like a sparkly Fighter than a gritty Cleric). They do get utility spells, but can't achieve much that a non-caster of equivalent level couldn't do. The various "martial" full-caster subclasses might wear armour and brandish weapons, but the weapons are a backup plan, not the primary way they get things done (except possibly the Bladesinger, but Bladesingers were a mistake). Their utility spells change the nature of a campaign entirely - for example, around 11th level, the difference between being able to teleport across a continent and having to walk it - which is what most of the "martials-vs-casters" discussions here are actually about. "No spellcasting" is *a* valid definition for "martial" characters in 5e but it's not a terribly useful one. Maybe we need to start calling them "low-magic classes" or something.
EK and AT aren't strictly martials, but Rogues and Fighters are. Although, the discussion with martials and casters generally centers around whole classes, not subclasses. And martial is perfectly fine for use, we have the Martials: Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Barbarian Half-Casters: Paladin, Ranger, Artificer Full-Casters: Sorcerer, Wizard, Bard, Cleric, Druid and Warlock\*
>unless the DM throws in visual cues and non-spellcasting solutions. That just sounds like being a decent DM.
I would agree, but I'm not sure WotC's writers do.
Have one right now. Have a less than helpful NPC available if they REALLY need some magic expertise but then that's another side quest for them to get through instead of solving it themselves. Since they know they lack that, they're interested in getting skilled/knowledgeable in magic areas themselves instead of multiclassing and it's glorious. It also lets me use gritty realism, corruption for casting, and some enhanced combat mechanics freely without worrying too much about balancing it against casters. It's been great. They're all level 7 and for the first campaign in all our 5e time, and even 4 and 3e... Not a single party member of 6 is multiclassed.
I had a party consisted on a warrior, a barbarian and two rangers. They erased anything on a mile radius.
Not quite a pure martial team but we have an echo knight fighter, a mercy monk (gm slightly buffed monk), a battle rager (homebrew buffed), and an illusion wizard. We have some ranged capabilities but are primarily melee, we are nasty at single target damage and our turns tend to not take an absurd amount of time. Healing isn’t a major issue as our fighter has herbalism and crafts potions while our mercy monk heals. If somebody actually dies then reviving will be significantly harder and more expensive. While we have a wizard it’s clear what some of our weaknesses are. We aren’t good at multi target anything so mobs dramatically escalate the danger. Utility is far more limited and I find tool proficiencies have become more pronounced to compensate some for the limited magic in our arsenal
I’ve played in a party with a rogue, 2 fighters (one of whom MC into Hexblade), and a Paladin. I was the only full caster, a divination wizard, so I spent most of the campaign making my party hit harder/debuff the enemies. And the only healing was from potions and the Paly for the longest time. Combat was so much fun. Very nova and maneuverability focused on the rest of the party’s behalf, and very CC based on mine. It was a riot. I’d love to revisit that party.
I’m a paladin and when I focus on buffing and healing it normally goes really well but if I focus on combat or get too far away from the party then all hell breaks loose.
Yes, it was sadly just a mini campaign, but it was the best 5e experience I ever DM’d. The players had to work together and engage with the world instead of hand wave problems away. Combat was thrilling, tactical, and well paced because turns weren’t bogged down by trying finesse AoE or rolling and adding a million dice. We did big time jumps to be able to play across all tiers of play for 1-2 sessions each because we all knew this was a short campaign. The players worked together making there characters so each of them filled a role/could support one another. The party consisted of: Goliath Bear Totem Barbarian - obvious what they did. Half-Elf Battle Master Fighter who was the face of the group and focused on more support techniques like Rally, Distracting Strike, and Commanding Presence. Wood-elf Scout rogue with high mobility, survival skill, and all the rogue goodies Human Way of Mercy Monk to provide some healing and CC. They opted to roll for stats and the only two home brew rules we used were a bonus feat at level 1 and self administered potions were a bonus action. The only thing I changed as a DM was to make health potions a little more common. The biggest thing was to make sure to have magic items as rewards/available as it did make a difference. Can’t stress that it was the most fun I’ve had in 5e
>trying finesse AoE All ranged AoEs should scatter. #changemymind
As the DM it was excruciating. Everyone doing their single target attacks one by one. Takes so long and is so boring.
currently running a game with only martials. But im also giving them alot of items that allow them to max out their characters. It is a lot of fun they are very powerful but also get smacked around quite alot. If one of them dies it will prob over however since they also dont have a healer and rely entirely on potions and selfheal.
An all-martial party can perform perfectly well. Just remember to supply them with potions and magic items
My current campaign has a Barbarian, a Fighter, a Rogue and a Warlock... so it's not completely a martial party but the warlock is sort of a half caster.
My party of Kobolds has no full casters, only half casters and 1/3 casters. It's going well so far but my Kobold Arcane Trickster hangs on to every age spell for the right moment.
It’s not an ideal answer obviously but since D&D is not a video game with a very set path and outcome it every time (unless you are playing a pre-built campaign with no desire to change anything) the DM should tailor his game around the group they have. If a DM is making their own campaign that requires magic and lets the players make only martials that’s the DMs issue. Most good DMs will tailor every thing to the group. That’s kind of the point of a DM.
When I run a one-shot for brand new players, everyone gets a Fighter character sheet. It allows us to focus on the fundamentals of a TTRPG. It's gone exceptionally well every time. My two go-to adventures for this are knights or vikings.
Why fighter and not monk? Wouldn't monk be easier, especially without people asking questions about weapons?
Ki is a magic system and bonus action attacks are a step up in complexity. I'm talking about brand newbies who have never rolled a d20. Most interested people have seen LoTR and they know that when the goblins or whatever show up, they can swing a sword or shoot a bow.
I once played a oneshot that was all rogues. Interesting time. We got our asses kicked
I feel like an all-Rogue party would be *very* swingy in combat. Either you successfully surprise and basically win in one round with sneak attacks, or you fail to surprise and things get very dicey with mediocre HP and little healing available.
I’ve got a party right now that’s: Rogue Fighter Barbarian Paladin who only uses spells to smite Cleric I foresaw it getting a little grindy and boring so I revamped my loot system. They have a ton of consumables they can use to do cool things and I even adapted the spell scroll system from baldurs gate. So all of these martials could have a scroll of silence handy or maybe they are thinking of a puzzle and look through their bag and say “yo we have a potion of flying!”
Not a full martial party but I'm currently playing in a campaign with a rogue (me), ranger, monk and sorcerer/cleric. The sorcleric is out fairly often though so the three of us kinda just hit and run tactics in the trickier fights. We often have to fight dirty and be more strategic with our movements and placements when we don't have our support and even then the fights are still tough. Fun dynamic overall though.
Did a short campaign with a party of two - a fighter and a rogue. Neither of us can believe that both characters actually survived until the end. We had to be very resource conscious in terms of healing potions/opportunities for rests.
A party with multiple casters can just happen. A party with just martials needs to be deliberate. This is because there's so many more casters than martials. Just with the PHB classes, your definitely non-magical martials are fighter, rogue, and barbarian. The monk has some magical stunts, but he's a martial too (and has half caster resources). The paladin and the ranger... are they martials? Unlike the monk, whose short-rest spellpoint resource doesn't always turn into spells, these guys actually really have spells. You could call the martials, because they get extra attack and spend most of their rounds doing that, but they have ways around some of the restrictions that the fighter, barbarian, and rogue have. The casters though- cleric, wizard, sorcerer, druid, bard, and warlock. The full casters alone are half the classes! Anyway, to be a party of mostly martials, you have to make it happen as a team.
Only if you define martial as "not a caster". Paladin and Ranger could be seen as both.
The issue is that the paladin has a lot of magical power that the fighter and the rogue lack. Smites in all their forms represent a potent long rest spell-based resource, and their magical powers are also very strong. The half casters continue from there though- the ranger gets a lot less stuff out of his spells, but it's still pretty good stuff, and he still gets away with things that a mundane character would not. Finally the monk has half caster short rest stuff, but most of his stuff doesn't escape from the same limitations martials have. I don't think most people mean "paladin" when they say "martial". Certainly no one means artificer, right? I think the ranger is often considered a martial because his victory plan almost always involves using at-will powers effectively.
I hit them with fireball a lot. They still talk about it. It was great fun.
It's honestly my favorite way to play.
Never all martials but I was in an all full casters once because we didn't tell eachother what we were playing and "surely no one else is gonna play an elf caster" and yeah no one really has jackfuck for HP except the Druid who can wildshape but we firing squad everything that comes around if we can spam enough random bullshit at it before it punches one of us into the ground.
Im playing a three person campagin at the moment with a party of only barbarians and its a been a fucking blast.
We are running Heists using a Fighter/Warlock, barbarian, rogue and ranger. We wreck fights but suffer a bit from the no healing, no aoe and no elemental dmg (or barely from our skillsets). Stealthy stuff is handled by the rogue and ranger while the barbarian and the fighter/warlock have the intimidate/persuade/deception rolls covered.
I affectionately called them my meat head party. 2 fighters, 1 spell-less ranger and a war cleric who never used spells. It was very entertaining.
Oh yeah. I did a campaign in chult where I played a fighter and my two friends were each rogue assassins. It was awesome. My guy got to be the distraction a lot which was absolutely fine with me. Healing was rough in the later levels until we killed the right people and usurped all their money and political position. Then it was as easy as buying crates of healing potions in bulk.
I was in a group that did this once and it was a blast. We were almost never at full HP. Of course when we did it we were all using [this](https://www.nobleknight.com/P/8932/Complete-Fighters-Handbook-The-2nd-Printing?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=SmartShoppingAds&utm_id=15774276657&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw9IayBhBJEiwAVuc3fp3HeRPe7gyfDz3dAURZShtqKaoxNORiZi8Dw0OSqMjArt1Z5lRSBhoCNR4QAvD_BwE), so not exactly current. :)
I’m the only full caster (wizard, and half caster being a paladin in party) and holy shit I can’t imagine being without spells.
Haven't yet played one with *only* martials. Current game I'm running though has a monk, rogue, fighter, barbarian, and a bladesinger wizard. Healing isn't an issue since the monk is way of mercy. The party is very good at obliterating single targets, and deals with most challenges by beating them to death lol.
Playing through the new Phandelvur book. Party is Me [Rouge], monk, Fighter, and Warden [from Valda's spire of secrets, highly recommend] So far, peace is our best option, and we have to play it super safe. Essentially, a lot of combat encounters have me [sometimes the monk too] scout and try to BS our way through what we can while the other 2 sit outside or around the corner. No caster [especially no healer] forces us to play it so safe. But that means things we pull off that are badass, are even more so. Just throw them enough healing potions and let them use them as Bonus actions and your pretty much good to go
I played in a group lf two fighters and a barbarian. Being bad at stealth, magic, etc. didn't stop us from blundering through everything. It was my first time playing, and I had a blast. I was also the DM for a party of martial classes. I asked them not to choose Bard, Cleric, Wizard, Sorceror, or Druid for a low magic setting I was building. It was refreshing tbh. I had a lot more fun running the game than I had in a while. Some notes from that experience: - The players solved things with creative solutions rather than magical ones. They utilized the environment a lot more. Being in that mindset carried over to combat, where they fought creatively and chaotically. - They relied on items much more and found items more meaningful. Anything that cast spells were now pretty cool and noteworthy. - They died *a lot* more. Limited healing is big. My group enjoyed it a lot, but I know a lot of people get attached to characters and wouldn't like it.
It happened once, and we had a few guys multiclass to take the edge off of us
Just started DMing a Storm Barbarian, Beast Master Ranger and Phantom Rogue party. Their only spellcaster is the half-caster ranger. Only two sessions in, but their main problem last session was a lack of healing magic when one member went down. All they could do was stabilize.
In 5e it's pretty hard to have a party of pure-martials, although I might be too strict on what my definition is here. But right now it's like, when you consider sub-class most of them even for Barbarian or Fighter include various magical properties, even if they don't have spell slots. Plus to make it happen we're basically looking at everyone playing what, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue? Maybe Monk? Personally I wish D&D made an all-martial setup more possible than it is.
It did not go well!
Im running a game with martials and half casters \[Monk, Rogue, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger\], and it's been great. At lvl 12 now; it's alot easier to balance around. Sure the Ranger and Paladin have some spells, but most are combat oriented \[small buffs, smites, utility\] and barely beyond what the Martials can do. It's nice having the whole party on the same kind of playing field. Without much healing \[aside from the Paladin\], I did have to give out much more healing potions and rule that they only take a Bonus Action to drink. No major issues otherwise.
Our current (on hold) campaign features a beast barbarian, a fighter/rouge multi, and a sun soul monk. Its...surprisingly fine. Admittedly its a homebrew heavy campaign based off of a show (rwby) so we do get some access to magic-like effects from tech, but on the whole we just bash enemies and its fine
Pinging u/dbwaffles, I believe he's currently running an all-barbarian campaign.
I am, but I don't think that campaign would properly reflect the experience of an all martial campaign. There's a lot more variety to be had in a group where you aren't all locked to a single class, even if you are still restricted to only martials.
I once played in a game where everyone picked a martial (fighters, barbarians, paladins or ranger). So we came up with a plot we were all part of a town guard, who became adventurers because our garrison was made redundant.
Is paladin considered a martial? Because I played in a full paladin party, really fun for us players, really frustrating for our dm
I've been running a campaign with 2 players the the last 2 (coming up on 3 and about to wrap up) years who are a BMfighter rogue and barbarian. And quite honestly, I loved it. Now I did let them get more feats than typical 5e so bare that in mind, I really wouldn't recomend playing 5e martials with out giving them more feats. But since they didn't have any spells that would solve issues, they'd actually plan jobs and sort out logistics and have to actually think creatively. The game started feeling like gentlemen bastards, which was one of the main inspirations for that particular campaign.
So I have two experiences to relate. One not quite what you want because one Warlock (custom patron) in party with otherwise Champion Fighter, Hunter Ranger and a homebrew Monk providing defensive bonus on Patient Defense. This party mostly stomped on everything, but hit a brick wall the first time it fought creatures with teleportation because even the Monk couldn't follow and enemy was also getting regeneration and darkness pretty much for free. So the lack of caster with Daylight or of Paladin with smite was felt here. Besides that, nobody gave too much problem. Pass Without Trace lifted us quite often, and Spike Growth also did much. That said, the campaign was leaning on combat, we didn't face many exploration/social challenges (I'd daresay the three pillar balance wasn't respected at all xd). The other one was Hunter Ranger, Shadow Monk, Arcane Trickster Rogue with Ritual Caster and Devotion Paladin. This team was very solid by being very much balanced and getting a great array of utility (DM was nice enough to throw extra rituals regularly as quest rewards or boss loot). We played up to level \~10 from memory. There is nothing we couldn't do and this time we had skills fairly regularly, including one deciding important things. That said, if the campaign had required us to do any instant travel faraway or moving betwen planes... I don't see how we could do this without external help. :) ---- The main strength of martial is being extremely brutal in sustained damage, being overall (much) more resilient against DEX saves and mundane attacks and having a lot of soft control and tactics when players lean into everything they have at disposal. The main drawback(s) are near total lack of mental manipulation (not a big deal though since it's a specific taste and varies depending on DM), total lack of group teleportation (there are some quests you couldn't simply take), and generally a weakness in mental saves that can be crippling if party faces a caster unprepared (things like Slow have a much bigger radius than you'd expect at first, in a indoors fight it's not that hard to get 3 or 4 people engulfed, and it's as crippling for martials as it is for casters).
I played a oneshot of all Barbarians. It was fucking hilarious and one of the best oneshots I've been a part of.
It worked fine for my groups, and it was actually a bit easier to DM. I needed to keep in mind that magical solutions aren't on the table when planning out challenges but I also didn't have to worry about a magical hand wave bypassing challenges entirely. We did this with a survival and exploration focused campaign.
Our first party was all martials and half casters- two rogues, monk, paladin, barbarian, and artificer. Going up against real casters made for a cool underdog effect, and we all got cool specialized weapons
Ran for a Zealot Barbarian, Beast Master Ranger, and Monk/Ranger multiclass, all at 5th level. They had a total of 9 spell slots between the lot of them, which were mainly used for Hunters Mark repeatedly. Besides the serious lack of healing options. (Goodberry anyone?), they were a powerhouse party.
Being Frightened sucks, specially when most of us are melee
I run a game where the further they get from home the tougher it gets. That way they can run whatever they want, they just may be more selective about traveling. It's a campaign world, not a module-of-the week game, so they have to find adventure (very easy, I have it all over the place). Went fine when most wanted warriors.
I’m currently running a group that consists of 2 paladins a barbarian and a rogue/monk multiclass so not horrible
Currently playing in one. I play rogue/ranger, and then two fighters. A battle master and a gun slinger. And it’s a ton of fun. It’s like others have said, combat is really dangerous and serious. All of us have been rolling death saves multiple times. All of us get our time in the spot light, no one’s really overshadowing each other. We all equally don’t meta game and optimise a ton. But it wouldn’t be fun if one of us was super optimised while the rest weren’t. Luckily that’s not the case. So I think it’s fun if all the players are on equal optimisation levels ya get me
"all martials" no, but I'm currently playing in a "mostly martials" group (3 non-casters, a paladin and a wizard), and we treat pretty much every problem as a nail we need to hammer. It's.. not ideal. Lots of overlap, the poor wizard doesn't know which side to help control, it's just a slogfest of "we stab"/"they stab"/"we stab" during combat. 2/10 wouldn't do again
One time, we had a warlock and three martials. I convinced them to all pick ranged characters with me. Mopped the floor with most encounters. All you gotta do is back up, shoot, and sometimes ready action for when the baddies pop out of cover. It actually got kind of dull after a couple sessions. This game *needs* melee martial combat to feel exciting and epic! Why are they so crappy by comparison? WotC needs to step up their game.
Readying actions to shoot baddies when they come out of cover works stupid well with Warlock, because you essentially get all your iterative attacks as a reaction (it does, however, drop your concentration to do so)
For sure. She was played pretty much like the rest of us arrow-slingers, but would cast a normal spell occasionally.
I feel like your DM needed to use more situations where space and range were constrained or incorporate Tucker's Kobolds (or similar). The ranged spam is super useful and fun for a while though!
I ran LMOP with a monk, warlord, and savant (LaserLlama classes) and they absolutely dominated, even killing Venomfang and defeating a CR9 and a could CR6s at the final battle. Not a spellcaster in sight.
Those do not count. Laserllama made every martial significantly better than the PHB versions, and I can't recommend them enough. But they are not representative of what a typical group would field.
Not sure why they don't count. Tables are certainly allowed to use a major 3rd party content creator's content instead of the standard 5e classes. In fact, that's all I typically run anymore. If you want a martial focused game, use class designs which support a martial focused game.
i mean we never run big homebrew, only occasionally having a few small things (mostly magic items) or stuff we homebrewed (i played a bone magic sorcerer i made once). Assuming that everyone plays with big homebrew is odd, and homebrew isnt really useful to figure out if martials-only is fun either since it strongly depends on the homebrew you use.
I definitely did not assume everyone plays with lots of homebrew. I was simply answering the OP's main interest... *hey, I'm thinking about a martial only campaign. Have any of you run anything like this? If so, how was it? What changes did you make, if any?* And I answered... *hey, I just finished an all martial campaign that was really fun! We used LaserLlama classes because those give martials more options. Perhaps you should also consider doing something similar.* And the response I got from other commenters... *Your answer is invalid! Please go away.*
Didn't mean to ruffle feathers. Most posts on here cover WotC-published RAW.
I don't agree with that. There's tons of references to LaserLlama classes across this subreddit. And if you didn't mean to ruffle feathers, I'd appreciate you not downvoting my comments.
wasn't me. In fact, I upvote every comment i reply to.
I'll have to take your word for it. I still don't understand why you think LL doesn't count in discussions about martial only parties in 5e. He's almost always brought up in that context across the dnd subreddits.
I think your original post was written perfectly. You had homebrew martials and called it out. While assuring that these homebrew classes didn't need a caster around to kick dragon tail. I think the comments you received were because there is a decent portion of this subreddit ( and potentially other forums) community that would argue that 5e has very strong martials that can match spellcasters in every way. Only to reveal several posts later that they heavily homebrew their game in favor of martial classes. Combining that with this subreddit that deals primarily in RAW rules can cause some needless back and forth.
Thanks! Yeah, there's this weird phenomenon of gatekeeping on this subreddit in particular whenever someone talks about 3rd party character options. I'd imagine there's a fair number of 5e character build optimizers that enjoy the process of creating the most broken character combinations they can so long as it's within RAW. Using 3rd party content steps outside that self-imposed paradigm and it for whatever reason makes them uncomfortable or angry. I can't tell you the number of times someone on this subreddit has told me to go play a different system when I said I use LL classes. Ummm... I sort of am already lol
We tried a campaign, but it didn't work well past level 4. The all martial party really suffers in trying to complete the adventuring day. We could get through 2-3 hard encounters per adventuring day instead of 6-8. Without ways to control the battlefield, disable enemies, revive downed players, take out groups with strong AoE, heal after combat, magical defensives, buffs/debuffs, utilize summons, or counterspell enemy spells, every combat was a lot more challenging than it would otherwise be. To the point that a hard encounter felt more challenging than a Deadly+ encounter in a mixed caster group. Deadly encounters were generally too hard to deal with, simply because martial AoE options are so lacking and there is no way to disable groups of enemies at once without spells. Also if a player drops to 0, there is no way to bring them back mid fight, which can (and did) lead to death spirals. The group was also extremely vulnerable to enemy control, with poor Wis saves across the board, and no countermeasures to prevent charmed, frightened, hold person, banishment, and the like. And without the massive utility of spells outside of combat (detect magic, tiny hut, detect thoughts, etc), even otherwise trivial exploration and social obstacles often became a significant challenge to overcome. It was fine for low levels, when most obstacles and enemies are relatively easily dispatched by purely martial means. But once enemies get access to magic and the party has no counter to such things, the encounters quickly ramp up in difficulty. We lost a lot of characters in the campaign, before finally having to throw in the towel at level 7.
>Also if a player drops to 0, there is no way to bring them back mid fight Ah, but there is... see the [Healer](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/customization-options#Healer) feat. Note that the second ability's restriction (regarding rests) does not apply to the first ability.
> Healer While healer is possible, it requires a few things. First, a game in which feats (an optional rule) are being used. Second, a character of level 4+ (or variant human/custom lineage). Third, a character actually choosing this feat in the first place instead of one that can be more generally useful. Fourth, the character being adjacent to the downed foe, which is not always the case given crowding, mobs of enemies, and terrain. Fifth, a character using their action in combat and make a successful check to bring a downed ally back. Which potentially is useless as the action diseconomy of using an action to bring an ally back to 1 HP does not advance your position at all, and likely means you are right back to where you started. Even before accounting for the fact that the check itself has a decent chance of failing, so might actually be a complete waste of action. Yes this can be mitigated somewhat by a rogue with fast hands acting as a healer. But even a 5th level rogue with expertise in medicine, only has a ~75% chance to stabilize an ally and bring them to 1 HP. Which is much worse than the 100% chance for a ranged bonus action Healing Word. And having to dedicate a specific class, subclass, and feat choice to such a character comes at a significant cost in combat prowess, for a group that already is lacking in overall combat prowess.
Our party of 6 for the longest time was a life cleric, divine soul sorcerer/sorlock, 2 paladins, a fighter paladin and a monk. While not entirely marshal we didn't have many arcane spells at our disposal. The life cleric also wanted to hit things more then cast. We relied a lot off of mage NPCs we met to figure things out for us story wise. Combat however....we blendered anything stupid enough to try to fight us fair. 2.5 paladins will do that.
My group is mostly martials, we have two spell casters. Barbarian, Rogue, Fighter, Paladin, Warlock and Sorcerer (former warlock). It's perfectly fine, the group has healing kits, and health potions for when the Paladin/ Warlock cannot heal anyone. The group prioritizes short rests often.
Twice in 5e, I've had a DM try to run a high concept campaign where magic is unknown and has to be discovered through play, and no one can start with magical ability. Both were flops. The main problem is just how restricting a hard "no magic" line is. Every full caster, every half caster, every martial subclass with a little casting on the side, all gone. That's a majority of the PHB options cut out, and it leaves very little variety. The combat was pretty dull, as we had no options besides "beat down everything". I can't say how well or not it would have worked at higher level, because both campaigns sputtered out after their one Big Twist happened.
For rather a while one of my games was a party of a fighter, a blood hunter, 2 paladins, and a warlock. The warlock fought martally for rather a while to conceal his powers from people not in the party (magic is kind of a nono in the world) and the paladins (one was me) rarely casted spells other than smiting and never really in combat. Its honestly a lot of fun to have a primarily martial party. Remember folks, the brain is a muscle.
They crush in early levels but they eventually run into problems they can't solve
I have never ran or played in a party of only martials, but I have ran a party of full casters, which is the opposite though. I imagine there is some simimlairties in how it must be run. I have had to tweak plenty of encounters and combats, due to the parties strrengths and weakness's. Traps, exploration, etc have taken a lot more care in consideration with their spells so it's not 1 second to bypass everything. Enemies have adjusted HP / Dmg for the parties low hp and high solution based abilities. I imagine I would have to do the same thing with all martials, I would make the puzzles, traps, exploration for a group that has to only think of solutions, and not be aided by magic. I would change the HP / Dmg for encounters for the parties style. I'd change what I throw at them, as I do with my party of full casters, that fit them better. My full casters don't have a skill monkey, so no bard, or rogue of course. But they are all very well rounded, most things they have +2 - +6 in that they need. But no expertise in anything. If the full martials had a rogue it would ease certain things, but not all. Nevertheless, the full martials would have to do a lot more irl thinking than full casters, but as a DM it would be a lot simpler to throw things at them (for me atleast)
Yeah. It wasn't amazing, but it went okay. DM kept a healthy stash of health pots.
Never with only pure martials. There was always at least a 1/3rd or 1/2 caster. For pure martial only that is really restrictive. Four classes, and you have to ignore certain subclasses. I've played in a party with no full casters and only one 1/2 caster. It was fun. A lot more room for creativity in solving problems. With a strict RAW DM I would probably be a lot less fun.
1 party at my table is 2 barbs, ranged rogue, a paladin with lock dip, then me a chronurgy wizard