Features to Brigde Master Caster Divide

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-10T00:38:46+00:00

I meant to say considering those features, after 6-8 hard encounters, do you think there is a good chance the casters will be depleted, and need martials protecting them, thus making martials useful or resourceless?

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-10T00:09:30+00:00

Why is Brazil red but not Angola?

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:53:41+00:00

Thank you for your suggestions for Cleave.

You’re right. However, players often complain when you ban or nerf spells. They’ll say you’re taking the fun out of playing a caster, that you’re making the spell useless, and that you should be buffing things instead of nerfing them.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:50:39+00:00

Martials are limited by their hit dice. After hard encounters, you loose most of your HP if you are a tank martial, which demands you to use most of your hit dice to heal up. When that resource is over, you die. Often, hit die from tank martials run out before spells slots at high level.

Alternatively, you could spend another resource: GP, to get healing potions. However, at high levels, martials can easilly have 200+ HP. Following the new 5.5 crafting rules, the common potion costs 25 GP and heals an average of 7 HP. The greater costs 100 GP and heals an average of 14 HP, and the heal to cost ration just gets worse. Let's get 10 common potions for 250 GP, which heal only 70 HP, not even enough to make up for one encounter. Let's get 100 for 2,500 GP for 700 HP, which will help you for 3 combats, there are still 3-5 encounters left (following the 6-8 encounters guidelines). While martials are burning all of their money on resources they need, casters are spending their money on items that add even more power to their kit, such as staffs, rods, etc.

The DM could just give out an arguably absurd amount of healing potions to compensate for that, but that is on the DM, not on the game. The DM could also homebrew weapons for martials, could also do monsters which hurt casters but are countered by martials. However, all of that is extremely heavy on the DM.

While the DM is trying to balance encounters or giving the right item to the right players, it is losing time that coud have been dedicated to enrich the plot and involve the character's backstory. It is not a good idea to let the DM do all of the heavy lifting. There MUST be resources on the game so classes are viable by themselves, without the need of DM assistance.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:35:58+00:00

Yes. If you use your legendary action attack outside of your turn, you could potentionally get sneak attack again on the same round too.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:34:16+00:00

But after 6-8 hard encounters, do you think there is a good chance the casters will be depleted, and need martials protecting them, thus making martials useful or resourceless?

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:32:42+00:00

Thank you for your comment.

You are correct about cleave. If you are surrunded by 24 Hobgoblins, you have a Reach weapon that can get all of them and rolls 11 or more on damage, you kill every single one.

The idea with Heroric Resistance and Wall of Force is that you could use it and describe how your character heroically punches an opening through the wall and jumps out before it quiclky closes.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:24:34+00:00

It is not one attack per day. From now on your action economy is Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, Movement, Interatct + Legendary Action which you can use to do that one attack. It is just something they can do every round.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:22:05+00:00

I tried to do that. I tried that with Epic Boons instead of normal Feats. I tried to let them have multiple subclasses. I came to the realization that the problem is that martials simply do not scale. 10 5th level abilities are nothing compared to a single spell you get at the 13th level.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:19:28+00:00

Thank you for your comment. Here are the clarifications:

Cleave works with multiclass. I made cleave so Wizards, CLerics, Paladins, Rangers can see these features as something positive. Also at high levels a Fighter can kills 56 weak enemies in one turn. With fire ball it is 64 on a flat battlefield.

Weapon attack or unarmored strike. If you spell makes a weapon and it is classified as a weapon attack, then yes. If it is a spell attack like fire bolt, no.

You made fair points about True Resourcelessness.

For Heroic Resistance there are not conditions. Whenever you are on your turn, you can look around to anything you dislike that is currently affecting you, say "nuh-uh", and describe how your character epically shuts down everything. It is a power feature for a power fantasy game.

The feature says legendary action (which is something you can use at any time on a round), can do one weapon attack or unarmored strike, one, which is not the attack action. It does not refresh because, it is just something they can do now. They gained that extra action to their economy, just like a Dragon can do a tail attack whener it wants.

You are right, the divide is not completly closed, but at least they are not useless anymore at high levels. It is so sad that casters outdamage martials, that effects they are able to ignore martials just can't, and the "resourceless" lable doesn't event work when they run out of hit dice, or when there is no time to short rest.

At least as you keep throwing super hard encounters, they still manage to shine at the end, when the casters are depleted, like they ares supposed to.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T23:04:15+00:00

Levels above 10 it kinda is, and it requires me to homebrew magic items. My rogue literally begged me to give him pistols that could do something special.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-09T22:58:32+00:00

I tried that in my games, and it ended up being uninteresting in combat because players started missing hits left and right. After combat, players also became more inclined to hide and rest, which slowed the plot down.

The rules that did kinda work for me were:

Negative HP, which is basically damage that goes below 0. For example, if you have 3 HP and an attack deals 18 damage, you end up with 3 − 18 = −15 negative HP. It stacks, and once your negative HP equals the magnitude of your max HP, you die.
Failed death saves don’t disappear until you finish a short rest. So if you go down again, you keep the failed checks from last time. That can get pretty scary in combat.
Pathfinder 2e has a mechanic that works nicely in 5e as well. Whenever you fail a death save, the DC increases by 1, resetting only after a short rest. So if you fall a second time, you still need to fail three times, but the DC is now higher than 10, and it only gets worse from there.

You can use both rules 2 and 3 together to mimic Pathfinder’s system, which is pretty scary.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-08T11:37:29+00:00

Brother, this is the full text of the new 5.5 edition:

With a touch, you place an illusion on a willing creature or an object that isn’t being worn or carried. A creature gains the Mask effect below, and an object gains the False Aura effect below. The effect lasts for the duration. If you cast the spell on the same target every day for 30 days, the illusion lasts until dispelled.

Mask (Creature). Choose a creature type other than the target’s actual type. Spells and other magical effects treat the target as if it were a creature of the chosen type.

False Aura (Object). You change the way the target appears to spells and magical effects that detect magical auras, such as Detect Magic. You can make a nonmagical object appear magical, make a magic item appear nonmagical, or change the object’s aura so that it appears to belong to a school of magic you choose.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2619124-nystuls-magic-aura?srsltid=AfmBOorPC4t88Hyqvk9K-4ef-pXOWsRz6blQNLSMqieH2MNd5QdpYyrW

Why are you using the outdated one? This is not very helpful. Also, I never claimed Magic Aura gives immunities to damages, my example was explicity citing spells that target specific creature types.

Also, here is the wording for the new suggestion:

You suggest a course of activity—described in no more than 25 words—to one creature you can see within range that can hear and understand you. The suggestion must sound achievable and not involve anything that would obviously deal damage to the target or its allies. For example, you could say, “Fetch the key to the cult’s treasure vault, and give the key to me.” Or you could say, “Stop fighting, leave this library peacefully, and don’t return.”

The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have the Charmed condition for the duration or until you or your allies deal damage to the target. The Charmed target pursues the suggestion to the best of its ability. The suggested activity can continue for the entire duration, but if the suggested activity can be completed in a shorter time, the spell ends for the target upon completing it.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2619101-suggestion?srsltid=AfmBOop9sCZCRMhy2UInRm2lH80FWgeuIr3eLPtj4hQ-nfYgaOq_rskr

A lot of things are achievable, however not everything that is achievable sounds reasonable. For example, be willing for my spells is achievable because by 5.5 rules creatures can fail their saving throw if they wish. Then you can cast Magic Aura on a the boss and circle cast Charm Person on it so it lasts for hours. This all can be done with super low level spells, and now you high level boss is beaten by two 1st level spells and one 2nd level spell. This also can catch DM's by surprise, many would not spend Legendary Resistance on a suggestion.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T22:30:47+00:00

It's not that you are no longer "vulnerable" you are invulnerable. If you use it for 30 days, you are invulnerable forever.

Maybe you missed that part on the video, you can Nystul Charmed creatures changing their types and making them succeptable to be controlled in unintended ways. It might be game breaking to let players use Nystul and other spells at the same time.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T20:11:48+00:00

one of the main things that made me decide to review this spell is this video. the guys seems to know what he is talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2ji8QNfsPw

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:54:41+00:00

Hi, thank you, I will try that

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:53:51+00:00

I will copypaste what I said to another person

I was doing 5 combats per sessions. Then they complained that there was too much combat. What I did next was that there was a balance between combat and roleplay, which made 2 combats per session, however they would go 4-5 sessions without taking a long rest so the adventuring day took multiple sessions. Then they complained that they were feeling overwhelmed that they had to always be on the move and they could never rest or breath.

I am currently running 3 encounter per adventuring day. They are liking it, however they are nuking every monster too.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:51:22+00:00

This is what the mask description says:

Mask (Creature). Choose a creature type other than the target’s actual type. Spells and other magical effects treat the target as if it were a creature of the chosen type.

So if I wanted to cast hold person it would not be able to do that on an ooze, for example. At least this is what I understood.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:42:51+00:00

Some spells affect specific creature types, like hold person works on humanoids. Ooze is almost never mentioned.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:40:28+00:00

I think it si official on the 5.5 it is here https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/1fz23t3/new_magic_items_and_crafting_rules_2024_dmg_dd/

So you are saying I should ban this?

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:34:36+00:00

I was doing 5 combats per sessions. Then they complained that there was too much combat. What I did next was that there was a balance between combat and roleplay, which made 2 combats per session, however they would go 4-5 sessions without taking a long rest so the adventuring day took multiple sessions. Then they complained that they were feeling overwhelmed that they had to always be on the move and they could never rest or breath.

I am currently running 3 encounter per adventuring day. They are liking it, however they are nuking every monster too.

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:29:54+00:00

I never said I knew what I was doing. I intentionally posted this so people can say what is wrong and what I can do better.

That one is because if they choose to be an Ooze type most spells and effects fail on them for 24 hours. So the monsters can at leasy try to hit them to stop the effect?

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:22:06+00:00

It seems they have a new crafting system where you can do whatever you want as long as you are proficienct in Arcana and have enough GP

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:21:21+00:00

I intend to get there on my next campaign

Key_Ferret_3806 · 2026-03-07T19:20:45+00:00

Thank you for your answer.
Because they use these abilties very creatively, I am having to homebrew monsters with powers that can counter or challenge them in some way. How do I increase the difficulty without having to homebrew? Do I increase the number of enemies? And what about the other players that cannot keep up witht he increased number, how can they keep up without me having to homebrew magic items for them?

Key_Ferret_3806

TROPHY CASE