"You just want to give martials anime powers" "YES THAT IS MY ENTIRE POINT MUNDANE PEOPLE ARENT DOING THE THINGS ADVENTURERS DO" respect+ for the honesty mate

The fact that some casters honestly make for better martials than actual martials is hilarious to me

One thread which will always live rent free in my head was one I read about the crossbows in Pathfinder 1 and a prestige class associated with it. Specifically how Crossbows had no utility besides a backup weapon for a Wizard and why the whole prestige class for martials to specialize in it was just a trap that did nothing but lock the player into an intentionally underpowered playstyle. A dev came in and explained that it was physically impossible for a human to multiattack with a crossbow or shoot "Harder", thus they didn't give it any ability to attack more than once per turn or scale damage with stats. He posted a video of a sharpshooter doing rapid fire target shots and stated that, if this was what a specialist with optimal equipment capped out at, letting martials accomplish better with a crossbow would be ludicrous. Someone replied "Alright. What KZfaq video did you use to decide the upper limits of a Wish spell?" For some reason, that guy never got a reply.

The funny thing is that when people build Martials, the best Martials are those that end up dipping into Spellcaster classes or feats.

I continue to say that the best and probably only way to improve ttrpg martials is to treat them exactly like spellcasters (via "stances" and "combat moves").

Thanks to 3e, supernatural is a loaded word. Some abilities should be "extraordinary," but monks should absolutely have "supernatural" features.

I think it's so strange that martials have terrible stamina. Wizards get so many spells every level, fighters don't even get a second action surge until level 17. Imagine a wizard with one spell slot.

One of the most infuriating things about this entire debate is when older D&D players hear these points, chuckle and say something to the effect of "Well, that's just how crazy spellcasters can be when you know what your doing!" As if this is some kind of super secret hidden perk of knowing the game mechanics. Its the exact same smug shit eating energy you see in someone who wins RTS's by shamelessly spaming cheese builds and then laughs about it.

I feel like the best way to handle the whole "mundane martials" issue is to take a page from mythology heroes, as you said. Beowulf isn't explicitly magical, but he is very much superhuman. He does stuff real people can't do because... idk he's strong. I feel like that kind of mythical hero who definitely is magical, but doesn't appear so, is the way to go here.

"Give martials anime superpowers" Sir, you first had my curiosity, now you have my attention

Why do people say martials should *have* to play by immersive low fantasy rules if casters don't? In a lot of low-fantasy magic is definitely powerful, but tends to have a lot of very exacting rules, restrictions, and drawbacks to it to make that power feel earned in the first place.

This is one of the BIGGEST reasons 4e will always be my favorite D&D. None of this Martial = mundane bullcrap limiting their abilities to being "realistic". It was a source of POWER every bit as extraordinary as Arcane, Divine, etc.

A good why to explain this system. All of the Casters gain the ability to channel their innate magic in some way, so because Martials can't channel their energy outwards, it begins stockpiling within the character and gain supernatural feats. Totally agree this would help.

Interesting comparison I thought of: While a 20th level Fighter is King Arthur, Tristan or Aragorn, a 20th level caster is Merlin, Morgan LeFey or Gandalf. One side is entirely human in limitation, the other is so powerful that the story has to sideline them so they don't simply solve every problem.

NGL, making martial characters more anime sounds hella fun. Imagine moving so fast in between targets that you're essentially flashstepping, or attacking so many times it looks like you're casting Judgement Cut. Or you know, you could just play Druid. A caster that can turn into a martial as a bonus action.

I was led here by pack tactics and honestly this just solidifies my solution of doubling all martial damage and making the battle master fighter a core mechanic in all martials.

Once upon a time, all the classes were balanced in dnd. It was called 4e and everyone hated it

Also, casters get hirelings earlier, cheaper, and in greater number than anyone else because it's listed as one of those many options they can take. They're called 'animal companion', 'find familiar', 'animate dead', 'conjure woodland beings', etc.

One of the main reasons I like PF2e's martis is that some of their feats just give its martials straight up superpowers. Barbarians can create earthquakes and punch magic into nothing, Fighters can break space and time to teleport and strike 80 feet away with a melee attack, and titan wrestler lets me suplex dragons. But probably the best part is that, as far as I can see, there is no bs caster subclass that is straight up better martial. There is no moon druids or bladesingers, and I am quite happy about that.

High magic setting: Give martials anime powers Low magic setting: Limit magical capabilities?

Might I suggest a homebrew creator named Laser Llama? They've made amazing alternatives to the martial classes that changes some small things, but also gives all martials a thing called "Exploit Dice". Basically it's Battle Maneuvers but base class, way more options, and each different martial class gets their own list to choose from, just like spells.

A *boring* but *efficient* way to buff martials are to make "non-magical" weapon upgrades of standard weapons. Why do so many deal a mere piddly 1D8? A standard rapier is 1D8, but a Refined Rapier could be 2D8, and a Duelist's Rapier 3D8 per hit. Weapons could be moddable with equipment martials find, and none of them count as magic. If this was built into the 5E system, martials would be guaranteed to excel in dealing damage to single targets in a much more significant way, allowing at least the satisfaction of single-target alpha strikes to compensate for the lack of options. Then when you throw in legendary magical weapons on top of that, they would be powerful enough to compare with casting a mid-to-high level spell every turn without the awful, trash spell slot system.

They were called "extraordinary features" in 3.5 Su: Supernatural affect that mimics magic. Ex: Extraordinary affect that mimics magic (but isn't magic) It's frightening how many things are just still there in 3.5. That just didn't get brought over.

With the release of the Warrior classes for OneD&D, this looks like it is going to be more true than ever. RIP martials

I think how the anime Overlord handles martial/melee fighters is a perfect example of how to do it for dnd. Everyone can swing a sword or punch but certain classes have access to a wide moveset unique to that class, in addition to movesets universally shared by everyone who can stab stuff

I’m not an optimizer at all and neither are my players. But watching this made me realize that in my the current game I’m running, my decision to let the fighter a retainer and the rogue a lycanthropic buff - which I’d initially planned to balance out by giving the casters little bonuses too - was actually an inadvertently mechanically wise move! I wonder if other DMs tend to unconsciously help their martials out.

I haven't played much of DnD 5e, or any ttrpg anyhow. But after looking through the books for 5e for a bit, I feel like the entire game design is stacked against the martials. 1) Multiattack doesn't stack. So if you try too multiclass, which you most likely are doing, you end up having dead levels because they don't stack. 2) The subclass features all conflict with your turns. Example: Rune Knight's runes all require either a bonus action, or a reaction. But then you can't use Giant's Might. Or you can use Giant's Might, but won't be able to use your runes. Or if you've multiclassed with Barbarian, you can't Rage when you use runes. Or you can't use Flurry of Blows if you've done it with Monk. Caster's don't have to worry about a bonus action or reaction because their actions are all streamlined and useable with any action. 3) Caster's main offensive stat ends up as an even better defensive stat. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves all have incredibly debilitating effects if you fail. And since any caster would have one of those stats maxed, they're less likely to be under those effects. But martials can't do that, or else they'll lose out on damage, hp, or utility. 4) And my biggest point, is this. Why is it, that for my martial character to be even a fraction as useful as a caster, I have to build them with a very specific build. What if my character isn't an archer, or doesn't utilize two handed weapons, or polearms. That means that for me to be able to do the one thing my class is supposed to do, I have to sacrifice creativity, customization, and my own choices to be able to do the thing I am even able to do. That point, of how martials have to sacrifice player expression and creativity, is to me why martials need to be changed. It goes against the whole point of DnD if I have to make that choice or fall behind.

3.5's Tome of Battle gave fighters supernatural abilities in the form of combat stances and maneuvers. Although it also had prestige classes that let you make gish builds able to use spells and combat maneuvers.

I think people should look to mythical characters like Hercules or Lu Bu. Unimaginable feats of strength, cunning, and courage. Have fighters become immune to fear and charm, give barbarians the ability to throw dragons, etc. Either that or have spellcasting actually be hard to learn.

giving martials fighting stances and being able to swap midbattle and other options to dynamically affect combat would be fun. features like tunnel fighter were fun albeit strong. i really hope wotc fixes martials in one dnd, but i doubt it since it is WIZARDS of the coast after all...

Guts from berserk and batman ate good examples of normal humans achieving super human feats. Both are enhanced by gadgets. I agree fighters and the other classes should be able to perform literal Herculean or beowulf like feats. Guts swings a 300 pound hunk of raw iron in the shape of a sword with one hand and Batman is the greatest detective to ever live. Thinking of fighters like this will make them more interesting

Gaining super strength/agility/dexterity would make sense to compete against casters. A super martial could probably dodge spells and reach the wizard

DnD 5e players: God, the Martial vs Caster disparity is unbelievably unbalanced in favor of casters. Pathfinder 2e Players: Is this some sort of broken joke I'm too balanced to understand?

A part of this whole thing that really annoys me is that newer dms and players will berate you for using PA, GWM or CA because they're "broken", but they're absolutely required for martials to even "mimic a fraction of [casters] power"

This excellent video summarizes everything single problem I have in DnD 5e about Martials, just a couple points I wanted to add. - With every new sourcebook, new spells, and magic items get added! Guess how many new core, nonmagical weapons got added... Zero! In 5e's NINE years, WOTC hasn't added a SINGLE new core weapon for martial classes. Yet hundreds of new magic spells and items. - Caster's Cantrips scale better than even the Fighter's extra attack, getting their fourth "extra attack", three levels earlier than the Fighter. Without needing to dedicate 20 levels into an inferior class. A level 12 character could pick up a cantrip via a feat and be just as if not more effective than a martial artist trained for their whole life, or a Druid who practiced the same spell for years. - Most Caster subclasses and features direct them into being SAD (usually towards their spellcasting ability), making them easier to allocate ASIs for and to have room for feats and multiclassing. Martials, for some odd reason, have a tendency of being MAD (Look at the Battlemaster maneuvers for proof.) with subclasses often needing investment in too many ability scores to make well-rounded /effective characters. Awesome video Ahero, this video reminds me why I switched to PF2e.

Since magic is interwoven into everything in most dnd settings, its completely fine to give martials supernatural abilities as a base mechanic. Just because theyre simple doesnt mean they have to be weak. There are plenty of ways to power a martial class and maintain their threat level alongside the meteor throwers. Improving their action economy, buffing the damage they do, giving them abilities or passives, whats strange is that wotc seems to put so much thought into what certain classes aren't allowed to do while others are allowed to do anything they can think of

All martial should get something like the Maneuvers. Each class has its own list of maneuvers and each subclass gets access to special maneuvers from other lists. That's my rebalance idea but I ain't doing the legwork on it. But it would make things very cool imo

Honest to Goodness, it feels like we need "Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords" now more than ever, a 3.5 supplement that did exactly what you would want: martial characters with multitudinous Stances and Maneuvers that function as Martial "Spellcasting" but with flashy stunts and, more importantly, tons of options (even if just for three classes made for the book)

a lvl 20 barbarian should feel like u roleplaying kratos

I hate how people think that high level casters have justified strength because magic but high level martial is still just a skilled guy with a sword High level martial should be like hercules, gilgamesh, conan or mikula selyanovich If you dont know who mikula was, it was the guy that had a bag with the weight of the entire earth just in his pocket and challenged svyatogor to a lifting contest with the bag which svyatogor failed And if you dont know who svyatogor was, it was the dude as tall as mountain that wasnt even woken up by ilya muromets strikes and when he walked the ground itself litteraly shaked

As a longtime DM who started with Pathfinder 1E, I found myself subconsciously powering up the martials in my game. Making the horizon walker ranger wise and powerful, making the fighter a vampire with additional damage to user and target, handing the rogue powerful magic. I think I was able to make martials just as important as casters, but it took real effort and I doubt it was as fun for them. I miss Pathfinder’s crazy bullshit.

I still don't understand why for example strength is made the way it is. Like, yay, you can carry 15 pounds of weight per point of strength. At 10 Str, that's 150 pounds, which is about what the average human can do. But, at 20 STR, that's 300 pounds. And bear in mind, 20 on a stat is supposed to be superhuman. So, a SUPERHUMAN can only lift about as much as a very buff dude in the gym. A barbarian with the might of the titans at level 20 can lift 360 pounds....Like, what the fuck. The strongmen can lift literally over a thousand pounds in real life, but a LITERAL PRIMAL CHAMPION can only lift 360? And scaling with size is also extremely stupid. Like....you can become huge - literally 20-25 feet tall musclebound goliath, and you can only lift 1200 pounds? Paul Anderson had a record of 1200LBS squat 40 years ago....what the fuck. That's just one example of why martials are weak. A DM literally has to go against the rules to make them even a bit more functional.

The supernatural abilities remind me of Warhammer chaos warriors. Essentially demon worshipping vikings that get various magic items and powers from their gods in exchange for undying loyalty and effective service. Like the god Khorne can give you a collar that can effectively counterspell at will or make you strong enough to rip a giant’s arm off and beat it to death with it. I’ve always wanted to play a character like that

In BG3 martials feel amazing. Mainly because of how many good martial themed artifacts are given to you. Also haste giving an extra action and not just a single attack. Some novas reach to over 800 damage with 1 turn. Casters there can't really do that easily. It's so sad that having multiple rings, amulet, a legendary+3 weapon and other stuff is what you need just to compete

My favorite part was the end where you (easily) destroy the whole "grounded fantasy" argument.

Something I'd like to add is that this isn't a problem in other RPG's. In Final Fantasy the Black Mage is a class that channels the power of the void to create fireballs and lightning bolts to destroy their enemies and the Dragoon channels the power of a dragon god to fly around and destroy their enemies, The Summoner summons literal GODS to help them in battle and the Monk just goes ham with their fists and there's no difference between those classes viability. Because SE understands that it's just as cool to see your character flip around and do some wild anime shenanigans with their spear as it is to use the void to erase your enemies. In D&D a Sorcerer can deal 280 damage avg. in 1 action (3.5 avg. d6 roll*8d6 dmg*10 targets) with a base level fireball, a Berserker Barbarian can get mad and do one extra attack on one target, take a level of exhaustion, and cripple their character. The Sorcerer can also re-roll their damage dice up to five times at lvl 5 if they want. This much imbalance exists because????????? Martials are way lamer and way weaker for no reason, and other RPG's have been getting this right for decades.

i really wanted the extraordinary, supernatural and spell-like descriptors from pathfinder on 5e. adding some extraordinary abilities for fighters is just *chef's kiss*

I miss AHero. So rare to get this combo of approachable and insightful.

One of the changes I gave to the champion fighter was giving them more chances to make opportunity attacks AND gave them additional attacks of opportunities based on proficiency bonus. To also increase consistency at later levels they can throw weapons with the throwing property as an attack of opportunity if an enemy attacks an ally. So long as it's within 30 feet. I felt like more attacks = more chances to crit with the champion so I felt that the idea would help it out quite a bit

WotC: we are gonna make Martial shine on OneDnD Players: good WotC: we are removing critical hits from spells Players: oh, well, if is to make Martial shine, i guess is... WotC: but also any additional damage made affar from the weapon damage is out of the equation, no more double smite or double sneak attack Players: but... thats a nerf for martial, not for spellcasters WotC: but nothing, we know what we are doing, is "balanced", this buffs martial! Players: no, this actually WotC: oh, and acrobatics and athletics are useless for grapple Players: stop, why are you doing this? WotC: for balance, of course, hahahahaha

The "encounter stamina" fallacy is so vital, I appreciate you highlighting it here. In my play experience, it's also quite rare for a session to get enough encounters in before the casters are truly tapped out (and then the martials are usually screwed for healing by that point!). The alleged consistency of fighters et al doesn't help at all when the casters are able to recharge constantly. If the game is high fantasy, then the martial classes deserve to be fantastical.

In 3.5, they kind of did what you suggested at the 3nd of the video but only in one book. The Book of the 9 swords aka the Tome of battle gave martials 3 classes and some prestige classes that allowed them to feel like a gish without needing to take a multiclass into anything. They got these awesome and very powerful maneuvers and abilities that really made them feel like the legendary heros you talk about in the last bit of the video and no, they weren't just spells or anything. Attacks like Soaring Raptor strike and defensive moves like wall of blades (make an attack of opportunity against an incoming attack, if your attack is higher you block it) were not only very useful and amazing, but came with descriptions that made it seem like you were doing something that not your average human could do. You almost felt like a Jedi or something (probably a bad comparison but that's the only thing I could think of off the top of my head) and it was so much damn fun. They did a great job with different types of maneuvers, different disciplines and techniques so that no Warblade, Sword Sage or Crusader felt the same. You could build just about anything with those 3 classes and you felt on par with any spell caster (especially if you min/maxed it) but you never felt too strong to where the spellcaster felt unneeded or anything like that. Ya know how everyone reacted to it? They banned it. Even at my table, my gm accused me of cheating by making one because he couldn't wrap his mind around how I was "doing as much damage as the wizard but you're a fighter, it doesn't make sense" Even today it's one of the most banned or edited books/classes because people really do not like the idea of being able to do all the things that a fighter can do, but also other things. It's like there's an unwritten rule that martials are just supposed to be weaker than casters and we all have to accept it. The 5e battlemaster btw is like the extremely watered down wish version of the Warblade from the ToB. Imagine that class but being able to hang with any caster in all of 5e as far as damage, choices, cool factor, etc. Give it a read if you get the chance.

I think the reasons listed in this video are why Battle Master was the first martial class that actually interested me, because it has a smidgen more choices to make and features to use with the maneuvers you get. And those maneuvers give you only a fraction of what spell abilities can do, so I think it'd be cool to see ALL martials get their own sets of maneuvers to choose from to give them options to customize their characters as well as more battlefield control abilities that all casters already have access to superior versions of.

Something that I keep suggesting my DM friends is to read up on the generic object portion of the DMG, even if by a little, considering in giving martials siege damage and having figthers and barbarians slicing castle walls in half. as martials level up they should start looking like walking natural disasters

I started running a campaign recently that tackled this issue pretty well in my opinion. I added an entire combat art systems semi based on hunter arts from monster hunter, but it ended up being more like combat arts from fire emblem. I reworked proficiency to work in grades or ranks. Being higher rank with a weapon unlocks more advanced arts and or upgraded versions of early arts. Those who wield great swords get a whirlwind early on which gets upgraded to whirlwind + at greatsword rank C which gives it extra range and causes the attack to deal more damage the more targets it hits. I balanced these arts around adding durability to all weapons which scared my players at first but honestly hasn’t been bad. Durability is only drained when arts are used normal attacks drain 0. A weapon that reaches zero durability can still be used to attack with and suffers no damage penalty outside of being unable to land critical hits and if the the user crit fails with a weapon at zero it will break. I should also say weapons are easily repairable and have high base durability any blacksmith or player with the proper tools and proficiencies can repair or upgrade weapons. The punishments of having weapons be at zero were in hopes that folks would carry many weapons and have reasons to switch between them (I also limited player inventory on weapons to reasonable level. Meaning they just have to have an idea of where each weapon is stored like on their back or at theirs side or dangling from a backpack. The only way it is actually limiting is I don’t let people carry five of the same weapon. Two is fine, I just wanted people to use different weapons to play test more of the arts and the leveling system for proficiencies) During the phase of me building this system one of my players during a open floor kind of conversation said this felt like a buff to martials and asked what spell casters got which at the time I just yes and nothing but I did end up giving spell casters new spells and they always had the ability to use arts which some of which had a prerequisite of requiring spell casting and some quartstaff ones were specially built for spell casters like a cool one that breaks the quarterstaff draining the energy from it to cast a spells of 1st or 2nd level from your known spells list. I also let each player create a signature art. Which could be a brand new thing or an art that is locked to a weapon that their character can use on a different weapon which was fun. This whole thing also lead to me buffing some weapons by either giving them cool arts which is what I did for whips or adding new qualities to weapons like daggers in this game deal extra damage from behind and need a lower value to crit from behind. So long as the campaign I’m play testing this with goes well I plan on started to use this at all my future tables.

You made great points here, and what I want to bring attention to is that in response to the poor shape martials are in with their reliance on feats, all the feats they rely on will be nerfed into the dirt in One DnD. The crutch veritably kicked out from beneath them. Should be great.

As one of the contributors to Tabletop Builds, thank you for the shout outs and links! The quality of the video was high. It's hard to cover all the detail in 15 minutes, but you provided a well-paced and entertaining summary.

To fix martials, I would suggest the "Alternate Classes" By LaserLlama They created alternate versions of the Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, and Rouge. And to a lesser extent Ranger, Sorcerer, and Artificer. For his Alternate Martials, with the exeption of the Monk, they took the Superiorety Dice from the Battle Master Fighter and turned them into a core class feature for all three, dubbing them Martial, Savage, and Devious exploits. Some of them give extra damage, while others mimic spells like Haste, Thunderwave, Tenser's Transfermation, Slow, and even Steel Wind Strike. For the Fighter alone there is like 40 Exploits they can learn. I use them in my game and my players are having a great time. Great Video BTW

But remember guys! When 4th ED made sure that martial classes worked, it was wrong! No, I don't care if they did it poorly or not. The complaint is never that it was poorly done, it is that it was even done!

As a Dm, and a raging min-maxer/power gamer, i have long since noticed the power of a pure caster and took note in my dming. Grappling, Shoving, restraining and sneaky attacks/traps are what i used often when handling my party. Unless they succeed an ability check that they usually don't have proficiency in their gonna get hit, and being grappled and or getting sneaked attacked/secretly poison can do so much for me. I also implement gritty realism for even more days to go without a long rest that usual casters needs so much, and for the warlock i especially have their patron come into play with special demands now and then followed by a Wis/Int Save to resist the command if they so choose(The command scales with every successful resisted save so eventually they'll crack) Also employ smart monster leader to "Target specific people if their doing something particularly important" Which usually goes for the caster first due to aoe damage reasons and usually cuz they seem the weakest physically so grappling and stabbing usually gets them immediately. Also i employ tactics like covering the casters mouth with enemy actions, restraining their hands etc etc I also make sure to keep at range, 200-300ft away where most spells cant reach, and use that to the monsters advantage and custom change most monsters resistance and immunity so people cant look up stats and resistance, enforcing a check to figure out a weakness/vulnerability first I also have it so monsters/opposing casters NOT yell out their spell name before hand so the casters have no clue what a spell is and before i describe the effects ill have them choose their reaction spells if they want to (as a trade off however I also use counter spell super rarely or almost never) All this leads to a certain uncertainty in spell casting that doesn't mess with the base class

There needs to be a 5e equivalent to the Tome of Battle from 3.5. I have never felt more on par with my casting party mates as a martial than when I was playing as a Warblade.

This is one of the reasons that I think that a lot of the default subclasses for martials from the basic rules should just be class features. A fighter should get improved critical, better physicality, more fighting styles, and Regen. This still wouldn't close the gap, but it would help. A rogue should get better mobility, shenanigans with quick items, and the ability to use any items. A barb should get another attack while raging without exhaustion, and the ability to resist charmed and feared (raging or no) Monks should absolutely get the open hand maneuvers regardless of subclass, in addition to quivering palm and the other open hand features. Rangers should get all of the special hunter manuever options. Again, this isn't necessarily going to close the gap, but it helps to start.

A really interesting idea me and a couple mates came up with was the idea that the more a person's fame spread, the more influence and power they literally gained. Like if a Fighter once managed to deflect an enemy firebolt with their shield, then anyone who saw that happen would spread the word, and as time goes on, that story turns into the Fighter's shield parting a dragon's firebreath like a rock against a wave. That fame and recognition slowly empowers that fighter, since people are more likely to tell stories about gallant knights in armor and shields than they are to tell stories about that one guy who everyone hates because he holds a stick and has horns and a tail

The simplest analytical point is the best, honestly. Fighters get THREE meaningful options at level the first, defining pretty much their pigeonholed role, capacities for the rest of their career. Wizards get NINE, at the least. This shit should have been fixed from D&DNEXT onwards. And it absolutely wasn't. Fuck.

I played on a 5e game server that averaged 18-25-ish people on simultaneously at the daily peak. As getting brought to events was akin to getting picked for teams (and pvp was allowed), it ended up turning *very* competitive and was thus _merciless_ about build optimization. There was _one_ high-level martial at the end, and they were inferior to casters well below their level outside of their _one_ niche. Many individual spells are far more dangerous than attacks and dealing damage for overcoming challenges and manipulating circumstances (suggestion, command, invisibility, flight, dream, polymorph, etc), and by virtue of getting so many, casters can often fulfil _multiple_ roles while also fulfilling a martial's well enough (and often _better_ than them with less investment). The existence of learnable arcane magic (wizards) questions the in-universe reason for strictly non-magical characters. Any nation that managed to build up and maintain wizards in an organized military structure would almost certainly replace conventional non-magical men-at-arms. The tools of men-at-arms always adapt with technology; it would be asinine to refuse to integrate the setting's most versatile and powerful technology. Barring barrier to entry, magic would become _one_ of a military and individual men-at-arms' tools. Related to that, I think one _potential_ solution would be significantly advanced ability trees related around various weapons, tactics, or superhuman maneuvers, much like you discuss, and many of them (until late levels, anyways) could play into how these weapons real niches (eg maces and hammers generally inflict less damage yet bypass armor, greatswords were excellent at fighting multiple opponents, etc) and thus not break the 'not-supernatural' fantasy. Importantly, though, they would need to gain enough abilities to have more than one role or strategy, like casters. Whether they need to be _as_ versatile (versus better at a smaller range) or whether these abilities need to work on exactly the same sort of resource expenditure is another question. While having a different resource expenditure style could contribute to distinct styles of play, that increases how asymmetric the game balance is, and is thus harder to balance properly. I think there are a handful of martial builds that are superior within a niche, and thus have some validity in gameplay; however, they are not nearly as valuable as casters in general. Bearbarian rogue is a _massive_ damage soak, whereas a Cavalier-paladin of the proper oath (while paladin is a caster, the abilities of concern are not spells) is one of the few ways to forcibly redirect attacks towards yourself (with penalties to boot). On the other hand, much of the time, you would be better off bringing another caster, regardless.

As a GM this is one of the reasons I love PF2E vs 5E. Watching player power diverge so dramatically is frustrating. I know 5E caster players can chafe a bit at not being able to do single target damage on par with martials but seeing martial players faces light up when they realize how powerful they feel is a treat every time.

The fine people at Level Up has already done so with their overhaul Advanced 5th Edition. Not only do they curb some of the power of spells (like reducing Fireball to 6d6 damage with the ability to discover the godly 8d6 version to avoid the hate), they grant martial classes access to Combat Traditions that essentially function like spell-like abilities (without the spell-like tag).

The Supernatural fighter is a great idea, in fact my Idea to make martials more optimal before this video is just make the battlemaster a default for all martial and/or hybrid classes. With fighter, barbarian, monk, and rouge being the martial equivalents of wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and warlock respectively and pure caster martial aligned subclasses getting access to these battlemaster feature as a mirror to the pure martials caster aligned subclasses. With hybrid classes like paladin and rangers getting a bit of both. This sort of universal battlemaster works like how the subclass does for the most part with you getting a list of maneuvers and superiority dice that are expended once using that ability. However unlike the battlemaster you only get certian manuvers at higher levels. With lower maneuvers being fairly mundane but useful and can be scaled to higher levels. As you get to the higher levels, the more fantastical the maneuvers become. For example a low level maneuver would be something like lunging strike, but a higher level may be something like destroy item/weapon.

Great video, man! Pack Tactics sent me on over here. The math is undeniable. In practice, though, I have found that a lot of tables play spellcasters so sub-optimally that martials don’t *feel* weaker. I have a group where the wizard won’t take almost any of the true S-tier spells and just opts for straight damage and the bard keeps hitting things with a rapier or using a crossbow. Like…they are having fun, so I am happy for them to do that. But these completely suboptimal choices has the added bonus effect of balancing the game ironically. I *suspect* that a lot of tables are like this, and hence there is this feeling you see on some replies to a Treantmonk vid about how powerful the monk is etc etc.

The Spheres of Might system (an add-on for Pathfinder 1e, and DnD 5e) does this. It gives martial characters features that either allow them to do more interesting things in combat, or to have some non-combat utility. The fact that a third-party add-on is needed to do this is sad, but you aren't the first to see the problem.

I had this idea for the "surge" system. Bacically martial specific "spells" that all martials get, these arent normal spells but like crazy physical feats that can peform with drive points.

I am under the mindset that a level 20 Fighter or other Martial PC should basically be, regardless of subclass, at a minimum, effectively Toji Zenin from Jujutsu Kaisen. Because I've had this same point for a while, in order to a max level fighter to be comparable to a max level mage that can warp reality on a small scale, these people have to be blatantly superhuman.

I might flat out give literally every fighter battle master maneuvers in addition to their other class features, plus more sparing lists for other martial classes. i think the most interesting way to scale up fighters while keeping them relatively mundane is to offer much more variety in weapons and tactics that let them deal with enemies in more engaging ways.

Great video! Love the changes and love the fact that adding loads of martial decision points would not only rebalance and specialize martials, but also make them a considerably less bland experience to play. It only takes a few combats of "BA rage, action attack" until the bad guys fall over before I start flirting with a multi-class dip into something more interesting and tactically stimulating.

They don't seem to understand that none of the classes are normal people. A fighter is not like any regular soldier, they can do much more than regular people. They are those people who cut down trees with a single swing. Those who take the hit of a dragon on their shield and barely flinch. Shields are also a thing that should be a lot better.

Wow! Great video! Game mechanics discussions can be dry, but your editing is on point. It kept the video so entertaining. Great job!

You're damn right! I want to be an anime character! I want to side step so damn fast that it just LOOKS like I cast Mirror Image Tell me why I can't break Forecage with a punch, or use Judgement Cut from DMC5 but the Cleric can summon Pelor to jump an innkeeper for charging too much for a mug of ale. Casters can even bring themselves back from DEATH. Druids have Resurrection, Clerics have Revivify and even the Wizard - who's not supposed to get healing spells at all - can come straight back with Contingency or Clone!

I'm a big fan of giving martials more control, distraction, etc. abilities on homebrews, and giving them tanking aspects unavailable to other classes. What boggles my mind is how often people scream "overpowered" for a martial class when it's intentionally designed to give that class more utility (and as such, stronger than the baseline for the class), even when this resulting utility is weaker than what even a suboptimal caster would have at the same level. (did an experiment with some fighter subclass concepts recently for this)

@AHero if you were to rework martial classes and give them supernatural abilities, how would you go about it and how would you make each martial feel different from the others? Side note, I feel like Monk & Barb would be the easiest to add supernatural stuff to at least thematically.

The fighters are skilled warriors, who spend decades of their life in weapon practices, yet that give them no real advantages as every enemy have the same skills. So they basically never have an advantage, which in real life they should. They should have traits, that skilful martial artists have, like disarm your opponent in one swing, instantly kill weak creatures without spending action points to perform that, the ability to instil fear onto shaken enemies that receives damage from fighter. Like in real life battles ends when enemy flees, but not when you slaughter all of them.

The “nerfing spellcasters” backlash stings the most, because a lot of the ideas I have to fix this imbalance hinge around exactly that. I had the concept in mind to make recovering spell slots require the spending of hit dice, with class rebalances and tweaks to the rest system to account for it… but generally speaking, players react harshly to nerfs of any kind. You’d have to give all classes some significant power boosts to offset that, I feel. Even then, that kind of nerf still gives spellcasters even more choices to make. You could go the Pathfinder route of giving all martials access to maneuvers, with Battlemasters getting extra maneuvers and superiority dice… I also have ideas for making attunement drain resources rather than requiring attunement slots, which when combined with the above would give martials another edge in terms of both strength and choice. I also have ideas for buffs to melee combat, but… hell, this is a hard problem to tackle.

Give martials techniques like in anime. Each technique does something special. You could even attach it to a stamina bar. My favorite example of this is the main character from "Chivalry of a Failed Knight" Basically, this guy only has enough magic to conjure a basic katana and power himself up a little bit. He is still able to beat all of his foes through a mixture of sword techniques, and his trump card; a daily ability that stems from his magical ability, and increases his base stats 10 fold for a single minute. IIRC, he has 7 sword techniques that let him do all kinds of stuff like create an after image of himself, reflect the force of attacks, counter attack, pierce armor, delayed damage. In addition, he can mimic any fighting style after seeing it once. Using this, while unable to see them, he knows the location of invisible weapons or traps. Even though he seems really OP, that is only the case in a 1v1 fight. When a fight drags on for too long, or there are too many opponents, he struggles greatly. This character is able to compete against the strongest mages in the world (in his universe) despite having next to no magical ability at all. I played him in a homebrew campaign with my friends, and it was really cool.

This is why when I put modern guns in my games, absolutely nothing was unbalanced with it.

I mean, you're not wrong. FF give martials supernatural abilities explained as everyone having mana flow inside them, and martials just use theirs to enhance themselves where as casters unleash it on others. Why not let martials be able to evoke the weave to strengthen their bodies?

The monk ki point thing is very important. Ki is less plentiful and does less than spell slots honestly I’ve considered making a blade singer wizard to recreate the avatar fantasy.

I feel like the Battle Master moves should be something all full martials gets, instead of only 1 subclass of 1 martial gets Of course this list is not complete enough to compete with spells yet but with some additions and modifications, you can end up giving martials a number of options every level that can be extremely strong and useful both in and out of combat like spells with the only difference that they run of Strength, Dexterity, and maybe Constitution, instead of Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma Btw Charisma and Wisdom casters are so much more unfair than Intelligence casters cuz Wisdom gives you access to Perception, aka the single best skill you can ever have, and Charisma gives you a genuinely good shot at smooth talking your way out of every situation with exception of brainless monsters and beasts

I would say to give them techniques. Like fighter could have variant attacks to chose from Rogue could have actual assassin type techniques and not just extra damage whenever he has advantage (like why rogue can not one shot some one who is sleeping ...) And monks could have litteral supernatural abilities as they were/are sometimes believed to posses them even in our world. And here some examples: fighter: -cleave - attack every target next to you and 5 feat from chosen target (10 feat on reach weapon) - charge - extra damage and pushing/slamming person to the ground - shield bash - disadvantage on next attack -riposte - reaction to roll your attack roll against enemy attack roll and who wins deals damage (maybe add disadvantage on next roll for loser) - sweeping strike fall up to 3 targets close to you to the ground (only with staff/spear type weapons) - falling strike - much more damage but you have to fall at least 10 feat and enemy falls prone/maybe even stunned if he fail con save ------------ rogue: - silent kill - if not noticed deals massive damage to unaware enemy (it would be blocked if enemy had that one feat to not get surpriesed) - dirty attack - blinds/confuse enemy for 1 turn - faint - bonus action to gain advantage on next attack/ or simply +2 to hit so it could work with advantage - decapitate -if enemy has less then 10(or some level/proficiency depending cap) you insta kill your enemy -armor pierce - bonus action, your next attack doesn t take enemy armor into account (natural armor is resistant to this) ------ monk: -they could also have armor pierce but it would pass trough armor but it would have to be done with fists - light step- you can travel short distance on water, move trough enemies and allies and not be impaired by difficult terrain - uses action or bonus action -true grappling- if you succeed in grappling enemy twice you stun them not restrain them -choke - when grappling enemy rolls con save on 3 fails he fail unconscious (they have to be in a row) etc. etc.

What is the show at 02:32?? Looks like something I need to watch.

Two things I'd add is that damage based Cantrips now exist for every full caster; some of which deal as much or more damage than any given weapon. Running out of spells as a caster doesn't mean bonking something with your staff now; it means using firebolt. And this adds into my second point; in older editions, way back to c/x casting spells always remained a risk; as a caster had to declare that they were going to cast a spell at the top of the round before initiative was determined for that round; and if they got interrupted for any reason; they would lose that spell slot. A caster could spend resources without any benefit. And our modern editions (excluding 4e) have been built on a system that had that risk built in; without bringing the risk. And while it's fully understandable why they changed stuff; they didn't bring casters reward down along with their risk. So now casters have at will spells that let them compete with Martials damage output; and will only ever waste spell slots by playing badly.

In some sort of way, 3.5 edition has responded to this same issue by just adding more alternatives to everyclass. Also, one thing 3.5 also did well with powerscaling is this : By level 5 every caster class overpowered any martial class, plain and simple. But at level 12 a lot of spells could be tossed away by another spell or effect. Invisibility became useless in battle because it became expected that every foe would have something like a See invisibility or True Seeing effect on it at this point, but not everyone had enough spot to beat the +30 hide of the rogue, therefore keeping the class relevant for sneak attacks and hiding. Similar thing for saves where you could make the equivalence of a Strenght/Constitution check instead of a Intelligence/Wisdom or Charisma check with the right feats, keeping the fighter safe against most of mind spells. Casters classes could cast 1 or 2 spells per turn, but every martial classes could get up to four attacks per turn (instead of just the Fighter class in 5e) without any help from magic items or feats or special powers. Speaking of spells, one big error of 5e in my opinion has been to separate the base 3 saves (Reflex, Vigor and Will) from 3.5 to 6 saves (one for each stats) and then design most of the one shot spells to need mind ability saving throw to resist, therefore leading to even more lack of balances between classes. It sure wasn't balance enough and casters still were overpower to the extreme, but I think 5e could get some inspirations from previous editions to keep track of balance between classes.

Do as One Piece does: on the one hand, you have people that can magically raise the dead, heal, create barriers, or just spam fireballs. On the other hand, you have people who through physical training and sheer force of will resist magic, fire off a ranged slash from a sword, physically punch elementals, "teleports behind you" with blinding speed, and generally hit things really *really* hard.

Imo: Battle Master should be the foundation for Martials. I feel like PathFinder with the Path of War and Elephant in the Room resources does a good job of closing the game a bit more by providing martials with a lot of features and options, but that also requires 3 third-party resources. They provide more options for martials as they level up through what is essentially martial arts that work similarly to magic and reduce requirements for feats (which you get quicker in the system) respectively. Which, y'know, helps a lot in a system where eventually wizards can literally cast Wish.

I have been toying around with a “Martial Stances” mechanic. It functions similar to a spellcaster’s cantrips, in that it scales at certain levels and it would allow martial characters to enter a stance when they roll initiative that gives them a variety of bonuses depending on the stance they chose. Like there is a precision stance that adds to the attack roll, a swift stance that grants an additional bonus action at high levels, and a power stance that allows you to cleave through one enemy and deal half damage to a creature within 5 feet of the target.

Much love for the PF2e point. Even within the 2e community people are constantly talking about how bad casters feel, but I think it's just because they're coming from 5e where casters can do...well, everything, as explained in this video. I have tried and tried to create characters in 5e based solely around martial classes, and always come up short of some gish warlock or artificer. Makes me sad because I don't think slapping spellcasting on everything is the right choice, but often it feels like it's needed to be at all effective.

What stats are you assuming for each of the classes when you compare the wizard to the fighter?

Ah yes. The Swords bard with their 4 ranged attacks by level 9 (simply magical secrets into swift quiver), with extra damage plus versatility just like a battle master fighter. Oh, and then they're a full spellcaster with stuff like irresistible dance, silvery barbs, hypnotic pattern, forcecage, teleport, foresight, etcetera.

Those first two seconds were absolutely brutal to these classes. I don't know if you're the editor if it's someone else, but whomever is is absolutely brutal

Having gone through quite a few builds from Tabletopbuilds it becomes apparent how important multiclassing is. Their echo knight build is Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 15 for example but at lvl 5 you're Warlock 2/Fighter 3 I mainly play Clerics however I love playing battle masters and recently I DM'ed a game with an Eldritch Knight It was nice to see how just a few extra spells made that class completely different. Personally, I don't think I would ever play a fighter without taking levels in Sorcerer or Wizard or Cleric to round out the class.

There was Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords for D&D 3.5 and it gave martial classes with anime style powers. Regular martial classes when multiclassed with these new classes counted half to total caster level equivalent, so even 1 lvl dip enabled fighters to use these features.

Honestly, to me the best way to buff martials is to implement a Ki point system to every class (just dont make the options trash like monk) Make it so the martial can buff themselves during combat. Let them spend points to give themselves an adrenaline boost and haste themselves, damage boost, speed boost, anything. Introduce more magic items that disable enemy spells. I came up with a magic item called "The Followers Gauntlets" where a martial can use a reaction to forcibly keep a telportation portal open by strength check against the enemies spell save DC. Stuff like that. Make it so that mundane items can be carried and do the same things as magic spells. Grenades that act like lower powered Fireballs with a fixed DC.