>>98902247
Giving a warrior the ability to parry/reflect spells doesn't move the needle much, because the power gap is a result of the Fighter being less useful in any situation that isn't just swinging a sword at enemies.

If you're up against an enemy mage, the warrior can now kill that mage more easily. But the players could probably already do that by just having the party mage cast counterspell. And the warrior hasn't become any more useful when it comes to turning invisible, teleporting, summoning demons, raising the dead, or all the other various forms of utility.

Bridging the gap either involves bringing mages down to the level of a mundane warrior, or raising warriors up to the levels of superhuman where they can redirect a river through pure muscle.
Parrying spells can be part of that, but it won't fix anything by itself.

>>98902284
>Bridging the gap either involves bringing mages down to the level of a mundane warrior, or raising warriors up to the levels of superhuman where they can redirect a river through pure muscle.
neither of these are difficult changes and yet people pretend like its such an impossible task

>>98902247
As >>98902284
said, the issue is mage's utility, not ways to fuck up the wizards.

AMF and related factors neuter the mage, but that is a flat toggle of 'is the the wizard/cleric/sorcerer useful or not'.

>>98902361
It's become an impossible task because people have this bizarre fixation in D&D and D&D adjacent properties that warriors are just action heroes while wizards can do absolutely fucking anything. Neutering magic pisses off mage players; boosting martials pisses off the 'blood and grit' martial players alongside the particularly egotistical mage players. The change people talk about in this instance is the zeitgeist around this shit, not individual groups. Even individual tables can be pretty resistant to changing their game up.

>>98902361
caster players don't want to play low power casters and fighter players don't want to play high power fighters.
When games try to do either of those things, it gets hated, for example people here, absolutely hate PF2e (which has low power casters) and D&D 4e (which has high power fighters)

>>98902399
>It's become an impossible task because people have this bizarre fixation in D&D and D&D adjacent properties
But D&D literally did that back in 4th edition. It just didn't catch on for whatever reason.

>>98902408
>caster players don't want to play low power casters and fighter players don't want to play high power fighters.
thats called just balancing the levels
a level 1 wizard shoots magic missile twice a day and no one has a problem with that
a level 20 fighter with epic feats should be able to divert a river like hercules without any magical or divine aid, nobody will have a problem with that either
but people act like the only options are fireball at level 1 or having no utility other than strength checks at level 9

>>98902284
The issue is really that magic's been stuck in very big buckets instead of properly building on internal divisions, largely for the honest reason that lengthy lists of bespoke condition removal are too fundamental of an assumption to spell design and the Cleric's blowouts are from it taking a massive online blowup to finally get people to pay attention to what it can do outside the "primary" curative role that just doesn't work properly without a generalized grab bag

>>98902361
Because it's a tedious slog to do "properly" starting from a previous body of work as you have to sit down going over every "kind" of problem you want to stay in (or even add to) scope, how every spell you want to keep fits into them even with some layers of "extended" problem-solving, and then re-allocate the niche-allotment accordingly in a way that still meaningfully guides functional party compositions

And even then you're probably still getting complaints if you don't devise longer-term resource subsystems for the martials to make comparable "Obvious Big Buttons" at all sensible, because a LOT of this shitshow is really just the clear spotlight of sudden proactive shifts rather than a legitimate structural issue. Just look at how ludicrously over-buffed the Cleric got for 3e in the efforts to remove built-up assumptions typecasting them as pure healbots. The forums ranting and raving about CoDzilla did not stop it, because the wider consumer base and playtesters STILL did not get the message!

>>98902408
Given how mere community consensus on "cut off at 6th" went in 3.5, I'd expect BECMI-style overt play tiering to be ABLE to fix it, but good fucking luck getting that through to WotC product design and marketing.

>>98902423
Because presenting classes by formalized power source+role with abilities in proto-VTT prepared keywording that completely segregate the "tactical skirmishing" from utility sucks the flavor out of it. It may be a passable system, but it just is not D&D

>>98902284
>to the levels of superhuman where they can redirect a river through pure muscle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA9iNF6tBek

>>98902473
> redirect a river through pure muscle
Give any level 0 commoner a shovel, few months to swing it, and he can do the same. Martials aren't doing anything special, they just do the mundane more efficiently.

A game should commit to the idea, if magic is inherent to a majority of creatures and materials, there shouldn't be any fully mundane creatures or materials; if not magical, then some kind of other kind of power acting as an equalizer.
Ancient humans conquered tigers because we can commune, build, plot, and throw really hard as an equalizer. If magic's only equalizer is other magic, the mundane cannot exist - those refusing to use it go extinct in a living world that isn't just sacred cows reimagined from 70s - 80s literature and film pop culture.
Otherwise, magic must be rare and unknown, and there must be limitations on both player options and encounters available for the GM to use.

>>98902247
...no because the gap is HEAVILY in utility.
It'd be something interesting for a subclass/mid game feat/whatever you want to call it but not a dedicated class.

>>98902247
Let me say the same shit that has been already said, but from an other angle:
All classes are supposed to be at least decent in a fight.
Making the fighter better in a fight doesn't earn him any special place, as everybody can already fight well enough, and the DM will likely balance encounters around the party abilities anyway.
Meanwhile, the wizard does shit the fighter can't even attempt.
The wizard can't be replaced easily, if you don't have one there's a real chance your next adventure will involve kidnapping, befriending, or hiring one.
If you don't have a pure martial, it's quite unlikely your mission will be to go get one.

>>98902361
Because autistic people fear change

>>98902408
>>98902399
what I don't get is why are monks and barbarians also forced into this dictonomy if their class fantasy is inherently supernatural.

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>>98902247
why do you keep posting vtuber fanart here.

>>98908111
I've been called autistic thousands of times, and I made similar changes as the ones described to my games.

I think OP is retarded because there isn't a power gap. But what >>98902284 describes is something that is real but is not a power gap.

Martials are highly specialized in the specific task of bringing enemies HP to 0. Most casters either are not specialized to that task, or can do quite a bit of that but can't sustain doing it for long without running out of magic. The fighter can keep fighting waves of skeletons. The wizard has already used their high power spell slots and has pulled out a crossbow. If your DM doesn't force wizards to be frugal about when they spend their spell slots, then they're doing a bad job.

But the issue isn't a power gap, it's that fighters are specialized as fighters. What that should tell you though is that you're playing fighters wrong. If you are a wizard they give you non-combat spells that make it easy to open your box of tools and find little non-combat solutions to non-combat problems. or even to use those non-combat solutions creatively to prevent combat.

The fighter has his hammer and not everything is a nail.

The solution is you don't let your class full dictate your character. That's the wizard's whole identity. But what has your fighter done? Was he a blacksmith's son conscripted as a youth who has now turned to mercenary work with this party? There's more to war than the fighting, there's a lot you pick up and a lot you need to be, and maybe he still has smithing skills..

The problem is you have to do the work in making your character actually more than the class provides. The class only provides "swing sword" it does not provide any other more dynamic skills. You need to create a character who would have those, make them a part of the skillset, and as a tradeoff you might do 1 less damage with your sword or have slightly lower AC, but because you're not minmaxing you can now actually do more shit.

>>98904317
I keep saying this logic should be used to redefine barbarians and monks so they're more interesting. One os tapping into magic to make their body a weapon, the other is tapping into magic to temporarily powerup.

>>98908175
That's a good first step, to be sure.

>>98904317
A reminder that party niches have been an overt structural assumption on occasions prior to WotC acquiring the IP. It is not actually a problem for magic to only be answerable to other sources of magic AND it being relatively scarce because it's not actually a problem for a party to "need" at least one wizard-type and/or cleric-type because such dependencies are the diegetic reason why "adventurers" are overwhelmingly seen operating as parties in the first place.

But this goes across way too wide a range. You can scope-limit that concept dictating parties have some manner of counter-mage without leaving more general proactive narrative impact almost completely one-sided. The absence of a dynamic making the wizard-types and cleric-types "need" the fighter-types to deal with a level-appropriate giant striding up to squash them flat is also important; while the fighter-types are certainly helpful for scale in endurance slogs, the cleric-types have long been able to reach par performance in the niche for "normal" encounter scheduling while still having magic to spare for utility.

>>98908155
>You need to create a character who would have those, make them a part of the skillset, and as a tradeoff you might do 1 less damage with your sword or have slightly lower AC, but because you're not minmaxing you can now actually do more shit.
The issue is that D&D is INCREDIBLY bad at mechanically supporting this decision, because there just isn't a good class-agnostic build resource pool for utility. Even in d20 where feats could be damned near anything the number of them was still lacking for trying this, while cross-class skills on 2+Int per level are a cruel joke.

>>98908318
>The issue is that D&D is INCREDIBLY bad at mechanically supporting this decision,
True. But as most people here are aware, you'll often find yourself playing dnd or its derivatives more often than you'd like. So the only option is to adapt. Which most people do. Which on a plus side means you can, with GM approval, just make shit up. DnD seems like they're trying to head in this direction by shifting so much focus to character origins. And it's perfectly fine to most GMs to be creative with origins, alter them, or make up your own. (I think some of the books even encourage this?) Regardless, be creative. Your character was at sea for years, there's a lot of skills you can with permission claim your character has as a result. Hell, you could have learned to build bridges in the army. You could have been a blacksmith or farmhand before picking up the sword. You're a former city guard, shouldn't you get advantage to investigation or a perception bonus? But you also would have knowledge of local laws, what items are contraband, how various factions dress and act.

All of that rambling aside though, the core question of this thread was about a power gap. And this is not a power gap. And that is the main thing I'm arguing here. The gap always boils down to flavor gap. Swing sword is boring. People are asking for more colorful ways of swinging sword. But you don't need those. Because swing sword is already powerful enough.

What people are upset by is that DnD provides a lot of colorful abilities for wizards and not for fighters. They never actually talk about a real gap in power. And the answer there is that the wizard needs his spells defined so people don't make shit up that's too over the top. But when you're just a guy whose power is swinging a sword, then that's not something you're likely to do. So all the flavor is up to you to add.

>>98902247
They tried this before with the Monk and the answer is that any competent caster can work around spell immunity by targeting their opponent's environment. Even if the fireball doesn't get you, the roof it just collapsed onto your position will.

>>98908318
What a bunch of retards supposedly assume doesn't apply to what's in the product intended for sale.
And magic being magic's counter only makes sense if magic is scarce. In a world where everything in D&D exists, magic is not only not scarce, it's literally everywhere.
Look at all the civilizations and species that have gone extinct; they didn't adapt or change their ways, so they died. With magic being an overwhelming, unchecked power, all non-magical beings would have to adapt, change their ways, or die out. It's simple cause and effect, for reasons I've already explained twice now.

>>98902247
>picture
That's from Centuriichan, yeah? Very distinct style

But yeah I think it can help a bit. However like the first post said, it's still not quite enough in terms of general utility. Mages are just busted in general.

>>98911852
>And magic being magic's counter only makes sense if magic is scarce.
No, it does not. Because living in a society means you can have friends who specialize in the necessary factors, while you specialize in non-magic things. Just because you need a wizard to be breaking all the curses flying around does not mean everyone has to dabble in wizardry.

>With magic being an overwhelming, unchecked power
This is a separate criterion from its commonality, and needing magic to counter magic still counts as it being checked.

>It's simple cause and effect, for reasons I've already explained twice now.
Which only applies to the full design-by-landfill D&D-brain, but falls apart rapidly as you carve out normal social functions as scaling better with non-magical participation and make individual casters pick a damn lane that even the totality of of still misses SOMETHING important to adventuring.

>>98911934
>Just because you need a wizard to be breaking all the curses flying around does not mean everyone has to dabble in wizardry.
NTA, but it's like how in real life not everyone has a backyard farm even though you need people who can grow crops if you want your society to eat

>>98911887
Non-magic adventurers should get their utility from gear, they should be on average stronger than spellcasters and able to carry more variety. Packed rations instead of Create Food, rope and pitons instead of Spider Climb, crowbar instead of Knock, mundane sources of light, ranged/thrown projectiles, etc. And at least some of those mundane utilities should be able to last longer than wizard's spell slots, making preparedness shine whenever (long) rest isn't readily available

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Have you tried playing 4e?

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>>98915588

Have you tried playing Pathfinder 2e?

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>>98908118
because there is a lot of crossover between chuuba fans and fa/tg/uys.

>>98915588
>>98915595
Yes to both. They're unplayably bad. You should instead try MERP.

>>98915595
IIRC it's basically worst parts of 3.5/PF1e spiced with choice bits of 4th wearing 5e like ill-fitting skinsuit.

>>98902284
>power gap is a result of the Fighter being less useful in any situation that isn't just swinging a sword at enemies.
Yeah so it doesn't really matter? The wizard being able to teleport doesn't take anything away from me. All I care about is that he can btfo me in a fight so it's not very fair. If he can escape by teleporting that's fine. But he should be weaker in combat to compensate for that.

So tired of this "all classes should have an ability equivalent to every utility spell" and saying that bullshit perfectly tuned cheat codes that ruin gameplay mean that skill/martial classes "can't do anything" becasue their skills have a chance of failure.

>>98911934
It's not just a society, it's their entire world.
Magic is not ONLY overwhelming, but ALSO unchecked, because its counters barely exist player-side, but are massively ubiquitous NPC side.
"Normal social functions" wouldn't have saved ancient humans from tigers on their own. They needed their previously mentioned equalizers, and even then, the scales were heavily tipped in the tigers' favor.

But I get it, you just want excuses for D&D's shitty design choices and literature/film references, and don't care about functional games or living worlds.

>>98902247
Gay gooner slop tbqh
Real men pick Anti-Mage (Dota 2)

>>98902247
>Could this actually work for bridging the caster-martial power gap?
In my settings, everyone use magic.
Whether you use it for physical enhancement, item crafting, spells, curses or divination is irrelevant.
Even a random peasant's housewife know can learn a spell (if she ever has the time to ponder the dao).

>>98915830
>Even a random peasant's housewife know can learn a spell (if she ever has the time to ponder the dao).
Even fisherman's wife? What eldritch powers does she dream of?

>>98915837
>Even fisherman's wife? What eldritch powers does she dream of?
Beginner spells are extremely weaks, at most they can dry stuff, start a fire or move water around depending on the element.
Meanwhile the highest level of spells can affect the land for millenias, altering the landscape or even the bloodline of living beings.

>>98915846
Starting fire without any tools can be very useful.
And potentially quite dangerous, hell hath no fury like housewife capable of spontaneous combustion scorned.

>>98915583
Yeah I agree. Personally I love to be resourceful and carry a lot of shit for every occasion in my characters, but the problem is that in reality long rests happen way too frequently, so the mages always have stuff available. And it's not like the rest of the group doesn't want to full rest at every opportunity, too. For one everyone benefits since they recover everything, but also they know the spellcasters are extremely useful for the group, so they want to keep that usefulness at hand.

I think the DMs really need to not give full rests at every occasion. It makes some aspects of the game kinda trivial, and it impedes people from being creative, crafty, resourceful. Magic solves every problem, yay.

>>98902247
I guess you're talking about D&D. The problem of those games is that they work with a paradigm that you need a spell to be cool.
If you know that a character naturally will max jump at 28+roll don't make 30 half the length of the real life world record.
And a rogue maxing the skill 20 levels and getting both feats that improve jumps has a base jump bonus two points under a level 1 spell bonus at level 9.
Even if spell reflect is usable on reflecting the force cage to the face of the spellcaster they still can't swim the river or jump over a big cliff.

>>98908115
Bold of you to assume that a WotC employee has ever deigned to soil their mind with Wuxia or other foreign filth.

The Monk class is exactly as the holy progenitors of the fantasy genre - Hasbro will it to be. Any substantial deviation is heretical and inherently inferior due to its nature as the creation of an inferior mind.

>>98902408
Everybody loves 4e

>>98902408
I hate it more when there's a gap between classes that destroy everything with what's available in the book vs classes that suck even when you beg the DM for gear.
I'd rather have a roster of classes that engage with combat differently to provide a variety of tactical options, than have "wizard that blows up everything" and "fighter whose player has to hope for the right kinds of magic gear".

But that's why I'm stuck making my own games; I like options to fit the game instead of fitting outdated literature and film references, and I like a stronger focus on combat. I'm a niche within a niche, nobody's going to market to someone like me.

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>>98915763
>But I get it, you just want excuses for D&D's shitty design choices and literature/film references, and don't care about functional games or living worlds.
No, it's you who is so obsessively HYTNPDND brained that you repeatedly fail to comprehend numerous explicit statements of divergence from its complete body to make a functional game from SOME of its premises. I sure as shit ain't keeping "bounded accuracy" or predicating the resource-paradigm foundation of inter-class balance on encounter scheduling nobody follows!

>>98915837
Octopus cunnilingus, of course.

>>98917587
Your point relies on nobody ever using enough of the magical to break a mundane world.
I don't think I have to tell you why that's a problem.

>>98902247
I don't play d*ng**ns *nd dr*g*ns so there isn't any such power gap.

>>98919037
>Your point relies on nobody ever using enough of the magical to break a mundane world.
You're just laundering your premise of D&D-brained bloat again, asserting that there positively will be the excess of magic required for this in the first place. Again, numerous explicit statements of divergence from the complete body, why is it so hard for you to understand that my position is niche-based interdependency specifically predicated on CUTTING AWAY shit magic does in D&D?

>>98919055
To be fair, you don't play games at all.