My Warlock whose patron is her cat:
Correct.

To each their own, but I think removing the differing life spans makes the races more flat and indistinct.

Personally I think they’re twice as flat and indistinct when they all live to be 450 years at minimum. From Half-elves to Dwarves to fucking fish people, everything seems to live ten times as long as humans do in fantasy. I agree differing lifespans is interesting, but humans shouldn’t be dying at less than a quarter of the lifespan of everything else.

Now THIS is a real Swiss Army Man.

As someone has mentioned, “Pass” and “Fail” are not the only possible outcomes of any given roll. That’s why there are numbers on the dice besides 1 and 20.
Also, the GM doesn’t usually(and also shouldn’t, with everything else they need to keep track of) memorize every aspect of all their players’ character sheets - they don’t necessarily KNOW if the check is impossible to pass or fail.

I don’t know if 5th has that as an official rule or it’s a common house rule.

It’s mentioned somewhere in Chapter 8 of the DMG.

Magic should be powerful, yes, but non-magic users should be able to function.

I’ve always house ruled that it didn’t make sense for a character to fail at the thing they’re the best at.

House Ruled? That’s RAW. Crit Fails and successes only apply to attack rolls and death saves. And that’s how it should be.

High School Tech Theatre Teacher. Many of the teachers in the theatre department at that school had somewhat of a reputation. This one, I felt at first, might’ve been unearned. She seemed genuinely good at her job, besides the occasional slip-up. During one class period, she explained to the class that she expects us to set up our big giant table and the chairs for it(It was a rather unfinished building specifically for the theatre department with no actual classrooms, so our classroom was actually just a square nook in a hallway.) before class began so we could get through lessons faster. Reasonable request, that’s fine, we were getting rather…nothing done for awhile because of how janky it was to have a classroom setting like that. That’s not necessarily her fault.
One class, though, there were some band students moving their instruments - talking cellos, saxophones, tubas, entire drumsets, and other big and/or fragile instruments and class materials - to the auditorium nextdoor through said classroom which was…just a hallway. Y’know, using the hallway as it’s supposed to be used, rather than as a classroom. We, as people with common sense, didn’t start moving around our heavy class materials likely to cause injuries just to make the path even narrower than it already was. Once class started, teacher RAILED at us for about a minute. She was clearly SEETHING as she ranted about how when she says to do something we do it. One student tried to explain our reasoning for the delay, even saying “There were other students moving heavy stuff through here. Why would we form a big block?” Her response?

“Why would you not?” I am not fucking joking, those were her exact words. She then interrupted him before he could respond and told him he was saying he didn’t care what she had to say and he was being disobedient. When he tried again to explain himself she threatened to send him to the principal.
This was not the only thing she did that proved to me she was a power-tripping removed who saw us students as her inferiors, but it was the one thing I just can’t get out of my mind because of just how absurd it was in the moment. The only funny part was that she didn’t even realize she was taking up MORE class time than we took setting up as she raved about such a petty issue because we apparently questioned her authority.

that isn’t the teachers fault.

The…the teacher was literally encouraging his punchable behaviour though.

You put that WAY better than I did.
And yeah, At this point Casters really can just do everything martials can, better, and more. There’s just no denying that.

Most spells also used to cost something to cast other than a spell slot. When your only limitation is 8 hours of rest, magic scales wildly out of control.

This post I made just…keeps coming back, doesn’t it?

Or play a system with better design instead of trying to force the wargame to be anything other than what it was designed to be.

Okay fair, I suppose. That is part of why I mention Pathfinder in the post, though, so…Eh. Whatever.

No I absolutely agree with you on both of those points - Martials need more resourceless abilities, and casters are too strong and nerfing them is an absolutely essential step. People are too resistant to nerfs, but PF2e casters are just as competent as ever - they were made less omnipresent because the problem isn’t just in how absolutely shafted martials are(though that is definitely a big, BIG issue that WotC seems to not even be trying to hide anymore), it’s the fact that magic is too cheap for such powerful effects, while martial abilities are just as if not more expensive for less.

Honestly, the main example I turn to regarding both of those points, and WotC absolutely hating martials, is one single ability - Commander’s Strike.

When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can forgo one of your attacks[1, ah ah ah] and use a bonus action[2, ah ah ah] to direct one of your companions to strike. When you do so, choose a friendly creature who can see or hear you and expend one superiority die[3! ah ah ah]. That creature can immediately[This Count Dracula joke doesn’t apply here…] use its reaction[4! 4! Ah Ah Aaaahhh!] to make one weapon attack, adding the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll.

Have you figured out what the muppet vampire was counting? That’s right, Resources spent by this fighter ability! And the total count is FOUR. FOUR ENTIRE RESOURCES SPENT BY THE PARTY, THREE OF THE FIGHTER’S AND ONE OF THEIR ALLY’S, ON ONE ABILITY. SPELLS NEVER COST MORE THAN ONE SPELL SLOT EVEN AT 9TH! WHAT THE FUCK?? Let alone the fact that all you’re getting for it is…A single extra attack from an ally that turn. With a bonus to damage, sure, but that only applies if it hits. And to add insult to injury, it says “immediately,” so the one getting it can’t even delay it to decide the optimal target or save it for a particularly sticky situation.

The game and its players seem to just put more expectations on the non-magical people for them to be able to do anything than casters, who can just do things with no strings attached.

When power levels of the degree of modern TTRPGs are expected of characters, D&D sort of becomes a game all about your options and which you choose when. If certain characters have inherently MORE options to pick from in such a setting, that means they are essentially objectively better by default.

Also, “martial” in this case specifically refers to Fighters, Barbarians, and Rogues.

Don’t discount Monks! They’re generally regarded as the worst class in the game, as they’re essentially fighters that deal less damage in exchange for a resource that lets them use cool abilities…for a short time. Yeah, I know they’re technically? magical, but they function and present as a martial class, poorly at that.

The disparity is choice and impact. Because of their lack of choices, it can seem difficult to have an impact on the game, mechanically. A good DM can make up for this in a variety of ways, but when you’re just looking at the rules or white-rooming a character, the problem does tend to become a bit obvious…if overblown.

Also don’t discount, being able to play out-of-combat scenarios. Casters get utility like Pass Without Trace, Spider Climb, Prestidigitation, Friends, and then the fact that most of them are charisma-based for some strange reason, which is THE out-of-combat stat. I know my suggestion in particular doesn’t really address that, and is more focused on the more-abilities and/or allowing interesting choices part that you mention after that, but I do absolutely want things like 3.5e’s Moment of Perfect Mind, and whatnot.

I like your thinking. Also have you read the most recent playtest? In it second wind is the limit break resource, at later levels they can use it to ad to skill checks and gain extra movement without provoking opportunity attacks, in addition they have weapon mastery properties that are control oriented.

I haven’t! Nice to know I’m having similar ideas, I suppose, though this has a much different execution.

If you’re interested though, I was thinking about rewriting a samurai class that was effectively fighter fueled by ki with eldritch invocations. It was a little too powerful in it’s last build but faired just fine alongside the other classes I made for the game it was played in.

Hm, that is pretty neat. Though I think it would work better as a monk subclass, I do want more “pseudo-this-other-class” subclasses, especially for martials.

Aren’t spell ingredients made meaningless by the focus

Not spell components that are consumed. Also, I’ll just leave this post of mine here.

I can sort of understand - a lot of players unfortunately just kinda wanna roll dice and kill monsters. I say, though, that if that’s what you wanna do, play a martial. (Note: I fully realize the way martials are designed is still bad and they absolutely need to be able to do more than just hit things, but as of their current design my point stands.)

This is actually a very fine analogy…for utility magic. But when we’re talking about combat and healing magic and whatnot, I don’t really think it works. Even melee weapons wear down over time. Ranged weapons require ammunition. Yes, you may be using the same gun your entire career as a soldier, but you sure as hell aren’t recovering the same handful of bullets to be reused all the time. The same logic applies here - you may be using fireball to solve all your problems, but you can’t use the same wand or sulfur as ammunition FOREVER. At least, not without some serious upkeep to that wand.

I totally agree! I think it would be a net benefit for the game if we just remove cantrips entirely - magic is too cheap. I get that that would make a lot of players mad. Maybe a compromise would be reduce the damage of attack cantrips…by a LOT. And then make pretty much most non-attack cantrips level 1 spells. Yes, including prestidigitation.
Either way, all these comments mentioning how AD&D and 2e and whatnot does it makes me want to play them. I’ve already looked into playing 3.5e and 4e, but honestly I’m just slowly realizing that 5e is…kind of bad? So maybe that’s unrelated…

I vaguely recall one handbook or another even saying somewhere that a commoner’s stats usually sit around 8 or something, so even a level 1 adventurer is a cut above.

I already knew all of the stuff you mention in this, and this part is just actually wrong outright. I’ve never heard of any of the rules saying commoners would have such low traits, and have always heard it as - 10 is the average amount for a human/commoner. 7-9 is slightly below average, anything below is remarkably low, 1-2 is near death. Now, yes, even a level 1 adventurer is uncommon and more powerful on a base-line than a commoner, but IMO that shouldn’t mean magic should be cheap for them. I suppose I do say uncommon at least, though. Common would probably work too, but requiring attunement would make sense considering it’s supposed to be a sort of conduit for an individual’s magic, and magic is usually considered very personal as far as fantasy tends to portray it.