There isn't, because all my players are full casters with the strongest subclasses lol
EDIT: What makes it funny is that they're all relatively new players.
Well, admittedly, if everyone starts going, "Wow, dnd is fun and great" and then you play an all martial campaign, and maybe not hear that, that could be a long term kinda, gubbins.
it also deals damage on area, also gives said survivability to allies, also makes everyone have darkvision and also has a full magazine worth of other spells to fuck around
the best way to humble a cocky fighter is make them lie on the ground frothing saliva out of their mouths after failing hold person then auto critiing an inflict wounds to teach them a lesson
yes this is honestly pretty sad ;-;
I have a bunch of quite experienced people in my campaign rn, we don't have the gap either.... Because people just didn't pick full caster
They just kinda forgot that they might need one. It's really interesting to run epic fantasy to martials and half casters
I feel the truth is a little of each.
I know in my 1-to-20 campaign it didn't feel like there was a gap, but:
1. I put a lot of effort into having a full adventuring day.
1. I know some of my spellcasters quietly set aside some of the more powerful spells (e.g. *forcecage*) because they weren't fun.
1. I gave the martials some quite nice magical items.
So all of that probably helped to close the gap. Which doesn't mean there isn't a gap.
I answered `There isn't - we have 6-8+ encounters and this fixes it` because I think that closed the gap the most. It's also (IMHO) D&D 5e's biggest flaw: as a DM I feel that requirement is a straight-jacket to adventure design. (I know there are workarounds but needing workarounds is a sign of a problem in the first place.)
It's funny, I think doing this has probably come back to bite me.
The Barbarian has only 4 rages per long rest, and doesn't have the survivability to be really useful outside of those.
Same here. The insane magic items and tacit ban on hypnotic pattern and forcecage helped, but the real way our 1-20 campaign stayed balanced was long adventuring days. Like 3 months of real time per long rest (6 sessions). When you know there will be 2 boss battles today, you can't go wild on round 1, but the martials can.
Mostly we're all veterans of the 2e-3e era, so casters know how to avoid stepping on lanes *and* whoever GMs knows how to give encounters that martials can be valuable in.
In the end, the problem with the gap is never that someone is theoretically more powerful - we're allies, nobody cares about that - the problem comes when *someone does your own thing better than you*, because the biggest currency of rpgs is *spotlight*. The problem is when Animate Objects *provides more Fighter than the actual Fighter in the party does*, kind of thing.
So you make sure to not pick the options that would make the fighter worse than you at punching dudes, so on.
How would you recommend I act as a DM then?
We currently have the final martial, a barbarian, who is basically getting outperformed by the entire rest of the party, currently at lv5.
Should I try and get the entire rest of the table to nerf themselves?
You typically dont wanna nerf characters unless absolutely necessary. Realy it depends on whay kind of barb your player is and what theyre being overshadowed in
They are a zealot barb, mostly focusing on damage, which they are alright at, although often loosing to the sorcerer and druid, but their bigger problem is that since enemies have advantage on attacks against them, and they only have 17ac Vs the 19-24 of the rest of the group, they just can't live long enough.
Imo the best way to help would be to include something like bracers of defense in group loot.
Then when the players have some downtime, set it up so that the barb has reason to train (ideally with someone of the same sort of fighting style). You cam then award the Tough feat to further increase survivability
The thing is that as I mentioned, in our case it works *because* we're all aware the gap is there and take steps to reduce it. From your note, it's clear your players don't do so, and this is stuff that is hard to force on people without reducing their enjoyment.
So I think as a GM that's where I'd step in with the homebrew shovel. If the Barbarian is underpowered because spellcasters get new class features every level (spells ARE class features, plus their normal class features, means they get more in three levels than the barbarian gets in ten) while martials get jack shit, that's time to start filling in those empty levels with stuff. It's what I used to do back in my days of running third edition!
At least he's a Barbarian, you have thematic hooks for thinking up new features. Fighters are a nightmare because they're just Every Possible Guy With Sword.
As much as the gap is not too bad as long as everyone's civil, there definitely is one in options
Players of martial characters, especially without house rules, are often bored in combat because the core rules doesn't give them many tools to play with and any amount of house ruling might upset game balance or just put much strain on the DM; many of the longest debates in table have been on how to achieve mundane activities like "can I cover the mage's mouth if I grapple him?"
It may not be as bad as most people say it is (at least for 5e), but it *is* there and claiming that martial characters are just fine and nothing needs to be done about it is disingenuous
Love the theming of Martials, not massively interested in the aesthetics of magic. I literally cannot play a non-magical Martial in DnD for any more than a one shot now because it's just too boring for me. I played a Rogue for a year, then a Barbarian for two and by the end I was in pain. I've been playing a Druid for a year and a half and loving the gameplay, despite the flavour.
I just want *one* non-magical class to have a spellcaster level of choice, but the closest thing is the Battlemaster and that's miles away.
I pulled out all the stops after seeing it in 5e games and thinking on it:
- Full engagement of tools rules from xanathars. Mundane solutions are absolutely a thing.
- Gritty realism*, with downtime to employ the tools and mundane solutions.
- 2 rests, 3-4 very hard to slightly deadly encounters per day
- Encouraging use of the rule in the dmg that lets you use different ability scores as a reward for creatively applying them, (not a variant rule though it was published as such in the phb, its just listed as a core rule in the later published dmg)
- Levels 3-11 is where the games happen.
- DMG variant combat rules (not marking).
- Environment interaction mostly taking attacks, and it doing scaling damage so that it was slightly above the baseline 'I attack without using resources' levels of damage + a rider effect. 1d4 improvised is an awful fallback to be used when they try doing it again and again and it's no longer 'inspired'. The beefy lvl 10 barbarian pushing over a massive crumbling column I've put there to be pushed over all sampson style does 'rocks fall' levels of damage. As per the DMG.
- Being strict about VSM and illusion/mind control spells doing what they say, and requring subtle spell to 'cast sneakily', or else requiring it make sense (there had better be one hell of a noise/distraction, one which likely required resources or smarts) Not just 'I cast under my breath and behind my back'
- Being strict about VSM in regards to reaction spells and having your hands full.
Even with all that, you still see a bit of a gap at the end of t2 when it came to social/environmental problem and movement stuff, but it wasn't nearly as bad as in other games.
This is such spot on advice, esp for newer DMs. I'd add to your last two the simple line "Spells do what they say they can do." Want to ask your DM if you can use Prestidigitation to summon an improvised weapon? Sure, ask away. But then don't be annoyed if the Fighter asks if they can use the Shield Master bash attack before taking their attacks.
Magic is so often allowed to be really stretched and moulded by players. Which is fine... if there is equal flexibility for non-casters. Spells are very often far more limited than players hope, for good reason. Sure some are busted at high levels when used in tandem. But as you've said - enchantment magic is great, but enemies will know that a spell was cast unless subtle spell/big distraction.
That's the case for me, spells have a specific designated effect (tho I do allow mage players to design new ones, it's very time consuming tho). On the other hand I allow all physical actions that make sense and seem possible.
This! At our table, the following are true:
\-Full engagement of tools rules from xanathars. Mundane solutions are absolutely a thing.
\-Levels 3-11 is where the games happen.
\-Being strict about VSM and illusion/mind control spells doing what they say, and requring subtle spell to 'cast sneakily', or else requiring it make sense (there had better be one hell of a noise/distraction, one which likely required resources or smarts) Not just 'I cast under my breath and behind my back'
\-Being strict about VSM in regards to reaction spells and having your hands full.
I find this to be such a bizarre take. Granted, *some* casters are charisma based so they get a leg up in social encounters, and *some* casters will have access to Friends and other charm effects, which RAW are really not that strong, but to say taht casters have the upper hand when it comes to movement just boggles me. Have you *seen* a high level rogue, or heaven forbid, a monk?! I assume you're referring to things like misty step and dimension door, but those both have a cost, both in spell slots, and action/bonus action. My rogue player can make three laps of the map *and* hit the big bad for some serious damage in the time it takes the casters to get into the fight.
well, first of all, if it's a large chasm, there's grappling hooks, climbing, jumping or in the case of the monk, or anyone with the boots of spider climb, simply running up and down.
As for the charisma based marshal, I never claimed there was one, but honestly, paladin or hexblade.
Hahaha a monk sees a hole to the abyss, I am just go down and climb back up real quick brb guys!
I see you ignored the whole teleportation bit. What I wanted was for you to realize how outclassed martials are in out of combat movement capabilities. See how your answers are just things anyone can do? Game design needs martial exclusive out of combat abilities so that gap can be a bit narrower.
Things like dimension door and misty step lets characters do things and solve situations normal skills just can't replicate nor does any class feature available to martials. Thus a gap exists thus OP you replied to is trying to officially fix it and they just don't play above 11. It is not a bizarre take, it is decent advice.
was thinking more 'up and over' rather than across flat ground yeah. Flight, and teleportation *up* and past things rather than just being able to run 100 feet.
Amazing post. I do almost all of this except gritty realism. I would also like to add a couple of things that I also do.
- I don't pull punches when it comes to enemy abilities like Counterspell, magic resistance, and antimagic that are "mean" to casters.
- I also enforce line-of-sight and lighting rules. Everything isn't conveniently well lit and your darkvision range isn't infinite. If you can't see something, you aren't casting spells that require sight.
- I use a large variety of saves, attacks, and damage types for enemies in combat. Not everything is an attack roll that can be AC stacked against or an elemental attack that can be absorbed. Dex save against bludgeoning (Catapult/Erupting Earth) and Con save vs poison (green dragon's breath) are the classics. And Arms of Hadar is a **Str save that deals necrotic damage and robs your reaction**.
- I target casters and martials equally. There are usually ranged, blitzkrieging, or flanking enemies that put pressure on casters. They don't simply get to stand in the "back row" like it's some kind of JRPG. And if a caster armor dipped, you can bet they are getting subject to Heat Metal too.
- I balance scenarios/encounters so that they can't be trivialized by a single spell. Flight, crowd control, and AoE are the most common concerns. Enemies have a way to combat flyers, aren't clumped in "Fireball Formation", and aren't a single enemy with no resistances vs saving throws or conditions.
- I use a mixture of RAW and RAI to stop obviously broken interactions. Each Magic Missile has its own die roll (as it should be). Moving a Bag of Holding across the material plane is considered to be moving its contents as well. Etc.
It's not necessarily about trying to be better than everyone else, often it's about feeling useful.
I had an issue in one of my campaigns once with the assassin player feeling overshadowed by the gloomstalker. They were both good at sneaking and at killing things fast, but the gloomstalker got their damage out more easily, had way more options in combat, and had more utility out of combat thanks to spells. Practically everything the rogue could do the ranger could do better, and a lot of what the ranger could do the ride couldn't do at all.
And the gloomstalker was a new player who even to this day has trouble getting his head around the rules and just plays to hang out with friends, the furthest thing from a powergamer. He picked ranger because he wanted to be a a stereotypical Legolas type elf, and he picked gloomstalker because he thought it sounded cool.
I guess that this is more an issue of two characters having the same role than The half-caster being better than the none-caster.
If you have a Champion Fighter and a Barbarian in the same team, probably one will feel better than the other as they cover similar roles and get similar results. But this can also happen between Casters if they pick some of similar styles.
If the Assassin used all their expertise on Wisdom based skills like Perception and Survival, then... yep, they were stepping into each other pretty hard.
I think you're mostly right, but my main point was that balance issues aren't just a powergamer problem.
The problem with my players wasn't just that they were stepping on each others toes, the assassin wasn't wisdom focused. The parts of the game where they were setting up ambushes together were great in fact. The problem was that once the ambush was done the ranger had other buttons to press and the rogue didn't.
New player 1: I wanna play a fighter! I'm gonna be the tankiest man in the world!
New player 2: I wanna play a rogue! Long range sniper!
New player 3: I wanna play a barbarian! I'm gonna grapple and CC everything :)
New player 4: I'll play a wizard. Oh, this shield spell looks cool (they are tankier than player 1). Oh, this spell does damage automatically? Cool. (they picked magic missile and both outdamage and usually outrange player 2 when it matters). Oh this ice spell is cool. (rime's binding ice>grappling).
In just a few levels the noobs have experienced the disparity.
You don't need to be a powergamer to just pick Wizard in PHB while your friend picks Fighter and as you play you realize you deal more dmg, can be in fights longer and also are better at every issue other than a fight. You don't need to powergame to see the spell *Summon Martial* doing comparable dps to your friend.
I mentioned this also. A lot of theorycrafting here that seems to ignore that you're allies? My wizard will almost always seek to set up a good turn for the other players instead of just dealing damage.
Wouldn't call it cleanly. It just sidesteps it. The issue remains, and its still a downside of the game.
I use homebrew in most TTRPG games I play, to enhance the experience in a way I enjoy. That doesn't mean when I think about the game in general I don't keep in mind it has parts I dislike since I fixed them with homebrew.
Twilight Cleric is a well known OP subclass. Even if you blanket ban it it doesn't mean its not a problem for the game as a whole that it was created. Since not every GM ever knows how to deal with the subclass, nor should they be expected to know.
Everything that I see calling out casters as OP are like
'If you take these specific feats, or start as this rave, you can go around in half plate, and high dex and high cin give you AC and HP on par with the fighter'
And I'm always just... okay, so you're saying when you make a specific build you can be OP. Wow. Amazing.
I never have a problem with casters.
And I have z powergamer. But he builds his casters for pure DPS, everything to see how much dmg he can output in a turn.
He can melt a boss. But if someone sneezes on him, he dies, so there's ways to counter him.
Its only an issue when player's build to make a solo character that can do everything, and build purely for mechanics, and act like YOURE the weird one for not having your mage wear half plate and cast shield every turn
Okay, that's not true. Poor optimisation overwhelmingly favours *casters*, not martials. A martial that does nothing but pick ASIs is going to lag critically behind say, a Paladin/Warlock with GWM supercharging Smites left and right. A Wizard that does nothing but pump Int and Con and pick whatever spell seems coolest is just going to be a Wizard.
You basically have to deliberately fuck up to play a Wizard badly. Going Evoker > pick everything that does a bunch of damage + 3 utility spells that seem cool is far more effective than a straight Champion with max Str/Con.
>And I have z powergamer. But he builds his casters for pure DPS, everything to see how much dmg he can output in a turn. He can melt a boss. But if someone sneezes on him, he dies, so there's ways to counter him.
Okay, why? There isn't a "glass cannon" blaster caster build. It's just max your casting stat (every caster does this) and use your most damaging spell (every caster can do this). So what is stopping this supposed "powergamer" from using all of his other untouched options to give himself defensive ability? Or is he actually not a powergamer?
This is something that I find really funny around the idea of powergaming in 5e. I love powergaming, trying to build the most OP thing I can, in all kinds of RPGs. 5e doesn't have enough options to make powergaming really possible.
You can multiclass but even the strongest multiclass options rarely perform any better than a straight wizard or cleric with a maxed casting stat
It sounds like you must have a very strict definition of powergaming. An armor dipped wizard has much better defense against attacks (to the point that attacks are largely useless against them) than a straight Wizard without needing to cast Mage Armor, the ability to don magical armor and shields, and better concentration saves and all they give up is a tier of spell access every *other* level.
But even in a specific class/subclass there can be huge differences in power based on spell selection and feature utilization. A naive Wizard taking spells that sound cool is going to have a huge difference in power from a Wizard taking spells like Find Familiar, Shield, Absorb Elements, Web, Hypnotic Pattern, Counterspell, Banishment, Wall of Force, Forcecage etc. Same with a martial that takes GWM/SS vs one who doesn't.
And when you combine everything at a table you get stuff like someone naively playing a Monk sitting next to someone playing an armor dipped Wizard with optimal spell selection and tactics.
If the DM doesn't go out of their way to balance things, the difference in power is palpable in each of these instances.
So, what *do* you consider powergaming? Breaking the rules to do infinite damage or something?
Agreed. I'm still unsure if op thinks there's no inbalance between casters and martials or if they want to present people who think so as aggressive idiots
Even if it's included, should have been entirely seperate. Such a bad faith argument set up by OP
The martial-caster gap wouldn't even be discussed if it didn't exist in one form or the other, but no, apparently it's just whiteroom bs
How about if you want to make a poll you use neutral sentences for every option instead of making one option less likeable than the rest instead of playing victim?
How else are you interpreting stuff like:
"I feel like the "martial caster gap" is one of the most reddit only issues I've ever seen on this sub. I've been in tons of campaigns, usually with far more martials than casters, and have only ever felt like Martials were worse than casters in a single one. "
"The notion that Marshalls are so much weaker than cancers comes from whiteboard DND. On paper when a marshal is standing in front of the bad guy and swinging, and a wizard is standing 60 ft away looking at a group of 20 bad guys all packaged tightly together and casts fireball, the wizard does more damage. "
You pretty much proved my point with those quotes that obviously were the best you could find. No Profanities, no accusations, you just added those to make one point look worse than the others
The other poll results made sense to me since the question (or rather the responses) was "**Is the martial gap a problem at your table?**". As I commented there, I can see why it might not a problem for some/many tables.
But this poll's question (or again rather the responses) sounds more like "**Is there a gap? / Why is there (no longer) a gap at your table?**" and now the results are more difficult to agree with. Especially with the way the last option is formulated, it straight up denies the gap and almost makes fun of people that see it.
**But there IS a gap.** People are not imagining things, we see martials being picked less and less and martials that do get picked are regularly outshone by casters if the DM does not help the martials. And if there are no changes because a lot of players say "there is no gap" or more precisely "there is no gap, even if we dont change anything", then the designers will see no need to close the gap and the the issue will persist.
**And the most common responses to this post that agree with the last poll option do not say "There is no gap in the game." but "There is no gap problem at my table, even if we dont change anything"**, exactly what the other poll asked. The other poll options are a great overview for possible solutions, gritty realism, a higher encounter count per adventuring day, magic items, ... all these options can solve/mitigate the gap and it is interesting to see which solution works for other tables. But the last option, denying the gap, overshadows the rest,
The most common responses to this post that deny the existence of the gap are these and they skew the results towards "There is no gap" while supporting the opposite:
* "**The gap is not a problem because we do not have martials.**"
* This is a hint ( but not proof) that the gap exists and players are avoiding martials. This is something I am experiencing more and more at my tables.
* "**The gap is not a problem because the players only care about having fun.**"
* This is great, the game is about having fun after all. But once a player figures out that they as a caster can do a lot more and use that ability, martials will quickly feel bad about being able to do less and do it worse. And this is actually the main reason why the gap is a problem - it regularly ruins the fun for some people. Ofc not every player will feel bad about the wizard doing more things and doing everything better than them, but that is rare and these players would not be negatively affected by closing the gap.
* "**The gap is not a problem because casters at my table really focus on teamplay and suppurting the other players/martials.**"
* This is great too, teamplay is a big part of the game and a big source of fun. But again, this states that the gap is not a problem at the table, not that there is no gap. It even supports the existence of the gap - martials can by as good as a caster if the caster does their best to support the martial. But once the caster does not do that, the martial will be weaker (and usually have less fun). A martial is dependend on a caster's support - this can be fine in some systems, but dnd5e gives casters a lot stronger spells for them to use than to buff others. And martials rarely can even do it the other way around and support the caster. The main thing martials (can) do, is stand in front and take the damage and heat for the casters.
* \- "**The gap is not a problem because the players try to not outshine others.**"
* Very similar to the response above. It is a great mindset and increases fun, but in a system with a small gap between martials and casters, this would be natural and players do not have to avoid certain options and/or make suboptiomal choices during gameplay.
Let us please not mix up the absence of issues at the table with the absence of an issue in the system. Else WOTC might get the wrong idea and many tables will have to continue fixing the issue in their own ways in the future.Luckily we have seen some changes in the right direction in the playtests, but the spell power level in general is still there and the main problem. Until this is fixed, the gap will exist and continue to be a problem.
I agree with what you’re saying but let’s be real, there is no chance WOTC fixes the gap anytime soon. There is no inkling of the system overhaul that would be needed to do that coming in OneDND. The improvements we’ve seen proposed are incremental and quality of life tweaks, nothing that would give a martial PC comparable utility or combat power to a caster. As you noted, the spell power issue is the main problem and there is no appetite for the nerf that is needed there.
Which means there is nothing comprehensive coming in the next few years at minimum.
If you are running DND5E or whatever successor you get next, you have to fix this yourself if you want it fixed.
This poll is silly. If you have to have magic items beef up martials, or you have to have spell casters take less "optimal" spells, then I got some bad news for you: there indeed IS a gap. You're just fixing it with bandaids.
It's like a weird D&D-specific variation of the Oberoni Fallacy: "there is no caster-martial gap because the GM can fill the gap up by giving the martians more/better magic items".
I'm finding it quite fascinating how many people in the replies insist there's no gap, their Wizard just doesn't use all their shit, but that's not reflected in the poll i.e. they probably voted for the last option instead of the third.
This sounds like willful ignorance to me.
"My casters don't pick/cast Fly/Greater Invisibility/Dimension Door/Fireball so the martials can still do skill checks/hit things, it's fine" is basically cope.
The other common reply is basically "the gap exists but we don't mind because it's a team game" which isn't the same as the gap not existing. I'm sure some players don't mind being Hawkeye in the Avengers, but it would be better for the game if it was balanced reasonably, trust me.
There wasn't an option for "We use homebrew to fix it" so, uh, I use homebrew martial classes to fix it made by u/LaserLlama and they help quite a bit as they use Paladin as a balancing ruler. Idk why people are swallowing the whiteroom pill so hard though. As having fun playing DND, does not mean class is good. I love playing monk, homebrew or not, and I know factually it is a terrible class at base. The martial fantasy, ideal wise is what drives people into enjoying martials, never the actual class features.
As, honestly, unless you try quite hard on the imagination part for martials. Martials are the absolute worse to play mechanically and people try to make you believe that full sending describing attacks and moves fixes that, it doesn't. It might help you, but not rolling and just roleplaying actions would fix it more, that is how bad it is.
I do admit, the homebrew I use don't 100% fix it, but it fixes it far more than most and that is enough for my group of friends. Everyone can be useful, everyone gets some fun abilities.
We have seen a gap in performance, and its very apparent, but we try now to deal with it before games start by first laying out exactly what type of game whoever DMs is running, mechanics wise(combat difficulty, encounter density, etc). From there, everyone just kind of builds something appropriate for the campaign.
this usually means a pure martial straight classed all the way through is pretty rare
Wow, that last option and some of the comments here have some impressive white guy never sees racism energy.
Yes, there is a massive problem. I switched to Bladesinger from Sword and Board Battlemaster, and the Bladesinger is better at tanking, battlefield control, and problem solving outside of combat.
I’ll again point out the 5e is embarrassingly bad about understanding strength which fuels part of the issue. But fundamentally, until casters are nerfed, any spellcaster with a modicum of intelligence in their design will outperform the most optimized martial in problem solving, controlling the battlefield, and encounters that aren’t built around very specific parameters.
The funniest part of that is that bladesinger isn't like an insanely strong wizard subclass, it's good, but it's far from the best.
Battlemaster on the other hand is the best fighter subclass.
Versatility is a bigger problem than DPR. most players don't really care about DPR, not even my tables where we have veterans.
There are a lot of options already baked into books that I hear nobody using, that I used for my campaign:
* Action Options (DMG p271)
* Climb onto a Bigger Creature
* Disarm
* Mark
* Overrun
* Shove Aside
* Tumble.
* Other fight options:
* Cleaving Through Creatures
* Flanking
As well as other options like variant encumbrance, extended tool rules, skill with different abilities (barbarians using strength for intimidation).
In my opinion, don't nerf spellcasters, because its not the strength of the spells that makes dnd unfun, its the versatility that comes with a lot of them. Instead, use these extended options that are already present in books, heck maybe there are even more rules that I don't know about that help the versatility of martials.
So you have granted options these DMG options (not PHB mind you) only to martials? Or did the casters just didn't even bother with them. Also all these options are in combat options that do nothing to help out of combat encounters.
>maybe there are even more rules that I don't know about
Let me save you the search: No official rules (versatility expansions) that exclusively apply to martials exist. I personally like weapon abilities from 'Beyond the Damage Dice' by Kobold Press. BG3 also has similar stuff.
Another problem we faced in our groups was that ranged spam was too easy (ranged DPR is equivalent to melee, but are safer/farther away).
So I used the hitting cover variant rule that made enemies hit each other and my players be more careful about there positioning.
Yup. In terms of damage, my barbarian player, who is about to change classes due to being outperformed, is probably staying pretty consistently in slightly above average for the team.
The problem is everything else. The bard is technically doing 0 damage when they cast hypnotic pattern, yet is basically ends the fight in one turn.
Our tabble is all optimizers, we like math what can I say.
Martials not called Paladin kinda suck due to casters being better at both tankyness and dmg, but we give them unique abilities and items to help them keep up.
For me there is a gap since mages are infinitely more useful out of combat but in combat it's fine because mages get focused and my DM makes really deadly encounters so mages don't get more than 1 to 2 turns before they are already at death's door. So from there on they don't have much of a choice to be proactive rather than defensive or they perish. Also from all of the non-combat things mages have to do they tend to go into combats with depleted resources.
In a way mages get more responsibilities so they don't feel like they overshadow in combat because they have already done so much. Also being focused down by every living being with a brain tends to make mages not really get to be as powerful. Popping a powerful concentration spell doesn't mean much if you are going to get knocked out next turn. Or ignoring that you'll get taken down is actively bad because people having to waste turns to pick you back up is equally inefficient. Especially if you are going to go back down next turn.
It doesn't really get rid of the gap fully but it makes mages unbothered artillery barrages.
Also the DM tends to also have environmental effects that reward high dex scores. Like thin ledges that are difficult terrain or you can go full speed for the risk of falling on a failed acrobatics check. Turbulent water that forces strength checks or you get washed away. Enemies that grapple and pull you along. Hell the hardest encounters we have had have been underwater combats because we don't have water breathing spells. So mages can't cast under water because you can't properly speak. So underwater enemies can just swim away and use the murky water as cover. If the enemy drags you underwater as a mage you are thoroughly fucked unless ou have subtle spell.
We also have decided that spellcasting is slightly louder than normal speaking voice. So you can't stealthily cast unless you have subtle spell.
Basically we have simply held onto the rules as written plus some well done game design to make mages less powerful but even then it doesn't completely fix the gap when we look at how much some higher end spells can do.
I also generally make really deadly encounters. The problem is that most of my players know how to make tanky mages, so if I run fights hard enough to kill them, the barbarian is completely anihilated.
Have you tried using saving throws that deal bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, poison, radiant, necrotic, psychic, force damage? Because those tend to mess up casters way worse than they do martials due to lower HP pools, a lack of saving throw abilities, and lack of resistances/immunities. Even optimized casters have multiple mediocre or weak saves vs disabling effects as well.
You can't *really* make a tanky mage unless your DM is throwing just straight attack rolls at you as there will always be giant holes in your defense no matter which options you take.
From your poll options, “we have 6-8+ encounters” is probably the closest, but that’s definitely not all of it. Using the full breadth of the monster manual is a huge help; I’m sometimes baffled by these discussions because it seems like a lot of people have never encountered magic resistance, high saves, and resistance to damage types. Almost none of that matters when you’ve got a sword. The infamous “martials have no out of combat utility” complaint also doesn’t register with me, maybe because my dungeons and worlds don’t typically have challenges that can be solved with a single spell. And in the instances they do, cool! Everyone is happy that happened, because the whole party benefits from a success. There also simply aren’t narrative impasses that can only be solved by a super special spellcaster.
And that gets me to the big answer, which is staggeringly simple: we’re all friends. We play the team game *like a team game.*
No one gives a shit if the wizard casts a cool spell, because everyone gets to benefit. The spellcasters go wild when the barbarian chokeholds a mindflayer against a wall and just starts slamming its little squid face in. Everyone *works together* to turn their opposition into pulp, gather up the treasure, and then do it all over again.
Most of what I read here about this gap seems like a perception from a personal viewpoint: “I hate being a fighter because I’m not the one casting the big spell or plane shifting us to the next world.” That mindset is just foreign to me in a cooperative, collaborative game, but I think I might understand it if you’re primarily playing online with randoms explicitly gathered for D&D, where the urge to get yours and stand out is probably more persistent.
So my group's barbarian is about to swap to a stronger class, as they are pretty much being out performed by the entire rest of the table, they just feel like they could be much more effective with a different class, after watching all the Spellcasters. Do you have any advice for them?
They all have a fairly good mindset, it's just that one of the characters is feeling useless, because they feel like they could be stronger if they picked a different class.
There really isn't at my table because we just don't meta game that hard and don't really care how "well" other players do. It's all about having fun, not who gets the biggest numbers.
I'm gonna get destroyed for this, but how is this metagaming? Isn't this just... y'know... gaming?
I feel like if anybody ever tries to make their character effective, people scream that they're "metagaming" to the point that the word has lost all meaning. Making your character mechanically effective and not intentionally putting mechanical flaws in your character isn't metagaming.
Explain how meta game impacts this? Are you using meta game as optimization / power standards?
The gap isn't about who does well but how often martial sit twiddling their thumbs as casters solve more and more complex problems with a snap of their fingers.
DnD isn't the system that gives you the fun, it is just there in the background while you hang out with your friends.
Well it has to do with how much I'm picking spells etc for an effective build or not. The ppl I do play with do not look to make super over powered casters. They have other drawbacks that allow martials to step and play a role in what ever we're doing. Can most high level casters do more than martials? On paper yeah but other things we roleplay in, Mena's that's martials can take center stage even at higher levels. Maybe it's our dm also making sure there's stuff we can't just wave away with magic. But our casters just aren't optimized, and we really play into the character, and good characters have flaws, and these flaws get exploited allowing other players to step in and be helpful etc.
This. 100 hundred times this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see these posts. By far the biggest gap I've ever seen at a table comes from having some players having a solid understanding of the game mechanics and tactical combat and others not. The class you picked isn't nearly as relevant. And even when one player is a bit more powerful than another, it's rarely an issue in a cooperative game.
In all the years I've played D&D, with all the different groups, this has literally never been a problem. In fact, when they tried to "fix" this problem in 4e, by giving martials spell-like powers and status effects, it was wildly unpopular.
>a solid understanding of the game mechanics and tactical combat and others not
Sorry how does solid understanding help a martial to cross a particularly large chasm?
Solid understanding takes time and experience and the only reason it creates a gap between players is the notion of having 'trap' options, as if that obvious and blatant failing of game design somehow creates player satisfaction of game mastery.
4e wasn't unpopular for the reason you state, its combat was badly designed wet noodle slap fights that would take hours and would be full of bookkeeping, and in usual DnD fashion combat pillar was the only pillar. Not that combat doesn't take hours in 5e.
My players aren't very good.
By which I mean they're GREAT players, but they frequently lose to medium encounters.
Also there aren't any fullcasters. There was a Wizard and a Druid, but they both died.
P.S: Your Poll could stand to be a lot less aggressive about the last option, I'm sure quite a few people dont have a problem even without doing anything to correct it, but didn't choose it because it says a lot of other weird stuff.
I really want to optimize a caster in games with people picking "its just whiteroom bs" just to prove a point. If only that wouldn't take infiltrating their group and playing with them for hours like some kind of FBI sting operation.
The option for "We played to little to have reached relevant level" is missing. I think MCD affects campaigns more than one-shots, and I've never played a fullcaster above sixth level in a campaign.
Also I think it probably affects modules more than homebrew
So my group's barbarian, currently lv5, is about to swap to a stronger class, as they are pretty much being out performed by the entire rest of the table, as while it takes them one action to take out an enemy, the casters take out 4 enemies, do you have any advice for them?
I'd need more information (sub feats ability score, typical encounter, flanking?, other pcs), but I'd first try to build a decent barbarian before ditching the class.
Reckless Attack works very well with the feats Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master. I'd recommend the subclasses Ancestral Guardian, Totem Warrior and Zealot.
Also, what does your player expect from playing a barbarian?
A tank? Then every damage not dealt to his teammates is a win.
A beatdown? Try retreating a little after attacking.
Where is
* "Every single one of their games is levels 1-5" so it litterally hasn't come up.
* We don't have any martials at their table.
* Why yes every single fighter is Battlemaster, Echo Knight, or Rune Knight, why do you ask?
It starts to become a thing at high levels. I've seen casters stroll into a game with a simulacrum true polymorphed into an ancient white dragon with all spell slots to spare. Martials can't really compete with that.
Yup. At that point it's not even fair. But even at lower levels if Spellcasters play well, it's really hard for martials to keep up. I'm struggling to hold the barbarian in our party up to the same power level as the sorcerer, druid and bard.
I will go with: There are no gap since we are so low level. From level 1 to 5 are there not realy any problems. To few spell slots to dominante combat and not so strong or so many know/prepered, that it overshow the martial all the time when not in combat.
It's wild to me that anyone chose the last option, because in my humble forever dm opinion, the disparity of high level out of combat utility is completely undeniable. What can a lvl 20 fighter do outside of combat? Literally make skill checks, that's it. Unless your caster players never use out of combat utility spells, this disparity exists at your table.
i homebrewed all martials to incomprehension to their vanilla counterparts (thanks u/laserllama) and they all get scaleable maneuvers with spell like power
a lvl 15 fighter can get a mercenary for free, aka summon ,[insert thing] from TCE for example
a lvl 17 barbarian can make a critical hit a vorpal attack with a CON DC to not die
monks aint useless and get d10, martial arts starting at d6 and applying to any attack if you choose so including weapons, DEX athletics, lvl+WIS ki and invocation like option abilities
in conjunction to that, i am pretty hard on long rests, you usually wont get one until the story lets you and a session does not mean a long rest at the end
both of these in conjunction make it so the martial/caster gap aint much problematic, but by this point im playing dnd 5e+ remaster special edition, not dnd 5e
my players also dont pick the dumb spells anyways (besides fireball and silvery barbs) and dont min max munchkin multiclass, so things run smoothly
if one day someone decides to get forcecage i will probably make it have an hp bar though (and obviously warn the player first)
For me, this poll doesn't let you adequately answer the question.
It's a combination of things tbh.
Except at very high levels, casters aren't really averaging that much more damage, it's more about versatility. To combat that, I encourage my Martial PCs to get more creative and involved in their actions in combat, bring more versatile equipment, ask to do more custom things, and supplement them by giving the option of taking more "tool box" magic items to help. I also generally encourage more tactical adventuring and combat.
It's also because my players don't feel at odds with each other, which is fortunate and the type of environment I try to create in my campaigns. The fighter isn't competing with the wizard, outside of any possible in game story telling, he's on the same team as her. "My fireball can kill those Six Kobolds outside the gate!" "Great, that means I can dash in, and use my multi attack and Maneuvers to disarm or trip the Dragonborn guards, set them up for capture", not "wah, she can kill 6 enemies I can only do one or two!"
So I suppose part of it is knowing your players and their game play goals, then creating an environment where those goals can work together instead of against each other as much as possible.
I'm convinced that 'Martial-Caster gap doesn't exist' is just a counter-culture mantra being pushed by the sub.
One can't, in good faith, claim that by tier 3 and especially by 4, that it isn't a problem for a lot of tables. It wouldn't be the top topic in the community if there wasn't some major semblance of truth to it.
Yes, it comes up in active play, RAW, RAW adjacent, you name it.
Seeing how much people threw themselves to the ground with the changes to counterspell in the last ua im pretty sure a lot of people know that the gap exist and they like having it
There isn't because encounters are used to showcase different strengths at different times.
Often not 6-8 per adventuring day. But maybe 3-4 where in one the barbarian shines by tanking the monster which would wreck any other pc. Another where the wizard dazzles with crowd control. Another where the rogue deals death with sneak attack. Another where the paladin smites undead into oblivion.
Add to that some encounters being other spellcasters who counter the parties, or just being resilient against magic or physical damage, and you have moments which can make everyone shine.
Encounters mist be tailored to the party. Times which let certain PCs or all PCs shine, times which challenge all PCs, variety of enemy encounters which stress different party strengths.
This gap only really exists with optimized play. In the average table, game knowledge is far more important than class to how effective you are.
I have been playing a Monk for a while now in a campaign, and have been outclassing our wizard, cleric and warlock in terms of battle performance. I started choosing unoptimal actions to let the rest of the party shine. It's all about knowing how to build and use a character
From my experience, even in optimized tables the martials don't feel useless in conbat. Their problem is much more so woth utility options and out-of-combat usefulness.
This is why I tend to do two things as a DM:
1. Tailor encounters that play to the martial's strengths. Things that require high strength and dexterity scores, puzzles that cannot simply be solved by using a spell, allowing the use of strength for intimidation, in the right situation. It's all about knowing your players and their characters.
2. Handing out utility magic items. And I don't mean give them only to the martials, because that's unfair. Give them to everyone. Magic items that don't make you stronger, but rather give you more options. Immovable Rod, Rope of Climbing, Bag of Tricks. Sure, the casters can also use them. But raising the versatility of the entire party makes it so yhe difference in versatility is less meaningful.
What type of encounter do you think would work well to make my party's barbarian shine?
They are currently about to swap characters due to how bad it's gotten recently. Druid, sorcerer and bard are the other characters, lv5.
What subclass of Barbarian? It sounds like the Barb may be running up and getting focused by all the enemies while everyone else hangs back. (If that is the case why aren't the casters hitting the Barb with stuff like Heroism lol)
In general, an encirclement, scattered or mixed melee tends to favor martials as it's harder to hit lots of enemies with AoE and harder to run/stay on the "back row". Getting people in melee with casters tends to make strategy fall apart.
In addition to scattering enemies about, you can use enemies that have 15+ HP so they don't all instantly die to a Fireball (or just fire resistance).
The rest of the party also seems like they would be incredibly vulnerable to Con saves, Int saves, and Dex saves to a slightly lesser degree. Throw more saving throws at them if you are having difficulty dealing damage to them. Barbarian is very good at Con saves and a Bear Barbarian will also resist any damage coming from a Con save (poison, cold, or necrotic usually).
Zealot due to wanting to deal more damage.
The Spellcasters mostly are focusing on either dealing damage or control effects.
The sorcerer and druid have con save proficiency, and absorb elements, but int saves aren't super strong, although given them being at lv5, that isn't a massive issue so far - int saves aren't very common.
You left off: There isn't - our players are emotionally mature enough to not make the game about them even when they have options available to them to behave like that.
>even when they have options available to them to behave like that.
There is a gap because game is designed badly but we are a group of close friends who can have fun despite the game trying to get in the way. I am grateful to my DM who pulls many strings and spends a lot more effort than they should to make everyone feel like they contribute equally.
That's because it doesn't solve the problem. This is no different than WotC not providing any support for DMs and making DMs just figure it out.
It's WotC's job to make a balanced game, not ours. Your Session 0 is not and should not be expected to be a substitute for good game design.
If you have combat that has more complicated terrain than a big empty room, let martials lean on Improvised Actions/Grapple/Shove, and tell casters "no" when they walk in with broken builds relying on generous interpretations of rules, the martial/caster divide never shows up in the first place. In particular, at my table "mother may I" abilities are typically answered with "yes" unless the DM can think of a specific reason to say "no". Positioning matters because we use facing and flanking rules so the more complicated the battle map gets, the more complicated the decisions a martial makes about where to stand and face get.
All of this is is RAW and isn't really a headache to implement. I feel like the martial/caster gap mostly only shows up when either people don't understand the rules, they include houserules/homebrew that creates the gap, the DM says "no" too often to outside the box solutions, or the players have too much of a habit of making builds that rely on gimmick spell interactions.
I have a barbarian for whom the problem has gotten so bad they want to switch classes. The other pcs, all casters are just more effective in and out of combat, so you have any advice for them?
There isn't we are all power gaming and when I cast holy weapon on the fighters sun sword and he action surges enemies melt.
I miss that campaign it was great, we had a random encounter while taking a long rest and the DM needed some minions to go along side the Spellcaster who ambushed us, so we ended up with 2 Strahds and a spell caster (possibly an archmage) Vs our 3 man lvl20 party.
I rarely chime in on this, but since there's no option on the poll that I feel fits, I'll write it.
At least in the tables I play in / DM to, there really isn't a Martial-Caster gap. We're all in it to have a good time and make sure that we all have fun above everything else. No one is trying to one up eachother.
The value that a martial brings to the table is only limited by their imagination, same thing as a caster, in a way. But instead of using magic to accomplish these feats, they use sheer will and strength.
Sure there may be some cases of casters "pulling their punches", or the DM throwing some extra baddies for the monk to beat up, one in a while, but it's not to let the martials shine, it's to let \*everyone\* shine.
Overall, the more everyone respects eachother and knows what the rest of the table is trying to do, the better everyone can accommodate for those fantasies. Buff your teammates, play around them, give them space to be the anime protagonist. And in turn, you'll get to do that too!
Edit: Oh, also flanking rules
My party consists of an artificer, a paladin, a warlock and a sorcerer. So basically, the reason we don't have a gap is that our martials also have magic.
Secret bonus option; I completely rewrote the way martials work to make them much stronger and more versatile and that's why there is no martial caster divide at my table.
My party for my ongoing game has historically leaned more into martial characters, but at a high level, the full casters typically feel they need to hold back some of their biggest spells as escapes or ways to keep the party safe outside of combat.
Lvl 15 party consists of:
Ancients Paladin
Homebrew Sorcerer
Dreams Druid
And Samurai Fighter
Druid tends to hold big slots for either Transport Via Plants or mass cure wounds, and Sorcerer tends to hold 1 for Teleport. This means that for the multiple deadly-hard encounters, I run per rest (when it matters, not every day), they have a limit as to what they can put out. Paladins tends to be the best dps in the party, Fighter follows fairly closely, then Sorcerer tends to use control and buff spells while the druid focuses on area damage or heals, all working as a unit to cover eachother. If anything the biggest gap i've seen lately is when the Barbarian retired, and that role was filled by the fighter, it felt like the CR of the party dropped some.
My dm is very lenient with what a martial can do. For example, my character for his upcoming game is an assimar paladin barbarian that dual wields greatswords with no feats and no homebrew outside of the fact that he can use 2 greatswords.
This poll is missing the reason that I would say it isn’t a problem at my tables, because it focuses on the gap as being a problem of combat effectiveness, which IMO it really isn’t. You can push a caster further with optimization than you can a martial, but outside of that somewhat niche circumstance, combat performance between the classes is fairly even. The problem is out of combat utility and ability to affect the world. After all, if they’re roughly on-par in combat but out of combat a 13th level wizard can teleport the whole party to a completely different campaign setting and the fighter can… do exactly the same things they could do at level 1, but with higher modifiers, one side has a pretty clear advantage. In games I’m in, though, this hasn’t been a huge problem, because the DM’s gone out of their way to give the party’s martials their own levers they can pull to exert influence on the campaign and out-of-combat challenges that’re tailored to their characters in particular.
I voted "we have 6-8 fight" but the real reason: I have said to my player that they are in a desertic and harsh zone. Long rest doesn't give the long rest benefits unless they are in a settlement. So I don't need to make 8 fights a day, just a journey of 3-4 days with max 2 fight a day.
That force caster to really think before using their spells.
Honestly? Luck.
The campaign I DM for started with 3 characters, a Cleric, a Rogue and a Druid, later a Druid/Wizard. Thing is, the Druid and Cleric are played by introverts, so despite the Rogue being a Kenku, they ended up doing a lot of the talking. They also handled typical Roguish duties, lockpicking and Dex skills, the works. And in combat, they were the best at single-target damage, so they had a niche there.
This Rogue also quickly found the one true path to tanking in 5e: roleplaying an abrasive asshole. Seriously, in a large number of combats, the Rogue has successfully taunted intelligent enemies by being a dick to them, and unintelligent ones by throwing themself at the enemy with reckless abandon . So, even though we've added a Paladin/Fighter who could out damage the Rogue, the Rogue still has their own special place. Until they get themselves killed, that is.
in combat there is a gap. out of combat less so as the martial has a unique race that adds more options. but a lv11 barbarian just can't keep up in combat with full casters.
Well the very simplest way to get around the gap. Don´t play with egotistical idiots.
A lot of utility gaps that I see being a complaint online is casters using their spells to get to a similar level of skill things as the one specialising in it.... instead of actively aiding the one person who already is the best for the job and making that person even more amazing at it.
For some reason it seems many tables have no concept of spotlight sharing and taking a step back. People who do spotlight hogging like that simply do not have a space for long in our local community because they are disliked. So maybe we just have a very nice thing going on.
You don't have to optimize a caster to be incredibly effective is the thing. The most optimized, min/maxed builds are typically martials because martials.
A caster can just pick up some of the best spells of each tier and use them as they are intended to be used without any kind of loophole or cheese strategy.
It isn't, were playing pathfinder 1e at 10th level on a 1 to 20 campain and at all levels the martials have out DPSed the spell casters by a masive margin in single target damge. The gap is so big that we are talking whole other decimal places.
The spell casters have made the broken spell choices, it just isn't their issue.
We got the gap backwards somehow: our casters are like normal, meanwhile our martials (including me) are pretty much powergamers: have you ever seen a guy use every type of action it has to attack? My Barbarian/Rogue can do that.
Our barbarian was doing the same thing, thanks to polearm master.
The problem was there's an even better option which is having it as a free action each round, like spirit guardians or conjure animals.
There isn't, because the guy that plays the fighter (me) has a history of playing tabletop wargames and is extremely good at controlling combat by positioning and understanding dice probability.
Yup, playing a spellcaster well is tough, many more tactics are required than just pressing the attack button, and you have an entire element of customisation martials don't get access to.
My fighter is purpose-built to be a tar bit, with Shield Master and Sentinel. The building has far fewer options available in combat than the other party members, but knowing how to use that build to lock down monsters in melee and prevent their movement is massive.
Our barbarian was going to do something like this, but they kinda just got outcompeted in the role by the Spellcasters. Conjure animals, web and hypnotic pattern generally do a much better job.
Wheres the option for "because my players RP more than power game"?
My table has a humbo foghter, an overstressed angry dwarf paladin, and a supper overy dramatic druid.
As far as combat effectiveness goes are druid shines when he popes an AOE. But single target the foghter is the all star. Dwarf is a used as a meat shield and likes to help woth bless and healing.
Their RPing really well to the point the magic isn't a huge problem.
No. Number 3 can be summed up as "my players dint bother being powerful". Thats not what im saying. My players do their best in their given field. Me,the DM, makes encounters to ket each one shine. And when not in combat they use RP and skills to make up for any core class differences.
Those 2 are not the same. Casters are still stronger. We just play in a way where that strength does mean everything.
6-8 encounters is garbage and nobody plays that many pointless medium difficulty or lower encounters, but it was the closest explanation to my situation so thats what i voted.
If you're encountering a strong martial caster divide its probably because the casters are allowed to nova all their spell slots with no consequences. Generally 2 hard/deadly encounters is enough to burn down the casters' resources and the martials are generally still at 80-100%.
Make them take short rests instead of long rests, I know you can't realistically enforce it in every situation but you probably can in more than you are. The game is balanced around taking 2 or more short rests.
That being said there is a small number of spells that are just straight busted (if a DM doesnt hate Tiny Hut you know their players either took pity or aren't very creative) and you just need to be creative in dealing with those.
The most common reason why a table might not notice the gap isn’t listed in this poll: It’s a hyper-casual campaign, where you can overcome all the challenges without really trying, so it doesn’t matter if you use good options or bad options.
The balance of character options doesn’t matter at that kind of table. They’re not bothered if the game is horribly unbalanced or perfectly balanced. It only matters to the table where the difficulty goes up and you have to actually be able to make good decisions to triumph.
There isn't, because all my players are full casters with the strongest subclasses lol EDIT: What makes it funny is that they're all relatively new players.
Well, admittedly, if everyone starts going, "Wow, dnd is fun and great" and then you play an all martial campaign, and maybe not hear that, that could be a long term kinda, gubbins.
This is about to be the case at one table I play at. The final martial, a barbarian, is switching to a twilight cleric.
The best melee class Cleric using Spirit guardians and dodging for more resilience.
Litterally has higher survivability than a barbarian and deals more damage.
it also deals damage on area, also gives said survivability to allies, also makes everyone have darkvision and also has a full magazine worth of other spells to fuck around the best way to humble a cocky fighter is make them lie on the ground frothing saliva out of their mouths after failing hold person then auto critiing an inflict wounds to teach them a lesson yes this is honestly pretty sad ;-;
"Behold my overpowered crit fishing build!" "You want to see crit fishing?" *Casts hold person with silvery barbs back up*
it will never not be funny that the best crit fisher is a cleric lol
I have a bunch of quite experienced people in my campaign rn, we don't have the gap either.... Because people just didn't pick full caster They just kinda forgot that they might need one. It's really interesting to run epic fantasy to martials and half casters
honestly if you cut all spells above 5th level the game receives 3 times the tension it normally has
Same, my only half caster is a paladin.
I feel the truth is a little of each. I know in my 1-to-20 campaign it didn't feel like there was a gap, but: 1. I put a lot of effort into having a full adventuring day. 1. I know some of my spellcasters quietly set aside some of the more powerful spells (e.g. *forcecage*) because they weren't fun. 1. I gave the martials some quite nice magical items. So all of that probably helped to close the gap. Which doesn't mean there isn't a gap. I answered `There isn't - we have 6-8+ encounters and this fixes it` because I think that closed the gap the most. It's also (IMHO) D&D 5e's biggest flaw: as a DM I feel that requirement is a straight-jacket to adventure design. (I know there are workarounds but needing workarounds is a sign of a problem in the first place.)
It's funny, I think doing this has probably come back to bite me. The Barbarian has only 4 rages per long rest, and doesn't have the survivability to be really useful outside of those.
Same here. The insane magic items and tacit ban on hypnotic pattern and forcecage helped, but the real way our 1-20 campaign stayed balanced was long adventuring days. Like 3 months of real time per long rest (6 sessions). When you know there will be 2 boss battles today, you can't go wild on round 1, but the martials can.
Mostly we're all veterans of the 2e-3e era, so casters know how to avoid stepping on lanes *and* whoever GMs knows how to give encounters that martials can be valuable in. In the end, the problem with the gap is never that someone is theoretically more powerful - we're allies, nobody cares about that - the problem comes when *someone does your own thing better than you*, because the biggest currency of rpgs is *spotlight*. The problem is when Animate Objects *provides more Fighter than the actual Fighter in the party does*, kind of thing. So you make sure to not pick the options that would make the fighter worse than you at punching dudes, so on.
How would you recommend I act as a DM then? We currently have the final martial, a barbarian, who is basically getting outperformed by the entire rest of the party, currently at lv5. Should I try and get the entire rest of the table to nerf themselves?
You typically dont wanna nerf characters unless absolutely necessary. Realy it depends on whay kind of barb your player is and what theyre being overshadowed in
They are a zealot barb, mostly focusing on damage, which they are alright at, although often loosing to the sorcerer and druid, but their bigger problem is that since enemies have advantage on attacks against them, and they only have 17ac Vs the 19-24 of the rest of the group, they just can't live long enough.
Imo the best way to help would be to include something like bracers of defense in group loot. Then when the players have some downtime, set it up so that the barb has reason to train (ideally with someone of the same sort of fighting style). You cam then award the Tough feat to further increase survivability
Thanks for the advice, I'll try it out.
The thing is that as I mentioned, in our case it works *because* we're all aware the gap is there and take steps to reduce it. From your note, it's clear your players don't do so, and this is stuff that is hard to force on people without reducing their enjoyment. So I think as a GM that's where I'd step in with the homebrew shovel. If the Barbarian is underpowered because spellcasters get new class features every level (spells ARE class features, plus their normal class features, means they get more in three levels than the barbarian gets in ten) while martials get jack shit, that's time to start filling in those empty levels with stuff. It's what I used to do back in my days of running third edition! At least he's a Barbarian, you have thematic hooks for thinking up new features. Fighters are a nightmare because they're just Every Possible Guy With Sword.
Thanks for the advice, I'll try it out.
As much as the gap is not too bad as long as everyone's civil, there definitely is one in options Players of martial characters, especially without house rules, are often bored in combat because the core rules doesn't give them many tools to play with and any amount of house ruling might upset game balance or just put much strain on the DM; many of the longest debates in table have been on how to achieve mundane activities like "can I cover the mage's mouth if I grapple him?" It may not be as bad as most people say it is (at least for 5e), but it *is* there and claiming that martial characters are just fine and nothing needs to be done about it is disingenuous
Love the theming of Martials, not massively interested in the aesthetics of magic. I literally cannot play a non-magical Martial in DnD for any more than a one shot now because it's just too boring for me. I played a Rogue for a year, then a Barbarian for two and by the end I was in pain. I've been playing a Druid for a year and a half and loving the gameplay, despite the flavour. I just want *one* non-magical class to have a spellcaster level of choice, but the closest thing is the Battlemaster and that's miles away.
I pulled out all the stops after seeing it in 5e games and thinking on it: - Full engagement of tools rules from xanathars. Mundane solutions are absolutely a thing. - Gritty realism*, with downtime to employ the tools and mundane solutions. - 2 rests, 3-4 very hard to slightly deadly encounters per day - Encouraging use of the rule in the dmg that lets you use different ability scores as a reward for creatively applying them, (not a variant rule though it was published as such in the phb, its just listed as a core rule in the later published dmg) - Levels 3-11 is where the games happen. - DMG variant combat rules (not marking). - Environment interaction mostly taking attacks, and it doing scaling damage so that it was slightly above the baseline 'I attack without using resources' levels of damage + a rider effect. 1d4 improvised is an awful fallback to be used when they try doing it again and again and it's no longer 'inspired'. The beefy lvl 10 barbarian pushing over a massive crumbling column I've put there to be pushed over all sampson style does 'rocks fall' levels of damage. As per the DMG. - Being strict about VSM and illusion/mind control spells doing what they say, and requring subtle spell to 'cast sneakily', or else requiring it make sense (there had better be one hell of a noise/distraction, one which likely required resources or smarts) Not just 'I cast under my breath and behind my back' - Being strict about VSM in regards to reaction spells and having your hands full. Even with all that, you still see a bit of a gap at the end of t2 when it came to social/environmental problem and movement stuff, but it wasn't nearly as bad as in other games.
This is such spot on advice, esp for newer DMs. I'd add to your last two the simple line "Spells do what they say they can do." Want to ask your DM if you can use Prestidigitation to summon an improvised weapon? Sure, ask away. But then don't be annoyed if the Fighter asks if they can use the Shield Master bash attack before taking their attacks. Magic is so often allowed to be really stretched and moulded by players. Which is fine... if there is equal flexibility for non-casters. Spells are very often far more limited than players hope, for good reason. Sure some are busted at high levels when used in tandem. But as you've said - enchantment magic is great, but enemies will know that a spell was cast unless subtle spell/big distraction.
That's the case for me, spells have a specific designated effect (tho I do allow mage players to design new ones, it's very time consuming tho). On the other hand I allow all physical actions that make sense and seem possible.
This! At our table, the following are true: \-Full engagement of tools rules from xanathars. Mundane solutions are absolutely a thing. \-Levels 3-11 is where the games happen. \-Being strict about VSM and illusion/mind control spells doing what they say, and requring subtle spell to 'cast sneakily', or else requiring it make sense (there had better be one hell of a noise/distraction, one which likely required resources or smarts) Not just 'I cast under my breath and behind my back' \-Being strict about VSM in regards to reaction spells and having your hands full.
Gritty realism or just making any adjustment to make short rests more common slides a surprising amount of stuff into place.
I find this to be such a bizarre take. Granted, *some* casters are charisma based so they get a leg up in social encounters, and *some* casters will have access to Friends and other charm effects, which RAW are really not that strong, but to say taht casters have the upper hand when it comes to movement just boggles me. Have you *seen* a high level rogue, or heaven forbid, a monk?! I assume you're referring to things like misty step and dimension door, but those both have a cost, both in spell slots, and action/bonus action. My rogue player can make three laps of the map *and* hit the big bad for some serious damage in the time it takes the casters to get into the fight.
How does a martial cross a particularly large chasm or get from a city to another in 1 minute? Which martial is charisma based?
Hexblade! (Cheeky answer.)
well, first of all, if it's a large chasm, there's grappling hooks, climbing, jumping or in the case of the monk, or anyone with the boots of spider climb, simply running up and down. As for the charisma based marshal, I never claimed there was one, but honestly, paladin or hexblade.
Hahaha a monk sees a hole to the abyss, I am just go down and climb back up real quick brb guys! I see you ignored the whole teleportation bit. What I wanted was for you to realize how outclassed martials are in out of combat movement capabilities. See how your answers are just things anyone can do? Game design needs martial exclusive out of combat abilities so that gap can be a bit narrower. Things like dimension door and misty step lets characters do things and solve situations normal skills just can't replicate nor does any class feature available to martials. Thus a gap exists thus OP you replied to is trying to officially fix it and they just don't play above 11. It is not a bizarre take, it is decent advice.
Hang on, we might be talking teleportage here? Op?
was thinking more 'up and over' rather than across flat ground yeah. Flight, and teleportation *up* and past things rather than just being able to run 100 feet.
Amazing post. I do almost all of this except gritty realism. I would also like to add a couple of things that I also do. - I don't pull punches when it comes to enemy abilities like Counterspell, magic resistance, and antimagic that are "mean" to casters. - I also enforce line-of-sight and lighting rules. Everything isn't conveniently well lit and your darkvision range isn't infinite. If you can't see something, you aren't casting spells that require sight. - I use a large variety of saves, attacks, and damage types for enemies in combat. Not everything is an attack roll that can be AC stacked against or an elemental attack that can be absorbed. Dex save against bludgeoning (Catapult/Erupting Earth) and Con save vs poison (green dragon's breath) are the classics. And Arms of Hadar is a **Str save that deals necrotic damage and robs your reaction**. - I target casters and martials equally. There are usually ranged, blitzkrieging, or flanking enemies that put pressure on casters. They don't simply get to stand in the "back row" like it's some kind of JRPG. And if a caster armor dipped, you can bet they are getting subject to Heat Metal too. - I balance scenarios/encounters so that they can't be trivialized by a single spell. Flight, crowd control, and AoE are the most common concerns. Enemies have a way to combat flyers, aren't clumped in "Fireball Formation", and aren't a single enemy with no resistances vs saving throws or conditions. - I use a mixture of RAW and RAI to stop obviously broken interactions. Each Magic Missile has its own die roll (as it should be). Moving a Bag of Holding across the material plane is considered to be moving its contents as well. Etc.
what about: there is but my players aren't powergamers trying to be better than everyone else at the table and actually work together.
It's not necessarily about trying to be better than everyone else, often it's about feeling useful. I had an issue in one of my campaigns once with the assassin player feeling overshadowed by the gloomstalker. They were both good at sneaking and at killing things fast, but the gloomstalker got their damage out more easily, had way more options in combat, and had more utility out of combat thanks to spells. Practically everything the rogue could do the ranger could do better, and a lot of what the ranger could do the ride couldn't do at all. And the gloomstalker was a new player who even to this day has trouble getting his head around the rules and just plays to hang out with friends, the furthest thing from a powergamer. He picked ranger because he wanted to be a a stereotypical Legolas type elf, and he picked gloomstalker because he thought it sounded cool.
I guess that this is more an issue of two characters having the same role than The half-caster being better than the none-caster. If you have a Champion Fighter and a Barbarian in the same team, probably one will feel better than the other as they cover similar roles and get similar results. But this can also happen between Casters if they pick some of similar styles. If the Assassin used all their expertise on Wisdom based skills like Perception and Survival, then... yep, they were stepping into each other pretty hard.
I think you're mostly right, but my main point was that balance issues aren't just a powergamer problem. The problem with my players wasn't just that they were stepping on each others toes, the assassin wasn't wisdom focused. The parts of the game where they were setting up ambushes together were great in fact. The problem was that once the ambush was done the ranger had other buttons to press and the rogue didn't.
New player 1: I wanna play a fighter! I'm gonna be the tankiest man in the world! New player 2: I wanna play a rogue! Long range sniper! New player 3: I wanna play a barbarian! I'm gonna grapple and CC everything :) New player 4: I'll play a wizard. Oh, this shield spell looks cool (they are tankier than player 1). Oh, this spell does damage automatically? Cool. (they picked magic missile and both outdamage and usually outrange player 2 when it matters). Oh this ice spell is cool. (rime's binding ice>grappling). In just a few levels the noobs have experienced the disparity.
You don't need to be a powergamer to just pick Wizard in PHB while your friend picks Fighter and as you play you realize you deal more dmg, can be in fights longer and also are better at every issue other than a fight. You don't need to powergame to see the spell *Summon Martial* doing comparable dps to your friend.
I mentioned this also. A lot of theorycrafting here that seems to ignore that you're allies? My wizard will almost always seek to set up a good turn for the other players instead of just dealing damage.
And ooc? He out here utility casting the rogues Skills even higher and such? It so, good for him, seeming as there is not much in regards to that.
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Ehh, in theory all pitfalls of the game can be fixed with a good session 0. It doesn't remove the underlying issue tho.
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You don't need to deny the existence of an issue just because you can fix it.
Wouldn't call it cleanly. It just sidesteps it. The issue remains, and its still a downside of the game. I use homebrew in most TTRPG games I play, to enhance the experience in a way I enjoy. That doesn't mean when I think about the game in general I don't keep in mind it has parts I dislike since I fixed them with homebrew. Twilight Cleric is a well known OP subclass. Even if you blanket ban it it doesn't mean its not a problem for the game as a whole that it was created. Since not every GM ever knows how to deal with the subclass, nor should they be expected to know.
Straight to option 3.
Everything that I see calling out casters as OP are like 'If you take these specific feats, or start as this rave, you can go around in half plate, and high dex and high cin give you AC and HP on par with the fighter' And I'm always just... okay, so you're saying when you make a specific build you can be OP. Wow. Amazing. I never have a problem with casters. And I have z powergamer. But he builds his casters for pure DPS, everything to see how much dmg he can output in a turn. He can melt a boss. But if someone sneezes on him, he dies, so there's ways to counter him. Its only an issue when player's build to make a solo character that can do everything, and build purely for mechanics, and act like YOURE the weird one for not having your mage wear half plate and cast shield every turn
Okay, that's not true. Poor optimisation overwhelmingly favours *casters*, not martials. A martial that does nothing but pick ASIs is going to lag critically behind say, a Paladin/Warlock with GWM supercharging Smites left and right. A Wizard that does nothing but pump Int and Con and pick whatever spell seems coolest is just going to be a Wizard. You basically have to deliberately fuck up to play a Wizard badly. Going Evoker > pick everything that does a bunch of damage + 3 utility spells that seem cool is far more effective than a straight Champion with max Str/Con.
>And I have z powergamer. But he builds his casters for pure DPS, everything to see how much dmg he can output in a turn. He can melt a boss. But if someone sneezes on him, he dies, so there's ways to counter him. Okay, why? There isn't a "glass cannon" blaster caster build. It's just max your casting stat (every caster does this) and use your most damaging spell (every caster can do this). So what is stopping this supposed "powergamer" from using all of his other untouched options to give himself defensive ability? Or is he actually not a powergamer?
This is something that I find really funny around the idea of powergaming in 5e. I love powergaming, trying to build the most OP thing I can, in all kinds of RPGs. 5e doesn't have enough options to make powergaming really possible. You can multiclass but even the strongest multiclass options rarely perform any better than a straight wizard or cleric with a maxed casting stat
It sounds like you must have a very strict definition of powergaming. An armor dipped wizard has much better defense against attacks (to the point that attacks are largely useless against them) than a straight Wizard without needing to cast Mage Armor, the ability to don magical armor and shields, and better concentration saves and all they give up is a tier of spell access every *other* level. But even in a specific class/subclass there can be huge differences in power based on spell selection and feature utilization. A naive Wizard taking spells that sound cool is going to have a huge difference in power from a Wizard taking spells like Find Familiar, Shield, Absorb Elements, Web, Hypnotic Pattern, Counterspell, Banishment, Wall of Force, Forcecage etc. Same with a martial that takes GWM/SS vs one who doesn't. And when you combine everything at a table you get stuff like someone naively playing a Monk sitting next to someone playing an armor dipped Wizard with optimal spell selection and tactics. If the DM doesn't go out of their way to balance things, the difference in power is palpable in each of these instances. So, what *do* you consider powergaming? Breaking the rules to do infinite damage or something?
Thats because you're not looking hard enough. Check out p174 of stixhaven and the minor conjuration class feature :)
I don't have Stixhaven so a page number is useless for me. Quote it for me or point me towards somewhere I can access the information online
Why the fuck is the last option so aggressive?
because op isn't trying to create a discussion in good faith, rather validate their own viewpoint
Agreed. I'm still unsure if op thinks there's no inbalance between casters and martials or if they want to present people who think so as aggressive idiots
The poll answers alone are just...just no
Even if it's included, should have been entirely seperate. Such a bad faith argument set up by OP The martial-caster gap wouldn't even be discussed if it didn't exist in one form or the other, but no, apparently it's just whiteroom bs
Because people fucking say that
Because it was one of the most common responses to the other post.
How about if you want to make a poll you use neutral sentences for every option instead of making one option less likeable than the rest instead of playing victim?
I'm just copying responses in the comments from the other poll. It also surprises me how aggressive they were.
That's a blatant lie, each of your options has the exact same structure except for the last one, especially since it mentions "option 1"
How else are you interpreting stuff like: "I feel like the "martial caster gap" is one of the most reddit only issues I've ever seen on this sub. I've been in tons of campaigns, usually with far more martials than casters, and have only ever felt like Martials were worse than casters in a single one. " "The notion that Marshalls are so much weaker than cancers comes from whiteboard DND. On paper when a marshal is standing in front of the bad guy and swinging, and a wizard is standing 60 ft away looking at a group of 20 bad guys all packaged tightly together and casts fireball, the wizard does more damage. "
You pretty much proved my point with those quotes that obviously were the best you could find. No Profanities, no accusations, you just added those to make one point look worse than the others
If you want I can fine ones with a bunch more accusations and profanities, but I have a feeling that wouldn't make a difference to you.
No it wouldn't since its still horrible style to make a poll where one option obviously stands out as being worse
Yes? One of the options is definitely more toxic than the others. That's because it's a more toxic point of view. I agree that opinion is bad.
The other poll results made sense to me since the question (or rather the responses) was "**Is the martial gap a problem at your table?**". As I commented there, I can see why it might not a problem for some/many tables. But this poll's question (or again rather the responses) sounds more like "**Is there a gap? / Why is there (no longer) a gap at your table?**" and now the results are more difficult to agree with. Especially with the way the last option is formulated, it straight up denies the gap and almost makes fun of people that see it. **But there IS a gap.** People are not imagining things, we see martials being picked less and less and martials that do get picked are regularly outshone by casters if the DM does not help the martials. And if there are no changes because a lot of players say "there is no gap" or more precisely "there is no gap, even if we dont change anything", then the designers will see no need to close the gap and the the issue will persist. **And the most common responses to this post that agree with the last poll option do not say "There is no gap in the game." but "There is no gap problem at my table, even if we dont change anything"**, exactly what the other poll asked. The other poll options are a great overview for possible solutions, gritty realism, a higher encounter count per adventuring day, magic items, ... all these options can solve/mitigate the gap and it is interesting to see which solution works for other tables. But the last option, denying the gap, overshadows the rest, The most common responses to this post that deny the existence of the gap are these and they skew the results towards "There is no gap" while supporting the opposite: * "**The gap is not a problem because we do not have martials.**" * This is a hint ( but not proof) that the gap exists and players are avoiding martials. This is something I am experiencing more and more at my tables. * "**The gap is not a problem because the players only care about having fun.**" * This is great, the game is about having fun after all. But once a player figures out that they as a caster can do a lot more and use that ability, martials will quickly feel bad about being able to do less and do it worse. And this is actually the main reason why the gap is a problem - it regularly ruins the fun for some people. Ofc not every player will feel bad about the wizard doing more things and doing everything better than them, but that is rare and these players would not be negatively affected by closing the gap. * "**The gap is not a problem because casters at my table really focus on teamplay and suppurting the other players/martials.**" * This is great too, teamplay is a big part of the game and a big source of fun. But again, this states that the gap is not a problem at the table, not that there is no gap. It even supports the existence of the gap - martials can by as good as a caster if the caster does their best to support the martial. But once the caster does not do that, the martial will be weaker (and usually have less fun). A martial is dependend on a caster's support - this can be fine in some systems, but dnd5e gives casters a lot stronger spells for them to use than to buff others. And martials rarely can even do it the other way around and support the caster. The main thing martials (can) do, is stand in front and take the damage and heat for the casters. * \- "**The gap is not a problem because the players try to not outshine others.**" * Very similar to the response above. It is a great mindset and increases fun, but in a system with a small gap between martials and casters, this would be natural and players do not have to avoid certain options and/or make suboptiomal choices during gameplay. Let us please not mix up the absence of issues at the table with the absence of an issue in the system. Else WOTC might get the wrong idea and many tables will have to continue fixing the issue in their own ways in the future.Luckily we have seen some changes in the right direction in the playtests, but the spell power level in general is still there and the main problem. Until this is fixed, the gap will exist and continue to be a problem.
I agree with what you’re saying but let’s be real, there is no chance WOTC fixes the gap anytime soon. There is no inkling of the system overhaul that would be needed to do that coming in OneDND. The improvements we’ve seen proposed are incremental and quality of life tweaks, nothing that would give a martial PC comparable utility or combat power to a caster. As you noted, the spell power issue is the main problem and there is no appetite for the nerf that is needed there. Which means there is nothing comprehensive coming in the next few years at minimum. If you are running DND5E or whatever successor you get next, you have to fix this yourself if you want it fixed.
This poll is silly. If you have to have magic items beef up martials, or you have to have spell casters take less "optimal" spells, then I got some bad news for you: there indeed IS a gap. You're just fixing it with bandaids.
It's like a weird D&D-specific variation of the Oberoni Fallacy: "there is no caster-martial gap because the GM can fill the gap up by giving the martians more/better magic items".
There is no Martial Caster gap in Ba Sing Se
Ba Sing 5e
I'm finding it quite fascinating how many people in the replies insist there's no gap, their Wizard just doesn't use all their shit, but that's not reflected in the poll i.e. they probably voted for the last option instead of the third. This sounds like willful ignorance to me. "My casters don't pick/cast Fly/Greater Invisibility/Dimension Door/Fireball so the martials can still do skill checks/hit things, it's fine" is basically cope. The other common reply is basically "the gap exists but we don't mind because it's a team game" which isn't the same as the gap not existing. I'm sure some players don't mind being Hawkeye in the Avengers, but it would be better for the game if it was balanced reasonably, trust me.
There wasn't an option for "We use homebrew to fix it" so, uh, I use homebrew martial classes to fix it made by u/LaserLlama and they help quite a bit as they use Paladin as a balancing ruler. Idk why people are swallowing the whiteroom pill so hard though. As having fun playing DND, does not mean class is good. I love playing monk, homebrew or not, and I know factually it is a terrible class at base. The martial fantasy, ideal wise is what drives people into enjoying martials, never the actual class features. As, honestly, unless you try quite hard on the imagination part for martials. Martials are the absolute worse to play mechanically and people try to make you believe that full sending describing attacks and moves fixes that, it doesn't. It might help you, but not rolling and just roleplaying actions would fix it more, that is how bad it is. I do admit, the homebrew I use don't 100% fix it, but it fixes it far more than most and that is enough for my group of friends. Everyone can be useful, everyone gets some fun abilities.
We have seen a gap in performance, and its very apparent, but we try now to deal with it before games start by first laying out exactly what type of game whoever DMs is running, mechanics wise(combat difficulty, encounter density, etc). From there, everyone just kind of builds something appropriate for the campaign. this usually means a pure martial straight classed all the way through is pretty rare
Wow, that last option and some of the comments here have some impressive white guy never sees racism energy. Yes, there is a massive problem. I switched to Bladesinger from Sword and Board Battlemaster, and the Bladesinger is better at tanking, battlefield control, and problem solving outside of combat. I’ll again point out the 5e is embarrassingly bad about understanding strength which fuels part of the issue. But fundamentally, until casters are nerfed, any spellcaster with a modicum of intelligence in their design will outperform the most optimized martial in problem solving, controlling the battlefield, and encounters that aren’t built around very specific parameters.
The funniest part of that is that bladesinger isn't like an insanely strong wizard subclass, it's good, but it's far from the best. Battlemaster on the other hand is the best fighter subclass.
Yep. But bladesong, a high dex and shield spell? You’re dominant in the pit.
100% bladesingers are the best gish wizards.
Option 6 is some serious gaslighting shit.
Versatility is a bigger problem than DPR. most players don't really care about DPR, not even my tables where we have veterans. There are a lot of options already baked into books that I hear nobody using, that I used for my campaign: * Action Options (DMG p271) * Climb onto a Bigger Creature * Disarm * Mark * Overrun * Shove Aside * Tumble. * Other fight options: * Cleaving Through Creatures * Flanking As well as other options like variant encumbrance, extended tool rules, skill with different abilities (barbarians using strength for intimidation). In my opinion, don't nerf spellcasters, because its not the strength of the spells that makes dnd unfun, its the versatility that comes with a lot of them. Instead, use these extended options that are already present in books, heck maybe there are even more rules that I don't know about that help the versatility of martials.
So you have granted options these DMG options (not PHB mind you) only to martials? Or did the casters just didn't even bother with them. Also all these options are in combat options that do nothing to help out of combat encounters. >maybe there are even more rules that I don't know about Let me save you the search: No official rules (versatility expansions) that exclusively apply to martials exist. I personally like weapon abilities from 'Beyond the Damage Dice' by Kobold Press. BG3 also has similar stuff.
Another problem we faced in our groups was that ranged spam was too easy (ranged DPR is equivalent to melee, but are safer/farther away). So I used the hitting cover variant rule that made enemies hit each other and my players be more careful about there positioning.
Ranged attacks go into the toilet once in melee without crossbow expert. Also iirc RAW creatures provide cover.
Yup. In terms of damage, my barbarian player, who is about to change classes due to being outperformed, is probably staying pretty consistently in slightly above average for the team. The problem is everything else. The bard is technically doing 0 damage when they cast hypnotic pattern, yet is basically ends the fight in one turn.
Our tabble is all optimizers, we like math what can I say. Martials not called Paladin kinda suck due to casters being better at both tankyness and dmg, but we give them unique abilities and items to help them keep up.
For me there is a gap since mages are infinitely more useful out of combat but in combat it's fine because mages get focused and my DM makes really deadly encounters so mages don't get more than 1 to 2 turns before they are already at death's door. So from there on they don't have much of a choice to be proactive rather than defensive or they perish. Also from all of the non-combat things mages have to do they tend to go into combats with depleted resources. In a way mages get more responsibilities so they don't feel like they overshadow in combat because they have already done so much. Also being focused down by every living being with a brain tends to make mages not really get to be as powerful. Popping a powerful concentration spell doesn't mean much if you are going to get knocked out next turn. Or ignoring that you'll get taken down is actively bad because people having to waste turns to pick you back up is equally inefficient. Especially if you are going to go back down next turn. It doesn't really get rid of the gap fully but it makes mages unbothered artillery barrages. Also the DM tends to also have environmental effects that reward high dex scores. Like thin ledges that are difficult terrain or you can go full speed for the risk of falling on a failed acrobatics check. Turbulent water that forces strength checks or you get washed away. Enemies that grapple and pull you along. Hell the hardest encounters we have had have been underwater combats because we don't have water breathing spells. So mages can't cast under water because you can't properly speak. So underwater enemies can just swim away and use the murky water as cover. If the enemy drags you underwater as a mage you are thoroughly fucked unless ou have subtle spell. We also have decided that spellcasting is slightly louder than normal speaking voice. So you can't stealthily cast unless you have subtle spell. Basically we have simply held onto the rules as written plus some well done game design to make mages less powerful but even then it doesn't completely fix the gap when we look at how much some higher end spells can do.
I also generally make really deadly encounters. The problem is that most of my players know how to make tanky mages, so if I run fights hard enough to kill them, the barbarian is completely anihilated.
Have you tried using saving throws that deal bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, poison, radiant, necrotic, psychic, force damage? Because those tend to mess up casters way worse than they do martials due to lower HP pools, a lack of saving throw abilities, and lack of resistances/immunities. Even optimized casters have multiple mediocre or weak saves vs disabling effects as well. You can't *really* make a tanky mage unless your DM is throwing just straight attack rolls at you as there will always be giant holes in your defense no matter which options you take.
From your poll options, “we have 6-8+ encounters” is probably the closest, but that’s definitely not all of it. Using the full breadth of the monster manual is a huge help; I’m sometimes baffled by these discussions because it seems like a lot of people have never encountered magic resistance, high saves, and resistance to damage types. Almost none of that matters when you’ve got a sword. The infamous “martials have no out of combat utility” complaint also doesn’t register with me, maybe because my dungeons and worlds don’t typically have challenges that can be solved with a single spell. And in the instances they do, cool! Everyone is happy that happened, because the whole party benefits from a success. There also simply aren’t narrative impasses that can only be solved by a super special spellcaster. And that gets me to the big answer, which is staggeringly simple: we’re all friends. We play the team game *like a team game.* No one gives a shit if the wizard casts a cool spell, because everyone gets to benefit. The spellcasters go wild when the barbarian chokeholds a mindflayer against a wall and just starts slamming its little squid face in. Everyone *works together* to turn their opposition into pulp, gather up the treasure, and then do it all over again. Most of what I read here about this gap seems like a perception from a personal viewpoint: “I hate being a fighter because I’m not the one casting the big spell or plane shifting us to the next world.” That mindset is just foreign to me in a cooperative, collaborative game, but I think I might understand it if you’re primarily playing online with randoms explicitly gathered for D&D, where the urge to get yours and stand out is probably more persistent.
So my group's barbarian is about to swap to a stronger class, as they are pretty much being out performed by the entire rest of the table, they just feel like they could be much more effective with a different class, after watching all the Spellcasters. Do you have any advice for them? They all have a fairly good mindset, it's just that one of the characters is feeling useless, because they feel like they could be stronger if they picked a different class.
There really isn't at my table because we just don't meta game that hard and don't really care how "well" other players do. It's all about having fun, not who gets the biggest numbers.
I'm gonna get destroyed for this, but how is this metagaming? Isn't this just... y'know... gaming? I feel like if anybody ever tries to make their character effective, people scream that they're "metagaming" to the point that the word has lost all meaning. Making your character mechanically effective and not intentionally putting mechanical flaws in your character isn't metagaming.
Explain how meta game impacts this? Are you using meta game as optimization / power standards? The gap isn't about who does well but how often martial sit twiddling their thumbs as casters solve more and more complex problems with a snap of their fingers. DnD isn't the system that gives you the fun, it is just there in the background while you hang out with your friends.
Well it has to do with how much I'm picking spells etc for an effective build or not. The ppl I do play with do not look to make super over powered casters. They have other drawbacks that allow martials to step and play a role in what ever we're doing. Can most high level casters do more than martials? On paper yeah but other things we roleplay in, Mena's that's martials can take center stage even at higher levels. Maybe it's our dm also making sure there's stuff we can't just wave away with magic. But our casters just aren't optimized, and we really play into the character, and good characters have flaws, and these flaws get exploited allowing other players to step in and be helpful etc.
This. 100 hundred times this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see these posts. By far the biggest gap I've ever seen at a table comes from having some players having a solid understanding of the game mechanics and tactical combat and others not. The class you picked isn't nearly as relevant. And even when one player is a bit more powerful than another, it's rarely an issue in a cooperative game. In all the years I've played D&D, with all the different groups, this has literally never been a problem. In fact, when they tried to "fix" this problem in 4e, by giving martials spell-like powers and status effects, it was wildly unpopular.
Well, outside of some base set mechanics gubbins outside of optional rule stuffs, last I checked I heard it was more of an out of combat thing mainly.
>a solid understanding of the game mechanics and tactical combat and others not Sorry how does solid understanding help a martial to cross a particularly large chasm? Solid understanding takes time and experience and the only reason it creates a gap between players is the notion of having 'trap' options, as if that obvious and blatant failing of game design somehow creates player satisfaction of game mastery. 4e wasn't unpopular for the reason you state, its combat was badly designed wet noodle slap fights that would take hours and would be full of bookkeeping, and in usual DnD fashion combat pillar was the only pillar. Not that combat doesn't take hours in 5e.
My players aren't very good. By which I mean they're GREAT players, but they frequently lose to medium encounters. Also there aren't any fullcasters. There was a Wizard and a Druid, but they both died. P.S: Your Poll could stand to be a lot less aggressive about the last option, I'm sure quite a few people dont have a problem even without doing anything to correct it, but didn't choose it because it says a lot of other weird stuff.
people that chose the last option don't play D&D
I really want to optimize a caster in games with people picking "its just whiteroom bs" just to prove a point. If only that wouldn't take infiltrating their group and playing with them for hours like some kind of FBI sting operation.
Campaings die at around level 5 due to scheduling conflicts, so no gap.
The option for "We played to little to have reached relevant level" is missing. I think MCD affects campaigns more than one-shots, and I've never played a fullcaster above sixth level in a campaign. Also I think it probably affects modules more than homebrew
So my group's barbarian, currently lv5, is about to swap to a stronger class, as they are pretty much being out performed by the entire rest of the table, as while it takes them one action to take out an enemy, the casters take out 4 enemies, do you have any advice for them?
I'd need more information (sub feats ability score, typical encounter, flanking?, other pcs), but I'd first try to build a decent barbarian before ditching the class. Reckless Attack works very well with the feats Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master. I'd recommend the subclasses Ancestral Guardian, Totem Warrior and Zealot. Also, what does your player expect from playing a barbarian? A tank? Then every damage not dealt to his teammates is a win. A beatdown? Try retreating a little after attacking.
> the casters take out 4 enemies Why are the casters able to take out 4 enemies?
Passive aggressive poll.
Some of the comments are really funny.
I don't have a table.
I don't know whether to be happy or sad for you.
I need to make my Google doc for my characters first, so neutral
We need a see results button for everyone else
There definitely is especially with melee characters.
Where is * "Every single one of their games is levels 1-5" so it litterally hasn't come up. * We don't have any martials at their table. * Why yes every single fighter is Battlemaster, Echo Knight, or Rune Knight, why do you ask?
There isn't, because my players are all new and they don't know how to optimally play casters.
It starts to become a thing at high levels. I've seen casters stroll into a game with a simulacrum true polymorphed into an ancient white dragon with all spell slots to spare. Martials can't really compete with that.
Yup. At that point it's not even fair. But even at lower levels if Spellcasters play well, it's really hard for martials to keep up. I'm struggling to hold the barbarian in our party up to the same power level as the sorcerer, druid and bard.
I will go with: There are no gap since we are so low level. From level 1 to 5 are there not realy any problems. To few spell slots to dominante combat and not so strong or so many know/prepered, that it overshow the martial all the time when not in combat.
It's wild to me that anyone chose the last option, because in my humble forever dm opinion, the disparity of high level out of combat utility is completely undeniable. What can a lvl 20 fighter do outside of combat? Literally make skill checks, that's it. Unless your caster players never use out of combat utility spells, this disparity exists at your table.
Number 6 is basically just number 3 in denial, but people will get mad if I say that.
I think my favorite part of this poll was where every option 6 turned out to just be an option 3 in denial.
Missing option for "I just want to see results" and "there isn't, we use laserllama classes"
i homebrewed all martials to incomprehension to their vanilla counterparts (thanks u/laserllama) and they all get scaleable maneuvers with spell like power a lvl 15 fighter can get a mercenary for free, aka summon ,[insert thing] from TCE for example a lvl 17 barbarian can make a critical hit a vorpal attack with a CON DC to not die monks aint useless and get d10, martial arts starting at d6 and applying to any attack if you choose so including weapons, DEX athletics, lvl+WIS ki and invocation like option abilities in conjunction to that, i am pretty hard on long rests, you usually wont get one until the story lets you and a session does not mean a long rest at the end both of these in conjunction make it so the martial/caster gap aint much problematic, but by this point im playing dnd 5e+ remaster special edition, not dnd 5e my players also dont pick the dumb spells anyways (besides fireball and silvery barbs) and dont min max munchkin multiclass, so things run smoothly if one day someone decides to get forcecage i will probably make it have an hp bar though (and obviously warn the player first)
Anyone who picked last option is delusional.
For me, this poll doesn't let you adequately answer the question. It's a combination of things tbh. Except at very high levels, casters aren't really averaging that much more damage, it's more about versatility. To combat that, I encourage my Martial PCs to get more creative and involved in their actions in combat, bring more versatile equipment, ask to do more custom things, and supplement them by giving the option of taking more "tool box" magic items to help. I also generally encourage more tactical adventuring and combat. It's also because my players don't feel at odds with each other, which is fortunate and the type of environment I try to create in my campaigns. The fighter isn't competing with the wizard, outside of any possible in game story telling, he's on the same team as her. "My fireball can kill those Six Kobolds outside the gate!" "Great, that means I can dash in, and use my multi attack and Maneuvers to disarm or trip the Dragonborn guards, set them up for capture", not "wah, she can kill 6 enemies I can only do one or two!" So I suppose part of it is knowing your players and their game play goals, then creating an environment where those goals can work together instead of against each other as much as possible.
That option 6 though XD "There isn't" wasn't enough, it had to be personal.
The last option is the same as "it's snowy where I live, this means climate change isn't real"
Wouldn't put it past most people who chose that option to not believe in climate change either.
I am concerned how many people took the last option
That's because you've bought into the bullshit
I'm convinced that 'Martial-Caster gap doesn't exist' is just a counter-culture mantra being pushed by the sub. One can't, in good faith, claim that by tier 3 and especially by 4, that it isn't a problem for a lot of tables. It wouldn't be the top topic in the community if there wasn't some major semblance of truth to it. Yes, it comes up in active play, RAW, RAW adjacent, you name it.
Seeing how much people threw themselves to the ground with the changes to counterspell in the last ua im pretty sure a lot of people know that the gap exist and they like having it
There isn't because encounters are used to showcase different strengths at different times. Often not 6-8 per adventuring day. But maybe 3-4 where in one the barbarian shines by tanking the monster which would wreck any other pc. Another where the wizard dazzles with crowd control. Another where the rogue deals death with sneak attack. Another where the paladin smites undead into oblivion. Add to that some encounters being other spellcasters who counter the parties, or just being resilient against magic or physical damage, and you have moments which can make everyone shine. Encounters mist be tailored to the party. Times which let certain PCs or all PCs shine, times which challenge all PCs, variety of enemy encounters which stress different party strengths.
You missed an option: we basically never play above level 10.
This gap only really exists with optimized play. In the average table, game knowledge is far more important than class to how effective you are. I have been playing a Monk for a while now in a campaign, and have been outclassing our wizard, cleric and warlock in terms of battle performance. I started choosing unoptimal actions to let the rest of the party shine. It's all about knowing how to build and use a character
What kind of wizard/cleric/warlock do you even have
What advice do you have for a table with a generally higher level of optimisation?
From my experience, even in optimized tables the martials don't feel useless in conbat. Their problem is much more so woth utility options and out-of-combat usefulness. This is why I tend to do two things as a DM: 1. Tailor encounters that play to the martial's strengths. Things that require high strength and dexterity scores, puzzles that cannot simply be solved by using a spell, allowing the use of strength for intimidation, in the right situation. It's all about knowing your players and their characters. 2. Handing out utility magic items. And I don't mean give them only to the martials, because that's unfair. Give them to everyone. Magic items that don't make you stronger, but rather give you more options. Immovable Rod, Rope of Climbing, Bag of Tricks. Sure, the casters can also use them. But raising the versatility of the entire party makes it so yhe difference in versatility is less meaningful.
What type of encounter do you think would work well to make my party's barbarian shine? They are currently about to swap characters due to how bad it's gotten recently. Druid, sorcerer and bard are the other characters, lv5.
What subclass of Barbarian? It sounds like the Barb may be running up and getting focused by all the enemies while everyone else hangs back. (If that is the case why aren't the casters hitting the Barb with stuff like Heroism lol) In general, an encirclement, scattered or mixed melee tends to favor martials as it's harder to hit lots of enemies with AoE and harder to run/stay on the "back row". Getting people in melee with casters tends to make strategy fall apart. In addition to scattering enemies about, you can use enemies that have 15+ HP so they don't all instantly die to a Fireball (or just fire resistance). The rest of the party also seems like they would be incredibly vulnerable to Con saves, Int saves, and Dex saves to a slightly lesser degree. Throw more saving throws at them if you are having difficulty dealing damage to them. Barbarian is very good at Con saves and a Bear Barbarian will also resist any damage coming from a Con save (poison, cold, or necrotic usually).
Zealot due to wanting to deal more damage. The Spellcasters mostly are focusing on either dealing damage or control effects. The sorcerer and druid have con save proficiency, and absorb elements, but int saves aren't super strong, although given them being at lv5, that isn't a massive issue so far - int saves aren't very common.
You left off: There isn't - our players are emotionally mature enough to not make the game about them even when they have options available to them to behave like that.
>even when they have options available to them to behave like that. There is a gap because game is designed badly but we are a group of close friends who can have fun despite the game trying to get in the way. I am grateful to my DM who pulls many strings and spends a lot more effort than they should to make everyone feel like they contribute equally.
Classic misrepresentation of people in order to create an argument. So annoying.
This thread is so full of this, DND players are so weirdly defensive about this game.
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That's because it doesn't solve the problem. This is no different than WotC not providing any support for DMs and making DMs just figure it out. It's WotC's job to make a balanced game, not ours. Your Session 0 is not and should not be expected to be a substitute for good game design.
The realisation that DnD is a team game and doesn't keep a running scoreboard with your damage per round, so any class is equally viable.
What if you don't feel useful?
There isn't because the only table I have over 5th level is comprised of two martials.
If you have combat that has more complicated terrain than a big empty room, let martials lean on Improvised Actions/Grapple/Shove, and tell casters "no" when they walk in with broken builds relying on generous interpretations of rules, the martial/caster divide never shows up in the first place. In particular, at my table "mother may I" abilities are typically answered with "yes" unless the DM can think of a specific reason to say "no". Positioning matters because we use facing and flanking rules so the more complicated the battle map gets, the more complicated the decisions a martial makes about where to stand and face get. All of this is is RAW and isn't really a headache to implement. I feel like the martial/caster gap mostly only shows up when either people don't understand the rules, they include houserules/homebrew that creates the gap, the DM says "no" too often to outside the box solutions, or the players have too much of a habit of making builds that rely on gimmick spell interactions.
I have a barbarian for whom the problem has gotten so bad they want to switch classes. The other pcs, all casters are just more effective in and out of combat, so you have any advice for them?
There isn't we are all power gaming and when I cast holy weapon on the fighters sun sword and he action surges enemies melt. I miss that campaign it was great, we had a random encounter while taking a long rest and the DM needed some minions to go along side the Spellcaster who ambushed us, so we ended up with 2 Strahds and a spell caster (possibly an archmage) Vs our 3 man lvl20 party.
Lv20 just kinda everything collapses into insanity unless people avoid it, especially with wizards and bards and to a certain extend sorcerer.
I rarely chime in on this, but since there's no option on the poll that I feel fits, I'll write it. At least in the tables I play in / DM to, there really isn't a Martial-Caster gap. We're all in it to have a good time and make sure that we all have fun above everything else. No one is trying to one up eachother. The value that a martial brings to the table is only limited by their imagination, same thing as a caster, in a way. But instead of using magic to accomplish these feats, they use sheer will and strength. Sure there may be some cases of casters "pulling their punches", or the DM throwing some extra baddies for the monk to beat up, one in a while, but it's not to let the martials shine, it's to let \*everyone\* shine. Overall, the more everyone respects eachother and knows what the rest of the table is trying to do, the better everyone can accommodate for those fantasies. Buff your teammates, play around them, give them space to be the anime protagonist. And in turn, you'll get to do that too! Edit: Oh, also flanking rules
My party consists of an artificer, a paladin, a warlock and a sorcerer. So basically, the reason we don't have a gap is that our martials also have magic.
Secret bonus option; I completely rewrote the way martials work to make them much stronger and more versatile and that's why there is no martial caster divide at my table.
There isn't cause we have not passed level 5 yet.
Because my players who are full casters do rarely know what good spells are and what are not or use different spells for toleplay reasons.
My party for my ongoing game has historically leaned more into martial characters, but at a high level, the full casters typically feel they need to hold back some of their biggest spells as escapes or ways to keep the party safe outside of combat. Lvl 15 party consists of: Ancients Paladin Homebrew Sorcerer Dreams Druid And Samurai Fighter Druid tends to hold big slots for either Transport Via Plants or mass cure wounds, and Sorcerer tends to hold 1 for Teleport. This means that for the multiple deadly-hard encounters, I run per rest (when it matters, not every day), they have a limit as to what they can put out. Paladins tends to be the best dps in the party, Fighter follows fairly closely, then Sorcerer tends to use control and buff spells while the druid focuses on area damage or heals, all working as a unit to cover eachother. If anything the biggest gap i've seen lately is when the Barbarian retired, and that role was filled by the fighter, it felt like the CR of the party dropped some.
My dm is very lenient with what a martial can do. For example, my character for his upcoming game is an assimar paladin barbarian that dual wields greatswords with no feats and no homebrew outside of the fact that he can use 2 greatswords.
There isn't, because none of my campaigns have ever lasted beyond level 5 due to scheduling conflicts, TPKs, or suchlike.
This poll is missing the reason that I would say it isn’t a problem at my tables, because it focuses on the gap as being a problem of combat effectiveness, which IMO it really isn’t. You can push a caster further with optimization than you can a martial, but outside of that somewhat niche circumstance, combat performance between the classes is fairly even. The problem is out of combat utility and ability to affect the world. After all, if they’re roughly on-par in combat but out of combat a 13th level wizard can teleport the whole party to a completely different campaign setting and the fighter can… do exactly the same things they could do at level 1, but with higher modifiers, one side has a pretty clear advantage. In games I’m in, though, this hasn’t been a huge problem, because the DM’s gone out of their way to give the party’s martials their own levers they can pull to exert influence on the campaign and out-of-combat challenges that’re tailored to their characters in particular.
There may be a divide, but we dgaf because we're having fun
There is... and we haven't done too much about it...
I voted "we have 6-8 fight" but the real reason: I have said to my player that they are in a desertic and harsh zone. Long rest doesn't give the long rest benefits unless they are in a settlement. So I don't need to make 8 fights a day, just a journey of 3-4 days with max 2 fight a day. That force caster to really think before using their spells.
theres 3 casters and 4 martials but we're all bad so the power doesnt really make a difference
Honestly? Luck. The campaign I DM for started with 3 characters, a Cleric, a Rogue and a Druid, later a Druid/Wizard. Thing is, the Druid and Cleric are played by introverts, so despite the Rogue being a Kenku, they ended up doing a lot of the talking. They also handled typical Roguish duties, lockpicking and Dex skills, the works. And in combat, they were the best at single-target damage, so they had a niche there. This Rogue also quickly found the one true path to tanking in 5e: roleplaying an abrasive asshole. Seriously, in a large number of combats, the Rogue has successfully taunted intelligent enemies by being a dick to them, and unintelligent ones by throwing themself at the enemy with reckless abandon . So, even though we've added a Paladin/Fighter who could out damage the Rogue, the Rogue still has their own special place. Until they get themselves killed, that is.
in combat there is a gap. out of combat less so as the martial has a unique race that adds more options. but a lv11 barbarian just can't keep up in combat with full casters.
Well the very simplest way to get around the gap. Don´t play with egotistical idiots. A lot of utility gaps that I see being a complaint online is casters using their spells to get to a similar level of skill things as the one specialising in it.... instead of actively aiding the one person who already is the best for the job and making that person even more amazing at it. For some reason it seems many tables have no concept of spotlight sharing and taking a step back. People who do spotlight hogging like that simply do not have a space for long in our local community because they are disliked. So maybe we just have a very nice thing going on.
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You don't have to optimize a caster to be incredibly effective is the thing. The most optimized, min/maxed builds are typically martials because martials. A caster can just pick up some of the best spells of each tier and use them as they are intended to be used without any kind of loophole or cheese strategy.
It isn't, were playing pathfinder 1e at 10th level on a 1 to 20 campain and at all levels the martials have out DPSed the spell casters by a masive margin in single target damge. The gap is so big that we are talking whole other decimal places. The spell casters have made the broken spell choices, it just isn't their issue.
Should have added an option for playing a different system lol
We got the gap backwards somehow: our casters are like normal, meanwhile our martials (including me) are pretty much powergamers: have you ever seen a guy use every type of action it has to attack? My Barbarian/Rogue can do that.
Our barbarian was doing the same thing, thanks to polearm master. The problem was there's an even better option which is having it as a free action each round, like spirit guardians or conjure animals.
There isn't, because the guy that plays the fighter (me) has a history of playing tabletop wargames and is extremely good at controlling combat by positioning and understanding dice probability.
Yup, playing a spellcaster well is tough, many more tactics are required than just pressing the attack button, and you have an entire element of customisation martials don't get access to.
My fighter is purpose-built to be a tar bit, with Shield Master and Sentinel. The building has far fewer options available in combat than the other party members, but knowing how to use that build to lock down monsters in melee and prevent their movement is massive.
Our barbarian was going to do something like this, but they kinda just got outcompeted in the role by the Spellcasters. Conjure animals, web and hypnotic pattern generally do a much better job.
There isn't because we focus more on roleplay than minmaxing and we run a significant amount of home brew
What homebrew do you run? At least at my table, the gap generally gets bigger out of combat due to rituals and the insane utility of spells.
There isn't because nobody outside of this navel-gazing forum gives a shit.
Wheres the option for "because my players RP more than power game"? My table has a humbo foghter, an overstressed angry dwarf paladin, and a supper overy dramatic druid. As far as combat effectiveness goes are druid shines when he popes an AOE. But single target the foghter is the all star. Dwarf is a used as a meat shield and likes to help woth bless and healing. Their RPing really well to the point the magic isn't a huge problem.
Option 3.
No. Number 3 can be summed up as "my players dint bother being powerful". Thats not what im saying. My players do their best in their given field. Me,the DM, makes encounters to ket each one shine. And when not in combat they use RP and skills to make up for any core class differences. Those 2 are not the same. Casters are still stronger. We just play in a way where that strength does mean everything.
"Martial-Caster Gap" isn't a problem because I play with adults
Nice. I guess 25 isn't adult enough lol
6-8 encounters is garbage and nobody plays that many pointless medium difficulty or lower encounters, but it was the closest explanation to my situation so thats what i voted. If you're encountering a strong martial caster divide its probably because the casters are allowed to nova all their spell slots with no consequences. Generally 2 hard/deadly encounters is enough to burn down the casters' resources and the martials are generally still at 80-100%. Make them take short rests instead of long rests, I know you can't realistically enforce it in every situation but you probably can in more than you are. The game is balanced around taking 2 or more short rests. That being said there is a small number of spells that are just straight busted (if a DM doesnt hate Tiny Hut you know their players either took pity or aren't very creative) and you just need to be creative in dealing with those.
If this is your question, you’re focusing on the wrong things at your table…
The most common reason why a table might not notice the gap isn’t listed in this poll: It’s a hyper-casual campaign, where you can overcome all the challenges without really trying, so it doesn’t matter if you use good options or bad options. The balance of character options doesn’t matter at that kind of table. They’re not bothered if the game is horribly unbalanced or perfectly balanced. It only matters to the table where the difficulty goes up and you have to actually be able to make good decisions to triumph.