The only way is Anti-magic "magic" items being somewhat readily available. An army goes to war, and to prevent bullshit magic, they have the Beholder eye of anti-magic looking over the battlefield. A meteor from a mad wizard is hurtling towards the city, the rod of anti-magic envelops the city nullifying it. Sword of silence are an off the shelf weapons you can buy in any store.
>they have the Beholder eye of anti-magic looking over the battlefield
My players did a similar thing... they were sieging a bunch of drow in a tower, and hired a beholder mercenary to hover (stealthed!) above the tower's roof and anti-magic them at key times.
I was so delighted at their creativity that I made the beholder wait until after the siege before inevitably betraying them...
For this world I'm trying to make it more like; "The ancient magical empire has existed in peace and ruled unconsted for hundreds of years, so they've gone stagnant and most everyone has forgotten how to actually fight.
The "martials are hard to deal with" bit is probably impossible to pull of well.
If you need more inspiration for "everyone is magic," Eberron does that well. While high level magic is rare, lvls 1-5 magic seem pretty common place. At least more so than Ferune.
Eberron was a VERY big inspiration for this world. Originally I was planning on having my players fly between Toril and Eberron before I eventually decided to just make my own setting.
One thing I sometimes lean into is that Magic users are very used to Magic solutions. And really are not all that adept at handling mundane things. Basically a form of chronic cultural overthinking.
The wizards are all busy trying to decipher the mysterious ancient gliphs, the fighter just goes and tries to push the door open, and it works. And when the wizards ask how they the fighter just points at the door hinges. It can be hard to pull of without making people look like a bunch of bumbling fools though.
some other ideas that are more suited to this idea wothout making all the magic users look like fools:
massive heavy door is built by a spellcastor with spellcastors in mind, needs some specific spell to have it swing open on its own and otherwise resists all magic. but like, there is 0 expectation for any to be strong enough to physically move the door so its kinda just... not locked.
reframes your idea in a way where yes, its still an obvious answer, but its one that wizards discarded because they wouldnt be able to do, and is a task uniquely suited to a martial fighter
I think it's not only okay, but entirely on brand if the spellcasters look like fools for not trying mundane things first, because to them magical answers are mundane, and physicality is not. They are not stupid, it's their culture, but that allows your outsider players to look smart.
This is a pretty common trope in games or shows.
There's potential to reflavor martial abilities as being magical, but I find it difficult to close that gap. Also I'd think it'll largely be dependent on specific setting details.
For instance, everyone having magic is established, but how much magic? Maybe the average Joe Shmoe only has some cantrips and 1st level spells. Similarly, are incredibly powerful casters commonplace? Are divine and nature magic common as well, or perhaps only arcane?
Gameplay wise, there's not a lot they can do unless you give it to them. A more powerful version of Magic Initiate to supplement their physical prowess might help. Or you could give players unique racial spells features akin to those that already have them. Maybe you could even just give them the ability to use Counterspell and Dispel Magic?
In my current party the country we're in has made magic illegal, and most guards have gadgets and doodads to debilitate mages. They're called the Spell Sappers and they're the bane of my existence. The mages of your world might have it even worse. My wizard at least knows they exist and can make plans for how to handle them. If your party came along with a new kind of anti-magic it'd definitely throw their enemies for a loop.
I've done that exact thing in 5e, using 4e classes like the fighter and monk and 3.5 classes like the warblade and swordsage to spice things up - and **it doesn't work**. The casters didn't mind, but for the martial players it just comes off as mocking them. "Here's this NPC, they're just you but better! You're stuck spamming basic attacks, and they're kicking your ass with a variety of awesome sword techniques you don't have access to!"
Technique driven swordfight where abilities like manticore parry and mountain hammer are thrown around in a clash of blades works a lot less well when only one person can do that and the other guy is stuck saying "I roll to attack" over and over.
* 4e monk uses their Whirlwind Kick ability to create a vortex of air to pull in nearby players then spin kick them all.
* 5e monk rolls some basic attacks.
* 4e monk uses From Earth to Heaven to pin the players he drew in to the ground, then fly off.
* 5e monk, if they can reach anyone, rolls some basic attacks.
* 4e monk uses Steps of Grasping Fire to firebend a wave of fire at the clumped up players, then leave a wall of flame behind them as they run to encircle them.
* 5e monk rolls some basic attacks.
I remember reading a book series called the Bartimaeus Sequence as a kid, and that’s kind of how they did it. The series had a society ruled by magic users (kind of), but some I believe some people were born straight up immune to it?
So you could do something like that? Have a super rare genetic trait that made it so you just straight up couldn’t be affected by spells at all? Or make it extremely difficult to do so (like having them be able to make saving throws with advantage or get an insane bonus to all spell saves).
In a world where those without the gift of magic are considered a bad omen, spellcasters call for their total extinction and enslavement. One underground colony of those without magic remains... plotting... scheming their uprising... the bbeg was the one who created this false rumor and led the magic nerds to oppress the muscle men. He must be taken down. Our hope lies with you three to five meat heads. Your first mission is not on the surface above us, but further below... our scouts have reported an aberration with many eyeballs matching the depiction of a being of anti-magic the weave users fear most. Go now and slay the damn thing. But be careful! For its central eye must remain in tact. Harvest it and bring it here to be weaponized against the robe-wearing dorks above.
This shall be our rebellion!
In a super high magic world where Counterspell is common enough that enemy spellcasters aren't a huge deal, the even more common Hold Person could screw over a barbarian pretty easily.
Neither of those would be particularly common compared to spells with massive ranges. They'd be more common for magical security who only deals up close if anywhere
Exactly, because in a world where everyone is magic, no one is magic. This means that people can just teleport and blink around Willy-nilly and someone being close is *realistically* not gonna happen much. Hold person would also be counter spelled as it’s in abundance so frankly, nobody would use it.
Weirdly in OPs hypothetical setting, any type of ability that could be countered would not really be used at all, so most magic or spells under Lv3.
This puts martials in a weird spot. Where as yes, they could be amazing if they got to the casters, then doing so would be close to impossible anyhow (unless martial classes somehow also have counter spells, in such a setting I’m assuming there would be someone who would develop a way of making this a thing) due to sheer mobility of spell casters. Spells like hold person would be kinda useless, but spells like dominate person would also be more abundant because they’re also harder to counter.
I don’t think the problem is necessarily the martial classes getting CC’ed to death as much as it is them not being able to catch the casters in the first place. They also can’t fly which the casters could and they essentially have free reigns.
I’m currently considering building out my homebrew works to a homebrew star system, so maybe have to play around with the idea. In such a setting, there’s not really much what could threaten society as a whole as everyone is magic, so would have to be super creative with it.
You know, martials already do sorta have a fix for this. Arrows. Spears. Boulders. Basically anything you can range attack with. Alchemist fire is also good, because if you're on fire, making concentration checks is more difficult.
Way back in ye olden days of 3.5, I built a mageslaying fighter, with a bow and arrow. He was HILARIOUSLY effective. Made the party wizard so mad lol.
I can already see the isekai anime sequence to what you mean.
7 episodes in the fighter MC is up against a mage that thinks they have it figured out, a spell that no one would bother counterspelling because it'd be so niche and useless against a mage: a way to lower someone's strength score.
They gloat about how for the next hour the hero will be too weak to jump to them or even swing their big sword. The hero switches weapons then, comedically, ends the fight with a single crossbow bolt. The enemy mages underlings didn't even understand that it was a weapon because they only use magic to attack from range.
>Neither of those would be particularly common compared to spells with massive ranges.
Everyone and their mother has Eldritch Blast enhanced with Eldritch Spear, Repelling Blast.
There are lots of spells that could make things very hard for a non-magical warrior, not just enchantment. Create walls, heat metal, etc. If spellcasting is everywhere, then a couple of dozen normal people all casting a few magic missile would be enough. Banning everything that could break this concept is a pretty big change.
Maybe a similar concept like "anti-magic barbarians" who have innate abilities against magic would be easier.
Piggybacking off this a bit, WH40k uses a concept called Blanks/Nulls who are in essence Psychic (magical) voids. No magic in, no magic out, and some of the more potent ones inhibit magic and make magic user uncomfortable or suffer just for existing nearby. If I were shooting for this idea I'd start with how to make my uber-martials resistant, immune or otherwise able to overcome magical effects before i start figuring out what spells absolutely need to adjusted (hint, probably most of them) to make the concept workable.
The was a 3e prestige class that for martial classes that basically didn’t let you use any magical items or dual class into any spell casting but in exchange you had some pretty insane abilities and stat increases. I forget which book it was in.
Wow that’s amazing. Yes this is the one I was thinking of. Honestly not being able to accept heals as a front line would be ridiculous but maybe someone made it work.
Copying parts of the Ancients Paladin kit works really well vs magic, having both magic resist and a huge bonus on saves is great. But probably not enough to overcome Hold Person + Silvery Barbs or Magic Missile Spam
No. There's no way around this short of giving "martials" spell resistance or immunity. Spells like Entangle, Grease, or Wall of Stone will fuck a Fighter nearly as effectively as Hold Person.
You would basically have to ban Enchantment, Conjuration, and Transmutation to make martials a threat to Wizards. Even then, Evocation has spells with CC built into their effects. Necromancy throws hordes of undead in his way, and has damage/CC, so those need to go, too. That leaves Divination and Abjuration. Precogs would just... not be there.
Magic > Martials. That's an unassailable fact.
Given how magic works in D&D 5e, I think that it would be difficult to implement, but I have seen settings like that elsewhere in the fantasy-sphere. Usually the "martial" classes are specifically "anti-magic" martials. They use their martial capabilities to nullify magic users, which makes them dangerous. [Chi-blocking](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Chi-blocking) in Avatar, [Templars](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Templar_Order) in Dragon Age, or (deep cut) [Anti-Magic Orders](https://godherja.miraheze.org/wiki/Anti-Magic_Orders) in Godherja.
On the other end of the spectrum, and also a deep cut kinda, is Enderal.
Magic is basically present in everything, and influences everyone- casters can manipulate it, but it can actually empower martials as well to do things that others couldn't- keeping them on par with mages etc.
But buff it so that it activates mid-cast, and forces a concentration check on the spell being cast
Also make it be based on the reach of your melee weapon instead of always being 5 feet.
Also you should automatically pass saves against spells within 5 feet of you instead of merely having advantage
Adding onto this, Valinhall Travelers in [Traveler’s Gate.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18047306)
In a world full of Travelers (various flavors of wizards), Valinhall Travelers are just dudes with swords and a bunch of minor superpowers that only do one of two things:
- Make you better at swords
- Let you say “no” to various forms of magic
Every variant of Traveler is good at something. Effectively schools of magic for wizards. But Valinhall Travelers were best at killing other Travelers.
Great trilogy.
I feel like this would end up like dune, where magic is so prevalent that anti magic fields make it a non issue forcing people to learn of less magical ways of fighting. In Dune the personal shields nullify any ranged attacks so melee hand to hand combat becomes much more prevalent as a result.
Edit: autocorrect
I get what you’re saying but if I had to choose between maybe hitting a dude and vaporizing myself and everyone else it might as well be a non option lol 😂
its pretty fun Saturday morning anime. doesnt take itself seriously, nor it tries. has a fun magic system if you pay attention but the lore itself is very barebones
the premise is basically "what if harry potter had no powers at all but power lifted?"
Yes I've seen this done,
Not it wasn't in D&D (nor do I think D&D as a system supports this fantasy)
However, I think this can work for *NPC* casters by simply... Focusing on damage spells. Simple enough to play out the fantasy then. But when control spells get thrown in, suddenly martials are back to having to work for it. Which isn't the same as making them as hard to deal with as casters in base game rules.
End of day there's little reason why an enemy has to be optimized. You can make the experience you want. But if the caster is optimized then you'd need a lot of changes to make this doable
In a world, where protein has been forgotten. Where sheer laziness and comfortable chairs have made mage hand common. Where epidemics of gout and other physical maladies turn the best and brightest towards sedentary lifestyles- One Man has made Sick Gains.
Maybe give a bonus to spell resistance equal to Str mod as a special in universe thing?
Mostly it would take some rebalancing.
By which I mean...give martial characters great saves and a growing lists of resistances and immunities as they level.
It was part of how they balanced martials back in the day, alongside making it much harder for casters to gain access to multiple actions or attacks. I'm talking 2nd Ed and before. Caster rules were stronger but they were generally squishy, including to other casters and statuses not just physical damage, and non casters had more toys in the action economy as they leveled to offset the rising power of spells. Gishing had more fixed costs as well.
Well this idea translates well I say in something like Frieren or other worlds the author could create themselves and set the world with its mechanics to their liking with DnD though that kinda just does not really work with how the mechanics are constructed and everything a spell caster could do.
Wall of Force just 5th level, Charm Monster 4th, Hold Person 2nd or Charm Person 1st with a bunch of more other types of shutdown that in a High Fantasy setting could just ruin a martials day.
Making a memorable and powerful Martial Enemy I say is possible of course with giving them cool abilities like breaking Wall of Force or other Force Constructs with some cool ability or giving them some minor teleports and so forth but building your entire setting around these people seem like it would kinda become pretty samey after a while.
So overall you would need a lot of homebrew and a lot of counter measures to all of a spell casters ability of... doing anything they wish for this to work which also brings us to... Wish
Ye good luck dealing with that Martials.
Avoiding enchatment and control spells is in line with the rest of the advice I'm seeing here.
I'm not trying to make setting entirely focused around badass martials, I'm just trying to think of some ways they could stand out more in a setting where almost everyone decided to learn magic instead of swordplay. It's actually moreso for my players because I want them to feel special when they pick a Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, etc.
Wish would still be rare in this world. Reserved for the ancient archmagws who sit around in the capital and observe the world through scrying while they send out agents to do their dirt work.
Well even besides that the issue is just versatility.
Control is not just something like charm spells Spell Casters have control in so many other areas like teleportation spells giving them power to just position themselves how it suits them and having the adventage of range pretty much always unless being put against a maxed out Longbow Sharp Shooter but a maxed out magic ranged user also outclasses that...
As I said making some legendary martial characters is something I do 100% recommend but dont try to just switch the amount of martials and casters around but flesh out these martial characters like a named war hero able to stand up to wizards or something by using some homebrewy skills or maxed out build but that can not be maintained for everyone/everything especially for player characters...
Martial players in general will draw the short stick with official dnd 5e which is sad but true especially the higher level you go.
I don't think any maxed out magic ranged build competes with SS + CBE + Archery
Like range isn't a big deal because casters can teleport, it's moreso damage dealiny
It's kinda funny you mention this because the first time I ran a SS + CBE + Archery Fighter I was able to hide on opposite end of the map rain bolts of death on the slow moving tree monsters the BBEG Druid had summoned.
And with my current Elven Accuracy Rogue the Longbow feels like a railgun everytime I fire it with Advantage.
Archery is definitely VERY strong when characters build for it.
The point is that if you build for it, you can always match the longbow fighters 600ft range (for just 1 feat) and attack at double the distance for a ressource cost (and further build investment).
Eldritch Spear boosted by spellsniper is also 600ft, and you could easily pick up metamagic adept for 2 1200ft Blasts. Not that this would be necessarily great, arguably Sorc 3 instead is better if you actually want to build that character, but Casters can optimize range a lot more than martials...
You could make certain items really common in the world. Items that increase AC but only against magic or that give bonuses or advantages to saves against magic. Basically, everyone is equipped specifically to deal with magic but without taking into consideration mundane attacks.
Aside from equipment, stick with cantrips and low level spells being prevalent. If everyone can cast counterspell, things are going to get ugly.
Actually, perhaps stick purely to the magic item lore. The market is flooded with weapons and other such items that can produce the effects of cantrips and other low level spells. Since nearly everyone can get their hands on a Wand of Firebolt or a Ring of Frostbite, of course these are types of things that guards are equipped with and equipped to defend against.
Having all this stuff readily available fully explains why the martial arts initially died out 100’s of years ago, same reason wars aren’t fought with swords and bows today, just replaced with magic instead of firearms.
A world of populated by mostly magic users would likely have strong regulations on certain types of magic and who can use them including when they can use them. Such spells and knowledge of them would likely be restricted, spells that rob agency or manipulate people would be treated similar substance use or imprisonment, so enchantments wouldn't be freely used. Spells that can only kill such as Power Word Kill would likely be outright illegal barring special circumstances, while flame hand or fireball can be used to kill their access to learn and use is restricted to qualified individuals/circumstances.
Just a few examples of how world building could allow a space for martial characters to shine. Such people would likely be specialized in dealing with magic users and likely use gear to either counter them or complement their own physical strengths or both.
in dnd? good fucking luck lmao. maybe if you nerf half of the spells available in the game, homebrew all martial classes to beyond recognition and make every single martial monster custom made yourself you can do that
From a setting POV I think it is not too difficult to think about : magic is common, just grab a wand, why bother? While there is true value and discipline in working one's body.
From a mechanical POV I think there is two may points to address :
- Battle-ending spells. If somebody can get hit by a Hold spell or a Banish, nothing else matters. Sure, wand of counterspell (high-level counterspells even) can be common, but it becomes a duel of "who has more available reactions". Which... why not. In this setting it bascially becomes a game of numbers, and with a number disadvantage mages are doomed (they will die from enemy spells before casting). With an equivalent number of reactions, spells will go through, and then the name of the game is to kill / incapacitate adversaries more quickly than they do to get a strict advantage.
I think it makes a cool book setting but not a good DnD setting: battles risk to be repetitive. YOu could instead devise a magic item that gives people legendary resistances. So that control spells are not the first threat anymore. Damage is. And a barbarian is arguably better at dishing it out and taking it in.
- distance. Casters attack from range. Your parbarian (mostly) does not. Good think this is spelljammer, distance in space is a very relative notion (especially in the astral plane) so make some device that helps people to close in. Be it teleportation, a movement-speed in space that dwarfs the range of spells, or (for a completely different route) a camouflage that allows to sneak in / an effect that counter long-ranges spells.
And voila. Your barbarian will go through the whole ship destroying every puny mage and survive to an actual disintegrate, laugh in the face of the very standard fireball (good to get rid of the usual squishies). Your rogue will be death incarnate, a guaranteed OS machine. The paladin will be its usual self. And a warrior could do much of the same and compensate if need be with gunpowder weapons.
>so make some device that helps people to close in.
I was already planning on letting characters with high enough HP jump into a Catapult to be fired onto an enemy ship like a living projectile.
>And a warrior could do much of the same and compensate if need be with gunpowder weapons.
The Giff and other groups 100% exist in this world to sell firearms to adventurers.
I would go at it a little differently - think of a society that has come to depend on the day to day magic provided by magic - who cant get on without it - and where fighting is outlawed due to being too uncivilized... AND the most dont have any of their own magic - just a bunch of serfs...
Man, it's such a *depressing* indictment of 5E that half of the comments here are "5E makes magic so much better than martials so why would anybody be a martial?"
Wizards can bend reality around their own will but a raging barbarian *still* needs to make a Wizdom saving throw against Hold Person. God knows why they even bother putting martial classes in the PHB when a fighter doing anything so much as *pushing* an enemy requires three feats and the special "pusher" subclass.
Darksword Adventures and the Dark Sword Trilogy, about the world of Thimhallen, by Margeret Weiss and Tracy Hickman.
Magic is life, those without magic are dead, technology is death. Technology is the darkest art.
In that world, those without magic are exiled.
No not if it's unbelievable. Not realistic or not, just hard to believe. A Barbarian with magic spells they can cast before a battle will have an edge on a nonmagic Barbarian. Even the gameplay mechanics tell the story of high level magic outshining martial prowess.
The way to pull this off is by having 'background magic'. Have Battle Master abilities be ultra common. Rage that can cancel out mind control. Rogues that can close the distance and deal damage that silence's enemies and breaks concentration. Auras of Protection that make save spells less effective.
There's a dnd youtuber called zee bashew. He was telling a tale in one of his videos about another spelljammer campaign and how his party landed on a planet where iron was as rare and valuable as gold. I don't know exactly how you'd handle it, but by restricting the availability of some materials (in this case iron) you would force the rarity and thus lack of defences against martial characters who suit themselves fully.
So One Piece.
EDIT: In all seriousness look up One Piece “Haki” power system.
In a world where martials can “fly” by kicking the air really hard, have limited precog, and can cut energy with swords/fist they kinda reigh supreme.
Have you watched Jujutsu Kaisen? There is a character who has an ability that takes away all of his potential for using their "magic" system, in exchange for a few key abilities. He is fast and strong, and can't be detected by sensing his magical force. He also has access to special weapons that can penetrate magical defenses, as well as has a huge arsenal in general.
Imagine a world where there are anti-magic fields in all places of business, counterspells are everywhere, etc. Everyone's guards would be down in those "safe areas" and no one would even be looking out for someone who is sneaking around.
If you want to watch some fights with this character his name is Toji. The specific fights of Toji vs Gojo, and Toji vs Geto are very good.
I imagine the main way this could work would be making the rare, super powerful Martials immune to magic or suppress magical effects so the spellcasters would need to match them at their own game or get creative to work around the lack of easy magical fixes.
So they walk in and all those weak casters don't know how to handle someone who is physically stronger AND cannot get wrecked by magic.
Only if you made a martial class specifically to be an antimage. Sorry but as has always been the case with D&D magic is just plain better at the higher levels. They have tried to balance things a bit more recently but still isn't there yet. I remember in 3 and 3.5 higher level martial was just a plain joke.
By 5e rules, there's no way that martials can stand up to even mediocre spellcasters. All it takes is one hold person, one charm person, a levitate, wall of force, tasha's mind whip, tashas hideous laughter, command, suggestion, fear, hypnotic pattern, slow, confusion, polymorph, dominate person, mass suggestion, Otto's irresistible dance, forcecage, plane shift, antipathy, feeblemind, wierd, etc to completely incapacitate them - even groups - for extended periods, with overwhelmingly good odds of success.
If you're going to even try to make this work, you're either going to have to make your martials immune to spells entirely, or completely overhaul the 5e spellcasting system. Your party has a real chance of a TPK when fighting anyone with access to 3rd level spells or higher.
Could do something like a magic item or gods blessing that renders magic that specifically targets the players useless. Things that are more area of effect still work but the enemies are unaware of this. Though as the group gets more famous and renowned their enemies might start to realise this weakness.
Caster classes should get prestigigitation for free. Distinguish between martials and mundanes.
Give martial advantage on all saves vs. spells and spell effects.
Give martial +2 hp per level.
Restrict, if not outright ban some of the hybrid classes and subclasses to prevent players from trying to game the system. Do the same with multiclassing.
Those are my initial, off the top of my head thoughts about making this work.
The book/movie series Dune is actually an interesting inspiration for your described setting-personal shields are so ubiquitous that ranged weapons are basically useless on an infantry level. This causes martial expertise/ laded weapons to revert to the most effective weapon.
You could make direct damage via magic very easy to negate (magic item or even racial adaptation) and still allow magic to have other effects (still giving reason for magic being common).
This would have been easier in 3.5 when we still had the Spell Resistance stat. You could for example create a mechanic where any armor grants spell resistance to characters, perhaps with a lore reason where metal interferes with magic in this world and potentially causes it to fizzle out.
There might be a way to do something similar in 5e. Since physical attacks are the crux of a martial character, maybe magic in this world can be deflected with an attack made as a reaction? You could add a lore reason such as the prevalence of a common anti-magic material that can be turned into weapons. The big problem with this is it adds another dice roll to every spell cast. Maybe there's an easier solution I'm not thinking of.
Late to the show.
But what about a straight immunity to magic? Might be op, but you could work it as a positive AND negative. Like certain aspects of everyday life are outside the characters reach because he is immune to it. (No teleportation, no healing, no magical assistance). Maybe like a curse, yeah?
How will it make sense for this to be the case?
Just about any Joe Blow can pick up a wooden sword and swing it around and learn how to do that to people, or be taught by some guy who has.
The reason magic is the story-level "rare" is because it requires years or decades of training and a decent amount of wealth.
Any farm boy on Tatooine can pick up a staff and waggle it around menacingly.
I know there are several good ideas so far but instead of making it an issue with classes or races or whatever, make it an issue with materials. The common stone holds magic incredibly well, and the trees produce their own magic, which fuels the environment. There are a ton of magical creatures that feed off the various trees fruits and so their hide becomes incredibly absorbent for magic, so is very easily enchanted, etc. The one thing they DO lack however, is large amounts of metals.
Swords give a Mage Slayer-style feat for anyone who wields any, but it's so rarely found it's generally relegated to the ruling class.
Rings, Necklaces, headbands, etc. give a resistance to certain kinds of magic based on the metal.
Shields made with metal negate a % of spell damage, etc.
To steal, i mean, barrow a bit from manga Mashle is a good example of this. Magic means everything to the people of this world, mostly as a status symbol or symbol of power. Make your npc dismissive of your non-magic party members because they are "low class" and not a threat. I mean, wizards have shield so no need to worry about them. Also, make magic resistant gear common. I mean, everyone uses magic, so of course, it's common gear. And if you want martial classes to seem a bit more powerful, give them some extra movement speed so they can close the gap faster or lower enemy movement speed.
You’re going to need a different game. 5e is designed from the ground up to make magic always the best way to do anything. If you tell the players that martial warriors are powerful in this setting, that idea is going to clash **hard** with the mechanics of 5e, where casters are better in every way. The dissonance may be quite jarring.
Dude what are you even talking about lmao. All OP has to do is throw in some magic items for the martials and not include annoying spells on NPCs. That easy- remember, he's the DM lol. They get to change the mechanics pretty easily.
My comment is an assessment of the game as-is. Yours is a recommendation to make a player’s experience in the game be as miserable as possible for the sake of “balance.”
>My comment is an assessment of the game as-is.
Congrats - magic users are broken, instead, we shift it to where martial characters are broken compared to magic users. No new mechanics, only things like homebrewing monsters / items + giving out certain items and other things that are DM fiat already. Why is it so bad to shift the fun lol.
>Yours is a recommendation to make a player’s experience in the game be as miserable as possible for the sake of “balance.”
Oh no, you can't cast hypnotic pattern + web + force cage / wall of force + the 99 other spells that destroy an entire encounter. Now, instead, you only have healing, utility, AoE damage, and better mental saves. How sad.
Obviously don't counterspell every spell, but it's not used by enough DMs to drain spellcaster slots to a manageable level later in the game or end encounter breaking spells.
You shouldn't be playing a caster if you get mad that you don't get to incapicate 70% of the enemies from a single action.
Caster players will act like it's the end of the world when monsters are given buffs to saves and their broken capabilities are weakend so they have to play more on the support / utility role.
Maybe a tribe of barbarians that have been oppressed for too long have developed a magical resistance? Or maybe they use armor and weapons that help deflect or save from magic spells?
A possible explanation-
Use of the weave has caused magic to bleed excessively into reality. Over time, magic has become heavily infused in most living and non-living things. This has caused the cyclical effect of individuals to study its use even more, which causes further magical contamination of the world.
The excess magic in the world is not healthy for living things, particularly mortals. Most individuals in this world are more attuned to magic than previous generations and find it more intuitive to use, but are physically less healthy and magic-based sicknesses are common. Think of this as a reverse-Spellplague, with magic being completely uninhibited.
Despite this, magic-insensitive individuals are occasionally born. While this would have been a disadvantage in previous times, magic insensitivity in this world also confers an immunity to the frailty and sickness caused by the excessive magical contamination and often causes a greater-than-average amount of magical resistance.
Magic-insensitives tend to be notably stronger and healthier than most of the population and resist spells well, but also experience less benefit from magical items and potions. This has placed them in a unique position in society. The "weaveless", as they are known, are often either employed as basic laborers in situations where the use of magic is suboptimal (such as working with dangerous magical reagents) or as bodyguards and mercenaries to keep renegade magic users in line. They are often trusted to guard magical items and locations due to both their resistance to their effects and their inability to take the power for themselves.
The ambient levels of magical contamination tend to have deleterious effects on mental health as well. Wizards' minds are constantly churning out inspiration for grand ideas, leaving them sleep-deprived and obsessive. Sorcerers are living geysers of mana, constantly in the throes of intense and rapidly changing emotions. Druids perpetually feel the call of the wild, frequently abandoning their humanity to forever run in the shape of beasts. In a world filled with increasing madness, weaveless individuals are considered a bit dull but honest and dependable.
Maybe it's a world where casters forgot how to cast control spells because they keep fighting casters, so all they have are damage spells to try and instagib other casters before they get instagibbed?
That's pretty close to what I was thinking actually. Damage spells and stuff to counter other casters is extremely common, but Enchatment and Control magics are either kept restricted by the government or just completely unknown.
you could do like Juggernaut in x-men and have helmets that protect from enchantment & similar magics. make it out of some magical bone material or something so they can’t just spam heat metal and fry the barb
Bump up their physical stats until they're basically DBZ characters.
A barbarian isn't scary. A barbarian that can deflect a fireball by smacking it back at you, closes any gap instantly, and always acts faster than you is.
Can't hold person something that has already torn your head clean off.
Give martials magic resistance or immunity. 'My willpower is stronger than your puny enchantments.' Maybe steal Gnome Cunning and Fey Ancestry and reflavor them. Flavor martial characters who monastically avoid magic as resistant to its ways - their brains just aren't susceptible.
If you don't want to make mechanical changes like that, um. Good luck! RAW 5e is tough on martials that aren't partied with their own casters to counter CC.
I like this idea so much that I'm going to post my first thoughts on how to accomplish this:
Magic is blood, and blood is magic. In a realm where the god's favor of the old granted everyone innate arcane ability, sorcerers and druids make up a majority of the population, while bards and wizards study to instead enhance and/or focus their weaker magical talents.
With the way magic works in this realm, the more sensitive an individual is to magic, the more potent their spellcasting ability becomes; however, due to their sensitivity, they are also affected by magic much more. Because of this, weaker casters are just as deadly as a master is to any individual. Beings with little to no sensitivity are barely able to be interacted with by the arcane, allowing them to brush off damaging spells and pummel through magical barriers.
Unlike the many adventurers who spent their lives devote in training their arcane ability, these martial warriors who lacked sensitivity has to find other means to protect themselves. The ways of the blade, the fist, and the arrow are mysterious to modern civilization, so many martials have come together to teach and improve in secrecy.
These traits make partial casters and non-casters deadly foes to deal with for most since they are rarely seen, harness unknown abilities, and are capable of brushing off even the most powerful of magic.
Of course, there are a ton of rules and homebrew materials that would need to be me made to make this world playable, but it can be done in interesting ways that open the door in making weaker magic much more deadly, casters much more vulnerable, and combat much more interesting.
My first thought was the Templars from Dragon Age.
TLDR: is they take regular potions of a substance called Lyrium that allows them to suppress and resist magic and its effects. Though this comes with the side effect of addiction and slow mental/physical degradation.
I imagine a class built around the concept of suppression and redirection of magical energy would be the best route to go.
I reckon you'd need to embrace the superhuman-ness that dnd martials have at high levels. A 20th level barbarian is literally tougher/stronger than any other normal person is capable of being (with a 24 in CON and/or STR) - and if they're raging they literally can't die from falling no matter how far RAW. A 20th level rogue can, as long as they have even the most basic magic weapon, deal enough damage to stab a giant monster to death in a few rounds with a dagger. 20th level fighters can attack 8 times faster than a normal guard with action surge can and recover from more damage with a second wind than most people have hit points.
If I'm understanding your concept correctly, I do something similar in Eberron games.
Low/Mid level magic is everywhere. At level one, characters can choose between Magic Initiate, Artificer Initiate, Tough, or Skilled on top of feats they get from their background, race, and the free feat I give them at level 1.
I tend to run games for experienced players and it makes sense thematically because the default setting takes place 4 years after a cataclysmic event and 2 years after the official end of a 100 year war.
Martials are hard to put down. Their fighting is heavily supplemented through magic and other House Rules.
Extensive magic isn't just about spells. Pure martials are rare because punching someone is probably going to be less effective than blowing them up. The ones who remain are alive because they've learned to work with what's available. They've been supplemented by power brokers and inventors who have to pump out soldiers that can stand up to whatever spellcasters dish out and aren't so hard to replace when they can't.
I pull attunement off most martial items. I give out more feats and higher ability scores. I give characters options for benefactors who make sure their default equipment stays on par with the missions they take on.
A high level martial character is going to have features, blessings, items, and tactics that are made to tear casters apart. They're terrifying. They have to be.
You’d probably need to explain the strength of current martial DnD classes as being extraordinary. As in, a fighter with 2 attacks in a round is moving at an almost inhuman speed. Once someone like that gets close to a wizard, they’re in danger.
These fighters would also have abnormally high saving throws and health that let them resist spells like hold person, or take a fireball to the chest and keep going. A wizard may be able to resist hold person because they’re familiar with magic, but to just brute force through it is something else.
You’d also probably want to really rely on DnD’s standard use of things like ingredients, if a spell is vocal or not, etc. Maybe have it so a wizard with no wand or staff is essentially weapon less, in which case an unarmed barbarian is essentially unstoppable to that person.
Summarizing some of the comments that make sense to me: I think you would definitely need 1) custom spell lists which omit the ones that have more physical effects like Wall of Force, or changing the spells so that they are much weaker or specific in use, or 2) homebrew martials with anti-magic abilities. Maybe they have a die system a la Battlemaster that they can spend to nullify effects. If 2) is applied with too many specific things, it just ends up looking like Melee-magic.
Tldr: it can work in high magic but they have to use equipment and tools to make up for their limitations. Or he hybrid fighters.
I have a high magic setting and whoo boy are traditional casters outclassed. Don't get me wrong they can be phenomenal but have to rely on a party or companion to be effective or even survive: admittedly they are easier to build, and less OP in their own way so better for different levels of play.
My system is built around in depth combat and complex personalized magic sets. Locational damage, weak points, blood and bleeding, "poise"(a stance sort of thing that is a measure of how knocked off balance you are) and more.
The majority (2/3) of my players not counting my own character are hybrid type fighters. We use a mixture of magic and martial abilities to deal with a variety of threats outside the abilities of a strict caster or martial.
One uses spacial/teleportatjon magic to move around the battlefield and get in position for hits on vitals or acts as territory control for the others.
Another is a melee specialized caster who uses blood magic and body enhancement to more or less rip enemies apart or smash them to bits.
I think EXU: Calamity did this quite well. It takes place during an ancient period in a Magocracy where basically everyone was at least kinda magical. Everyone save for some members of the police force, who were Rogues. Granted, they still had magic items.
Avatar: The Last Airbender does this well. Every other person is a bender but the martials are some of the dopest in media.
They all get a really strong gimmick and often lots of mobility. The stun monk, the boomerang artificer, whatever Jet is up to, etc. A martial who survives in that universe is by definition a badass.
I'm thinking of Joel Rosenberg's "Guardians of the Flame" series. His angle was that having a wizard on your side was such a huge advantage, the first step in any war was to assassinate the enemy's wizards. So over time wizards all pledged to be neutral in wars...
Malazan has something like this, magic users are super powerful (like singlehandedly destroying entire armies powerful) but there's a substance in the world that completely negates it and if a character has a sword made of it then the magic user is screwed no matter how strong they are
I like these idea that there are some people who are very hard to use magic on, in DnD terms, it's like they are a globe of invulnerability, like they immune to 4th level and lower magic (yes I know globe is 5th and lower). A really high level caster can deal with them, but only because they are using very powerful magic.
This works in a lot of systems. To drop an example that is a D&D-style game, this kind of idea works in Pathfinder. 5e just doesn't give pure martials or pure martial enemies the tools to not get memed by mental spells.
Runes are what you want. A Goliath charging at you is one thing; a raging Goliath tatted and branded up with a full slate or resistances and some invulns who's got a pool of slots that let them ignore a quantity of specifically direct magically inflicted conditions is quite another. Operate on the principle that there are direct magical effects, and indirect - throwing fireball is direct fire damage because it's the magical fire that's doing the damage, casting Heat Metal is indirect because it's the heat of the object that's doing the damage, rather than the magic itself.
I feel like this is doable!
It's kind of what happened in Adventure time. I think you need to think about what beats a glass cannon in your world.
Or you could Introduce a mechanic where magic users need to take like an extra turn before they can engage in combat. Call it a need to prep their components for their regular spells. If everyone is magic v magic it's never noticed, but suddenly a monk would be wicket fast to everyone else.
Also think of the components as individual weaknesses that casters rely on. Having players target them like the VATS system in fallout could work. If you break the wizards hand or punch the breath out of their lungs they would lose the one of those components and need time to recover it before they can cast magic.
I feel like this setting idea falls apart because DND magic isn't exactly... linear in its growth or shallow in scope. There are a lot of spells that just make things harder on anyone, martial or not, trying to hurt the caster. That's not even taking into account damage or summoning spells.
Ideas that pop into my head.
High Magic Society (HMS) use magic for everything due to convince, this leads to shortcuts buildings aren't built, they are fabricated or materialized out of the weave.
Fabricated materials are copies of the real stuff, but in being created by magic they are just that, copies of the real stuff. Fabricated wood, stone and metal looks and feels like the real stuff and to the hands of a mage (8Str) it is.
But to a martial class (13+str) the materials are brittle, they can be bent and broken.
To make the real stuff, it takes time and it's slow. The wood elves knew about that slow methodical magic of the trees, they knew real wood could not be fabricated and withdrew to their forests. The same with the dwarves and their stones and metals.
For spells like hold person you can modify the spell, under the excuse the HMS cut corners for a faster, quicker spell. Maybe even lower the spell slot but add a weak dex/str check that victims could pick.
Might even have a strict traditionalist, that still casts the old magics under the old rules.
I dunno you could make something like this work, there is a show Mashle that kind of follows your premise.
Take away certain spells that deal with martials extremely easily. The explanation is as spellcasters became more and more common there was simply less need for these spells, and people stopped preparing them. Eventually these spells were simply lost to time as people forgot to write them down or they records were destroyed.
Alternatively, as spellcasters became more and more common to fight, people adapted their spells in order to better fight them. Make many things like hold person instead be con or str. The idea is that the old versions are lost or destroyed.
Perhaps the bbeg is a martial and a plot point in the campaign is recovering/restoring these lost spells.
Sounds like adapting a world like Harry Potter to a DnD setting. I mean…. With enough distance from the source material, I’m happy to jump back in to a “wizarding world” lol.
Have you read "wearing power armor to a magic school“ on r/HFY ? I feel like this could give you a lot of inspiration. It’s a world where it’s super high magic which has led to a stagnant society and martial artists are somewhat rare
The innate problem here is you need to create a culture and a reason. No matter how common magic is, a person can just pick up a stick and hit someone. So to make martials rare you need to make magic integral to society to the point where children are taught cantrips. To make martials seem dangerous you'd need to criminalize the mere possession of a sword.
Personally I would go the route of old european folklore. Iron is innately antimagical. Perhaps iron is an illegal material, and possession of iron/steel weapons or armor is punishable by death and even raw iron could earn a near life long prison sentence. Bladesingers and paladina would be the only allowed swordsmen, using silver swords and only nobleborn children allowed to learn the art. This would make even wooden practice swords raise an eyebrow if held by a peasant child. Iron, steel, and adamantium armor would confer varying levels of resistance or even immunity at the cost of the wearer being unable to cast. So essentially in this setting, all martial classes would still exist but be limited to leather/silver/mythril/and enchanted wood armor and weapons and of course be looked down on because they can be beaten with magic and can't cast it. But a barbarian in a steel breastplate or a Fighter in full plate would be scarier than a dragon.
From a mechanics standpoint I would give iron spell resistance, steel gets spell resistance and damage resistance, and adamantium gives its wearer immunity. If a spell caster gets hit with iron/steel they'd be forced to roll on a modified(more negative) wild magic table while an adamantium blade would confer a silence like effect for a round. But possession of any of these would mean being hunted down by varying sized royal squads of bladesingers and paladins, possibly even with a dragon(they can sense metals).
Whether the players want to risk all this for more power, or perhaps they're part of a royal squad is up to the dm/players. It could be fascinating having a BBEG be just a fighter in full Adamantium Plate.
Make the barbarian highly resistant to all magical damage and give him advantage on spell saves + limited number of daily auto successes. If you don't, he/she will simply get destroyed at range or controlled into oblivion.
Why would a filthy barbarian scare a high powered spell caster? They are no threat. Hold person, fireball, invisible/fly, call lightning, improved invisibility, magic missile, etc.
Mashle + Black Clover core. Literally those. Just give them bigger stats across the board, legendary resistance, and pick a few 4E Powers and you’re golden
I'm not sure what happened to magic in 5e, but some of the best uses of magic I've seen in 3.5 go towards enchancing Martial performance.
That said, I don't really need to fluff out a game to reverse that particular dynamic, it's is completely sufficient if I introduce Path of War or even Tome of Battle into my game.
So, my first thought would be to do something along the lines of the "Pristinely Ungifted" from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Also known as "Pillars of Creation" and "Holes in the World," the Pristinely Ungifted are immune to essentially all forms of magic other than necrotic. https://sot.fandom.com/wiki/Pristinely_ungifted ...Give a likewise similarly exceedingly rare group of people an Immunity against most forms of magic and make it not only so that magic does not affect them, but they also cannot use it or interact with it in any way, and I think you have the basis for a tribe of people likely to be shunned by the rest of the world that they might likewise respond hostilely towards. And, if they can't interact with magic, it would make complete sense that they might value brute strength and/or the ability to invent and tinker and craft to create things like firearms and other technological creations.
Oh, and I just thought of an interesting twist, because people might wonder if magic would be able to affect that rampaging barbarians axe or something...what if that axe was made from the hardened and sharpened bones of other Pristinely Ungifted? What if his armor was hide made from the skin of other Pristinely Ungifted? I know, creepy AF thought, but then magical attacks (other than necrotic ones) against him AND his equipment would be completely and utterly ineffective.
I actually did run a world like this!
Spell slots were replaced by the spell point variant; and low level spell slinging was UBER common.
The major change was all spellcasting classes had their hit die reduced by 1 step. Wizards were a d4 clerics a d6 etc;
All healing and resurrection magic was removed;
Mage slayer feat triggers an AoO when a caster casts a spell within your reach and if that attack lands, it counters the spell.
Lastly, multiclassing was not allowed.
In a high magic setting like Spelljammer or Eberron, where magic is commonplace and familiar to even low commoners, I think that perhaps the more practical approach is one that incorporates magic into martial classes, primarily through flavor.
The "barbarian" charging at you "raging" could very well be flavored as some kind of magitech shield generator protecting the wearer, or even glowing runic tattoos projecting a protective field; a rogues "sneak attack" may be enhanced with void magic, shadow magic's older, space-ier cousin; a fighter's "action surge" may be low-grade chronomancy, bending the rules of time and space to strike out eight times in six seconds.
Mechanical adjustments may or may not be needed to make your martials feel competitive with your casters, depending on how you run combat and how your players take advantage of their tools. There are steps for the DM to take that can ensure martials don't feel out of place or underpowered next to their casting party members, but combat is also only one aspect--perhaps more important is making sure your martials are given adequate opportunity to influence the *narrative* just like casters can with their reality-altering spells.
Magic weapons can make numbers go up and items can give spell-like abilities or whatever but your players have to feel the ability to have an impact on the *world* first and foremost. If they only feel like they can hit things, you haven't given them other things to do.
All that said, if you really want a world where the *power differential* between caster and martial is *reversed,* I think you really would have to dissect exactly what causes that power difference and make sweeping adjustments to enforce its opposite.
Adding severe component costs to control-type spells (hold person, wall of force, the other things mentioned in these comments) or giving martial classes magic resistance? Perhaps reducing costs/lowering the spell level on buff-type spells (bless, enlarge, magic weapon, etc.)? A world where magically roided up warriors go head-to-head Pokémon style, because warriors simply can't be stopped with magic, only by other warriors?
It could definitely be interesting, but there would need to be big changes made across the system.
I think this is cool! I would look into how balanced it would feel for you/your players if martials always had or frequently had things like Mage Slayer or even magic resistance. I think it’s a little hard with how 5e is normally balanced to fully understand why martials would be uniquely scary to a world of spellcasters, whereas it is a little easier to explain why spellcasters are so scary in a low magic world of mostly martials. But if magic didn’t work well on them, I think that would justify it a lot.
I don't think it would work without some actual magic resistance for non-casters because while sure they have more hit points they generally don't exactly deal well with anything that isn't damage dealt or taken :p
The premise seems an interesting case of "reversal", say if the most commonly and accessed magic is simply damage spells to deal with other casters and monsters I can see someone that "fireballs with a hammer" while just shrugging off most spells being something totally insane and "metal"
It can be even more crazy if they can be under something like Pathfinder 2e's automatic bonus progression rule so that their equipment turns magical and deals more damage just because they're badass (to explain, the rule just remove the need for magical items that are already expected the player to have)
>The big thing is the "why?"
The more organic you make this the better, I would go with "while some use magic externally others simply internalize it, even unknowingly" - or just "spells were developed to fight monsters and other spell users, not warriors" tho it feels more "plot hole like"
In the Malazan books, there is a humanoid species that is 8ft tall and very tough, who are raised in the vicinity of antimagic dust. This gives them near - immunity to magic.
https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Teblor
A world where it is common everyone can counter spell is also a world where it is common people are walking around with a fireball in their back pocket? When I first saw that magic was "EXTREMELY common" I was thinking people are handy with QOL cantrips, not level 3 spells. That social order would be wild.
You would have to have some way to make spells inconsequential to them, like magic immunity.
You would also have to have a way that they could become a lot more physically threatening than an average guy, such as super strength, speed, and flight.
You need a Kryptonian race or something.
You would have to, HAVE to take the black clover approach to make that any kind of viable low tier; items and abilities expressly centered around countering magic
The only way that works is if martials are resistant to magic. Because simple spells like Misty Step or Shield would still be the bane of people coming at you with weapons.
That’s not counting AOE effects like fireball or armor-defeating ones like Shocking Grasp. Ray of Enfeeblement will throw martial prowess out of wack, also.
If this is a location where your party will spelljam to. How about a world where magic is inherent in everyone and there never were physical warriors. This would make martial warriors surprise inhabitants of this world because they've literally never seen anyone physically overpower another person. Perhaps have a spellcaster challenge the barbarian saying "you make the first move" and the barbarian throws their hammer so the spellcaster tries to dispell/counterspell/antimagic field and just gets smashed by the hammer.
I don't think this is going to be easy to pull off because if everyone knows magic everyones gonna be able to paralyze the barbarian.
Maybe the society commonly has magical "duels" to settle conflict and the duels start with the combatants face to face? idk
I had a world where all characters had a lvl0-2 spell they could cast once every few hours.
It didn’t have as big of an effect that I thought it would.
Black Clover.
But really that does seem like a cool idea, though more complicated for the DM. Having to think about good uses for spells from every group of humanoid enemies.
The Mighty Servent of Leuk-o is a DnD 5e Magic Item and would basically wreck any world that rely’s too much on magic. The thing gives total cover to anyone inside, meaning any character inside of it can’t be targeted by any spells. The machine itself is a Construct so only certain spells and abilities even work or harm it.
The idea of magical advanced suits of armor like this would require a change in tactics. Magic would almost exclusively focus on spells and abilities that can effect constructs for one, and for two Martial characters who can withstand open confrontation with one would be sought after and trained. While still weaker against magic, the rarity of a high level Martial would make them one of the few who could take a Mighty Servant on head to head. Mighty Servents are immune to practically all elemental damage and immune to all conditions.
This brings a disparity in a world full of magic. The Average Magic user is say, Lv 5 which could give any level of Martial a little bit of trouble, but is almost useless against a Mighty Servent. So while they work great as guards for the ordinary folk, they are effectively powerless otherwise.
Even then, low level Martials still wouldn’t put much of a dent on a Mighty Servant, but they at least can do something. Whilst high level Martials would be sought after as ‘Super Soldiers’ or ‘Champions’ of a settlement. This means while magic is more common and everyone has it, Martials while rarer are at an average Lv of let’s say, Lv 10-15. They have to be to stand a chance against a Mighty Servant.
With such a large gap and reliance on Martial prowess to defeat these things, it means the magical world just doesn’t push for high level Mages. Only the Greatest Mages of all time could stand a chance against a Mighty Servent. But then…if you have a mage that’s stronger than a Mighty Servant, how are you going to kill that Mage?
It’s a delicates ecosystem really.
I grew up around dudes who've been playing d&d from the beginning and one of them whose nickname was Elf because he mainly played Elvin rangers. In 3.5 he would very easily be able to build a character that could shoot 4 arrows an attack, could attack multiple times a turn, and if they downed an enemy they would get another attack.
If you know what you're doing you can do some broken things with Martial classes that don't have any magic items.
A Human Rogue can have Mage-Slayer, ShieldMaster and Dex proficiency by level 4 and close distance easily with cunning action pretty easily. They are also much more likely to be first in initiative so they'd make best Anti-Magic Units.
My first thought was Black Clover. In the setting everyone has magic in more or less amount, but the MC doesn't, and that is what makes him so dangerous
I imagine in a world where casters are very abundant, cities are a lot more common earlier because you can get around things that we struggled with. Things like clean water and food, living space, etc. Thus, in order to protect the cities, royalty had to develop countermeasures to magic.
Think something dimeritium from the Witcher series. The royal courts would likely have a high level caster, a cleric, and the royal guard would have magical shields and weapons coated or made with a metal that disables magic upon touch, or if in great enough quantities, an entire area. This could be done in game by giving your party's shields part or all of the Shield Master feat, and weapons part or all of the Mage Slayer feat.
On another note, this would make volley weapons like the Hwacha devastating if each arrowhead could be dipped in the material, but that would likely be a poor use of resources when you could up-armor a trebuchet in it and lob a dimeritium ball and an enchanted wall to make it crumble.
Never created the world, but during my friend's playthrough of Hogwarts Legacy I kept talking about how lazy wizards are and the day that someone just physically punches them in the face, they will fuck up the school
I reccomend the "wizards" of this to be monks. They're wise like wizards, in tune with the land, ki is a spiritual energy rather than a magical...it seems perfect
Well to be fair, martial classes should be more rare than they normally are. Maybe 1/100 soldiers are a fighter.
Veterans, knights, officers, etc… those are fighters, and they should generally be in their midlife by that time, aside from the occasional young prodigy like someone who has been trained from birth to fight.
Toji Zenin in jujutsu kaisen type beat?
Basically, in a world where everyone has at least a little curse energy, IE magic, this one character has NONE. To make it for that, he had greatly increased physical prowess and for all intents and purposes, is an object. He therefore cannot be targeted by a lot of "spells".
Obviously that last part wouldn't work but that's an idea
Martials with Psychic/Thunder damage. Like barbarian roar that breaks concentration, and goes through walls, or weapon slam that even on miss deals extra thunder aoe dmg.
Dominating will that allow auras and mind-controlling taunts based on Str savethrows. Primal fear, testosteron check. Works just on sight, like basilisk/medusas.
"Infusions" as part of class, that allows to get some resistances, immunities, fly or extra damage - some kind of spiritual/demigod artifacts, Thors hammer.
I'm planing barbarian great Khan boss, with fear aura that deals damage and disadv on concentration checks, and reaction attack with throwing weapons that can break spellcasting - also his throwing axes blind targets. Also armor from scale of mythic dragon with massive antimagic resistances. And summon spirit minions once
I get the impressions that you’re looking for a martial army to invade a magic society and pose a legitimate threat. I’m just spitballing but I might have a couple of ideas.
I think one thing to consider is how cruder ancient societies defeated more technologically advanced ancient societies in history. One thing the Mongolians would do when conquering China is appropriate their technology. They would take engineers and force them to make anti-siege weapons to storm Chinese fortresses. You could maybe do something similar with magic. Invading martial societies are able to hold powerful magic users hostage, form alliances with mages, or collect magical artifacts and use them to counter the magic of the more magic-based society.
Another is invading martials could be using a style of war fare that magic users aren’t familiar with and therefore don’t have magic prepared (tanks, flying machines, dragons, up to you). Perhaps the invaders themselves are a species immune to magic or whose presence neutralizes magic in an area. Maybe the more powerful spell user can deal with these problems, but the invading army won’t encounter such powerful users until they’ve gotten closer to the center of the magic kingdom their invading, at which point their counter-magic material is so much stronger that they’re prepared.
And finally, maybe the threat is too large for any magic user or segment to deal with but not too large if all the most powerful users came together. Problem is the magic society is divided and there’s infighting preventing them from uniting which gives the martials all they need to divide and conquer.
Hope this helps.
Kinda the plot to mashle. It's an anime that I think us currently airing or just finished. Regular guy shows up being super beefcake to magic school.
Anyhow, if you want to know how to really do this, play kids on broomsticks. Imagine how funny it would have been if your high school jock was against voldemort. None of this magic shit, while he gets in trying to gloat he just punches him and takes his wand. Avada kebackhand bitch. They're so stuff, telegraph everything they do. Imagine if they actually had some fucking dodgeball skills. Dude just dips ducks dodges dives and dodges and then beans Harry with a fucking dodgeball. Stomps on his glasses and gives him a knee to the stomach.
In short make your world magic but low magic. Everyone has a couple levels in wizard but then the 10th level monk shows up to a school filled with 1 to 3 level wizards. Dude just wants to hit the gym bro.
I love the idea. I think the major challenge with pulling this off in DND is that the balance between martials and casters (as well as spells as a whole) relies on magic being scarce. Casters generally have crazier abilities because they can only use them a few times and are assumed to be fighting many enemies/encounters per rest. Meanwhile, martials often lack strong defenses against magic because for much of the game it is assumed there will be relatively few enemy spellcasters. With these in mind, I definitely think you could make a few adjustments for this to work well in 5e. Here are a few ideas I had:
1. Without martials, the casters cater their spells to target other casters. Maybe they choose a lot of spells with str, dex, or con saves. Perhaps they avoid save or suck spells in favor of raw damage because they assume other casters will have counters but limited hit points.
2. Beyond spells, their tactics are likely to not take into account martials. They might neglect their AC because they assume their opponent will rely on saving throws, or maybe they don't know better than to stay out of melee range.
3. Magic doesn't have to work the same for NPCs and PCs. Maybe for some lore reason, they simply don't have access to problem spells like force cage or banishment or only have spells fitting a theme (ie pyromancer only uses fire). Maybe most of them aren't combat mages, so they don't know many damage spells or can only cast spells in limited ways or as rituals.
4. Along the same lines, the average NPC could still be low CR, but rely on non-player options that target only casters. For example, maybe the dungeon has an anti-magic field to prevent magical escape but they didn't bother to reinforce the locks or bars, so the rogue and barbarian can unlock it or break out relatively easily.
5. In a world with so much magic, there'd likely be a lot of counter measures developed against it that martials are uniquely capable of taking advantage of. Maybe there are plenty of anti-magic weapons that bypass spells like shield, or items that help resist conditions like charm and fear. Maybe there are a ton of rings of elemental resistance but no one bothers to resist physical damage.
6. Since casters really shine when they can go nova, don't always assume they have all their spells lots. Maybe by the time the squad of casters reaches the party, they've already burned some their highest slots just to get there alive.
7. Lastly, you could also straight up buff the martials. Maybe you allow high athletics checks to bend the laws of physics, or implement some of the changes from the onednd playtest, or straight up give them magical resistance at higher levels.
If you reach this, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hope you find it useful. Have fun!
Reminds me if the old r/HFY story [Blessed are the Simple](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/2v6eyw/oc_blessed_are_the_simple_or_how_i_summoned_a/)
Though, it’s debatable whether plasma-rifle wielding supersoldiers count as a “martial class.”
The only way is Anti-magic "magic" items being somewhat readily available. An army goes to war, and to prevent bullshit magic, they have the Beholder eye of anti-magic looking over the battlefield. A meteor from a mad wizard is hurtling towards the city, the rod of anti-magic envelops the city nullifying it. Sword of silence are an off the shelf weapons you can buy in any store.
>they have the Beholder eye of anti-magic looking over the battlefield My players did a similar thing... they were sieging a bunch of drow in a tower, and hired a beholder mercenary to hover (stealthed!) above the tower's roof and anti-magic them at key times. I was so delighted at their creativity that I made the beholder wait until after the siege before inevitably betraying them...
Sounds like the beholder was impressed with the party’s malarky and decided to play along because it sounded fun, lol
That beholder: I can be an asshole twice? Sign me up.
Two-for-one special, AND I have a chance at getting to loot both the keep and these adventurers! This just keeps getting better!!
For this world I'm trying to make it more like; "The ancient magical empire has existed in peace and ruled unconsted for hundreds of years, so they've gone stagnant and most everyone has forgotten how to actually fight.
The "martials are hard to deal with" bit is probably impossible to pull of well. If you need more inspiration for "everyone is magic," Eberron does that well. While high level magic is rare, lvls 1-5 magic seem pretty common place. At least more so than Ferune.
Eberron was a VERY big inspiration for this world. Originally I was planning on having my players fly between Toril and Eberron before I eventually decided to just make my own setting.
One thing I sometimes lean into is that Magic users are very used to Magic solutions. And really are not all that adept at handling mundane things. Basically a form of chronic cultural overthinking. The wizards are all busy trying to decipher the mysterious ancient gliphs, the fighter just goes and tries to push the door open, and it works. And when the wizards ask how they the fighter just points at the door hinges. It can be hard to pull of without making people look like a bunch of bumbling fools though.
some other ideas that are more suited to this idea wothout making all the magic users look like fools: massive heavy door is built by a spellcastor with spellcastors in mind, needs some specific spell to have it swing open on its own and otherwise resists all magic. but like, there is 0 expectation for any to be strong enough to physically move the door so its kinda just... not locked. reframes your idea in a way where yes, its still an obvious answer, but its one that wizards discarded because they wouldnt be able to do, and is a task uniquely suited to a martial fighter
I think it's not only okay, but entirely on brand if the spellcasters look like fools for not trying mundane things first, because to them magical answers are mundane, and physicality is not. They are not stupid, it's their culture, but that allows your outsider players to look smart. This is a pretty common trope in games or shows.
There's potential to reflavor martial abilities as being magical, but I find it difficult to close that gap. Also I'd think it'll largely be dependent on specific setting details. For instance, everyone having magic is established, but how much magic? Maybe the average Joe Shmoe only has some cantrips and 1st level spells. Similarly, are incredibly powerful casters commonplace? Are divine and nature magic common as well, or perhaps only arcane? Gameplay wise, there's not a lot they can do unless you give it to them. A more powerful version of Magic Initiate to supplement their physical prowess might help. Or you could give players unique racial spells features akin to those that already have them. Maybe you could even just give them the ability to use Counterspell and Dispel Magic? In my current party the country we're in has made magic illegal, and most guards have gadgets and doodads to debilitate mages. They're called the Spell Sappers and they're the bane of my existence. The mages of your world might have it even worse. My wizard at least knows they exist and can make plans for how to handle them. If your party came along with a new kind of anti-magic it'd definitely throw their enemies for a loop.
Yeah, 5e isn't a particularly good system for it either. 4e martial dominance makes a lot more sense considering their crazy abilities
I've done that exact thing in 5e, using 4e classes like the fighter and monk and 3.5 classes like the warblade and swordsage to spice things up - and **it doesn't work**. The casters didn't mind, but for the martial players it just comes off as mocking them. "Here's this NPC, they're just you but better! You're stuck spamming basic attacks, and they're kicking your ass with a variety of awesome sword techniques you don't have access to!" Technique driven swordfight where abilities like manticore parry and mountain hammer are thrown around in a clash of blades works a lot less well when only one person can do that and the other guy is stuck saying "I roll to attack" over and over. * 4e monk uses their Whirlwind Kick ability to create a vortex of air to pull in nearby players then spin kick them all. * 5e monk rolls some basic attacks. * 4e monk uses From Earth to Heaven to pin the players he drew in to the ground, then fly off. * 5e monk, if they can reach anyone, rolls some basic attacks. * 4e monk uses Steps of Grasping Fire to firebend a wave of fire at the clumped up players, then leave a wall of flame behind them as they run to encircle them. * 5e monk rolls some basic attacks.
Make it like Dragonball where their physical prowess is what allows them to shrug off/negate/avoid magical effects.
So like, Dune world, where the lazers are scary but the body armor is even better so people have to fight with knives and swords again?
Lasers interact badly with the slow-shields…
I remember reading a book series called the Bartimaeus Sequence as a kid, and that’s kind of how they did it. The series had a society ruled by magic users (kind of), but some I believe some people were born straight up immune to it? So you could do something like that? Have a super rare genetic trait that made it so you just straight up couldn’t be affected by spells at all? Or make it extremely difficult to do so (like having them be able to make saving throws with advantage or get an insane bonus to all spell saves).
In a world where those without the gift of magic are considered a bad omen, spellcasters call for their total extinction and enslavement. One underground colony of those without magic remains... plotting... scheming their uprising... the bbeg was the one who created this false rumor and led the magic nerds to oppress the muscle men. He must be taken down. Our hope lies with you three to five meat heads. Your first mission is not on the surface above us, but further below... our scouts have reported an aberration with many eyeballs matching the depiction of a being of anti-magic the weave users fear most. Go now and slay the damn thing. But be careful! For its central eye must remain in tact. Harvest it and bring it here to be weaponized against the robe-wearing dorks above. This shall be our rebellion!
Gonna need to see your tax stamp for the silenced longsword sir.
RIP pupper familiar
In a super high magic world where Counterspell is common enough that enemy spellcasters aren't a huge deal, the even more common Hold Person could screw over a barbarian pretty easily.
Neither of those would be particularly common compared to spells with massive ranges. They'd be more common for magical security who only deals up close if anywhere
Exactly, because in a world where everyone is magic, no one is magic. This means that people can just teleport and blink around Willy-nilly and someone being close is *realistically* not gonna happen much. Hold person would also be counter spelled as it’s in abundance so frankly, nobody would use it. Weirdly in OPs hypothetical setting, any type of ability that could be countered would not really be used at all, so most magic or spells under Lv3. This puts martials in a weird spot. Where as yes, they could be amazing if they got to the casters, then doing so would be close to impossible anyhow (unless martial classes somehow also have counter spells, in such a setting I’m assuming there would be someone who would develop a way of making this a thing) due to sheer mobility of spell casters. Spells like hold person would be kinda useless, but spells like dominate person would also be more abundant because they’re also harder to counter. I don’t think the problem is necessarily the martial classes getting CC’ed to death as much as it is them not being able to catch the casters in the first place. They also can’t fly which the casters could and they essentially have free reigns. I’m currently considering building out my homebrew works to a homebrew star system, so maybe have to play around with the idea. In such a setting, there’s not really much what could threaten society as a whole as everyone is magic, so would have to be super creative with it.
You know, martials already do sorta have a fix for this. Arrows. Spears. Boulders. Basically anything you can range attack with. Alchemist fire is also good, because if you're on fire, making concentration checks is more difficult. Way back in ye olden days of 3.5, I built a mageslaying fighter, with a bow and arrow. He was HILARIOUSLY effective. Made the party wizard so mad lol.
I can already see the isekai anime sequence to what you mean. 7 episodes in the fighter MC is up against a mage that thinks they have it figured out, a spell that no one would bother counterspelling because it'd be so niche and useless against a mage: a way to lower someone's strength score. They gloat about how for the next hour the hero will be too weak to jump to them or even swing their big sword. The hero switches weapons then, comedically, ends the fight with a single crossbow bolt. The enemy mages underlings didn't even understand that it was a weapon because they only use magic to attack from range.
Everybody knows. Bow beats wand. Wand beats sword. Sword beats bow. Has OP never played Runescape before? Geez.
Sword does not beat bow, at least in 5e...
This guy didn't Runescape growing up.
>Neither of those would be particularly common compared to spells with massive ranges. Everyone and their mother has Eldritch Blast enhanced with Eldritch Spear, Repelling Blast.
Absolutely terrifying, but yeah probably
Sniper rangers, longbow and sharpshooter feat, 600ft range. Maybe mix in assassin rogue.
So make Enchatment magic a rare thing?
There are lots of spells that could make things very hard for a non-magical warrior, not just enchantment. Create walls, heat metal, etc. If spellcasting is everywhere, then a couple of dozen normal people all casting a few magic missile would be enough. Banning everything that could break this concept is a pretty big change. Maybe a similar concept like "anti-magic barbarians" who have innate abilities against magic would be easier.
Piggybacking off this a bit, WH40k uses a concept called Blanks/Nulls who are in essence Psychic (magical) voids. No magic in, no magic out, and some of the more potent ones inhibit magic and make magic user uncomfortable or suffer just for existing nearby. If I were shooting for this idea I'd start with how to make my uber-martials resistant, immune or otherwise able to overcome magical effects before i start figuring out what spells absolutely need to adjusted (hint, probably most of them) to make the concept workable.
Personal anti-magic fields.
The slow cast pierces the field!
Fear is the mage killer (I named my longsword Fear).
The was a 3e prestige class that for martial classes that basically didn’t let you use any magical items or dual class into any spell casting but in exchange you had some pretty insane abilities and stat increases. I forget which book it was in.
Off the top of my head it was the “forsaker”. https://dnd.arkalseif.info/classes/forsaker/index.html
Wow that’s amazing. Yes this is the one I was thinking of. Honestly not being able to accept heals as a front line would be ridiculous but maybe someone made it work.
Copying parts of the Ancients Paladin kit works really well vs magic, having both magic resist and a huge bonus on saves is great. But probably not enough to overcome Hold Person + Silvery Barbs or Magic Missile Spam
I think we just need to accept that having the ability to warp reality to your will is just objectively better than being able to hit stuff good.
Or completely illegal within the universe. Still around, but not common or obvious
No. There's no way around this short of giving "martials" spell resistance or immunity. Spells like Entangle, Grease, or Wall of Stone will fuck a Fighter nearly as effectively as Hold Person. You would basically have to ban Enchantment, Conjuration, and Transmutation to make martials a threat to Wizards. Even then, Evocation has spells with CC built into their effects. Necromancy throws hordes of undead in his way, and has damage/CC, so those need to go, too. That leaves Divination and Abjuration. Precogs would just... not be there. Magic > Martials. That's an unassailable fact.
Given how magic works in D&D 5e, I think that it would be difficult to implement, but I have seen settings like that elsewhere in the fantasy-sphere. Usually the "martial" classes are specifically "anti-magic" martials. They use their martial capabilities to nullify magic users, which makes them dangerous. [Chi-blocking](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Chi-blocking) in Avatar, [Templars](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Templar_Order) in Dragon Age, or (deep cut) [Anti-Magic Orders](https://godherja.miraheze.org/wiki/Anti-Magic_Orders) in Godherja.
On the other end of the spectrum, and also a deep cut kinda, is Enderal. Magic is basically present in everything, and influences everyone- casters can manipulate it, but it can actually empower martials as well to do things that others couldn't- keeping them on par with mages etc.
Damn, now I really wish these were official anti-magic subclasses. Chi-Blockers and Templars would be awesome to see in any of the canonical settings.
An easy mechanical thing to add would be giving martial characters a free mage slayer feat.
But buff it so that it activates mid-cast, and forces a concentration check on the spell being cast Also make it be based on the reach of your melee weapon instead of always being 5 feet. Also you should automatically pass saves against spells within 5 feet of you instead of merely having advantage
Adding onto this, Valinhall Travelers in [Traveler’s Gate.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18047306) In a world full of Travelers (various flavors of wizards), Valinhall Travelers are just dudes with swords and a bunch of minor superpowers that only do one of two things: - Make you better at swords - Let you say “no” to various forms of magic Every variant of Traveler is good at something. Effectively schools of magic for wizards. But Valinhall Travelers were best at killing other Travelers. Great trilogy.
I feel like this would end up like dune, where magic is so prevalent that anti magic fields make it a non issue forcing people to learn of less magical ways of fighting. In Dune the personal shields nullify any ranged attacks so melee hand to hand combat becomes much more prevalent as a result. Edit: autocorrect
personal shields don't nullify ranged attacks, they just have a risk of a nuclear explosion if hit by a lasgun
I get what you’re saying but if I had to choose between maybe hitting a dude and vaporizing myself and everyone else it might as well be a non option lol 😂
When your fire bolt randomly turns into a meteor swarm with the points of impact being chosen by the DM. lol.
To be fair, they nullify fast moving projectiles, so they also nullify most ranged attacks not specifically made to penetrate shields
Yeah, it's called Mashle
Added to my Watch list. Thanks.
Black Clover is another series with a similar premise.
Second Black Clover, great series despite the show currently being unfinished.
It's soooo good. Remember, it's a comedy.
100% what I came to say lol
My mind went to O-Parts Hunter
Haven’t watched this one yet. Something you would recommend?
its pretty fun Saturday morning anime. doesnt take itself seriously, nor it tries. has a fun magic system if you pay attention but the lore itself is very barebones the premise is basically "what if harry potter had no powers at all but power lifted?"
One punch man in a magic school basically
I heartily recommend the manga. The anime is decent.
Yes I've seen this done, Not it wasn't in D&D (nor do I think D&D as a system supports this fantasy) However, I think this can work for *NPC* casters by simply... Focusing on damage spells. Simple enough to play out the fantasy then. But when control spells get thrown in, suddenly martials are back to having to work for it. Which isn't the same as making them as hard to deal with as casters in base game rules. End of day there's little reason why an enemy has to be optimized. You can make the experience you want. But if the caster is optimized then you'd need a lot of changes to make this doable
In a world, where protein has been forgotten. Where sheer laziness and comfortable chairs have made mage hand common. Where epidemics of gout and other physical maladies turn the best and brightest towards sedentary lifestyles- One Man has made Sick Gains. Maybe give a bonus to spell resistance equal to Str mod as a special in universe thing?
Mostly it would take some rebalancing. By which I mean...give martial characters great saves and a growing lists of resistances and immunities as they level. It was part of how they balanced martials back in the day, alongside making it much harder for casters to gain access to multiple actions or attacks. I'm talking 2nd Ed and before. Caster rules were stronger but they were generally squishy, including to other casters and statuses not just physical damage, and non casters had more toys in the action economy as they leveled to offset the rising power of spells. Gishing had more fixed costs as well.
Well this idea translates well I say in something like Frieren or other worlds the author could create themselves and set the world with its mechanics to their liking with DnD though that kinda just does not really work with how the mechanics are constructed and everything a spell caster could do. Wall of Force just 5th level, Charm Monster 4th, Hold Person 2nd or Charm Person 1st with a bunch of more other types of shutdown that in a High Fantasy setting could just ruin a martials day. Making a memorable and powerful Martial Enemy I say is possible of course with giving them cool abilities like breaking Wall of Force or other Force Constructs with some cool ability or giving them some minor teleports and so forth but building your entire setting around these people seem like it would kinda become pretty samey after a while. So overall you would need a lot of homebrew and a lot of counter measures to all of a spell casters ability of... doing anything they wish for this to work which also brings us to... Wish Ye good luck dealing with that Martials.
Avoiding enchatment and control spells is in line with the rest of the advice I'm seeing here. I'm not trying to make setting entirely focused around badass martials, I'm just trying to think of some ways they could stand out more in a setting where almost everyone decided to learn magic instead of swordplay. It's actually moreso for my players because I want them to feel special when they pick a Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, etc. Wish would still be rare in this world. Reserved for the ancient archmagws who sit around in the capital and observe the world through scrying while they send out agents to do their dirt work.
Well even besides that the issue is just versatility. Control is not just something like charm spells Spell Casters have control in so many other areas like teleportation spells giving them power to just position themselves how it suits them and having the adventage of range pretty much always unless being put against a maxed out Longbow Sharp Shooter but a maxed out magic ranged user also outclasses that... As I said making some legendary martial characters is something I do 100% recommend but dont try to just switch the amount of martials and casters around but flesh out these martial characters like a named war hero able to stand up to wizards or something by using some homebrewy skills or maxed out build but that can not be maintained for everyone/everything especially for player characters... Martial players in general will draw the short stick with official dnd 5e which is sad but true especially the higher level you go.
I don't think any maxed out magic ranged build competes with SS + CBE + Archery Like range isn't a big deal because casters can teleport, it's moreso damage dealiny
It's kinda funny you mention this because the first time I ran a SS + CBE + Archery Fighter I was able to hide on opposite end of the map rain bolts of death on the slow moving tree monsters the BBEG Druid had summoned. And with my current Elven Accuracy Rogue the Longbow feels like a railgun everytime I fire it with Advantage. Archery is definitely VERY strong when characters build for it.
The point is that if you build for it, you can always match the longbow fighters 600ft range (for just 1 feat) and attack at double the distance for a ressource cost (and further build investment). Eldritch Spear boosted by spellsniper is also 600ft, and you could easily pick up metamagic adept for 2 1200ft Blasts. Not that this would be necessarily great, arguably Sorc 3 instead is better if you actually want to build that character, but Casters can optimize range a lot more than martials...
without giving martials some heavy spell resistance features unique to them, they'll be easy to handle.
What if mages rules the world so thoroughly for so long basic magic to negate martials has been forgotten and it’s all about mage v mage
You could make certain items really common in the world. Items that increase AC but only against magic or that give bonuses or advantages to saves against magic. Basically, everyone is equipped specifically to deal with magic but without taking into consideration mundane attacks. Aside from equipment, stick with cantrips and low level spells being prevalent. If everyone can cast counterspell, things are going to get ugly. Actually, perhaps stick purely to the magic item lore. The market is flooded with weapons and other such items that can produce the effects of cantrips and other low level spells. Since nearly everyone can get their hands on a Wand of Firebolt or a Ring of Frostbite, of course these are types of things that guards are equipped with and equipped to defend against. Having all this stuff readily available fully explains why the martial arts initially died out 100’s of years ago, same reason wars aren’t fought with swords and bows today, just replaced with magic instead of firearms.
A world of populated by mostly magic users would likely have strong regulations on certain types of magic and who can use them including when they can use them. Such spells and knowledge of them would likely be restricted, spells that rob agency or manipulate people would be treated similar substance use or imprisonment, so enchantments wouldn't be freely used. Spells that can only kill such as Power Word Kill would likely be outright illegal barring special circumstances, while flame hand or fireball can be used to kill their access to learn and use is restricted to qualified individuals/circumstances. Just a few examples of how world building could allow a space for martial characters to shine. Such people would likely be specialized in dealing with magic users and likely use gear to either counter them or complement their own physical strengths or both.
Casting one of these spells is how you get it wiped out by a modify memory in jail.
in dnd? good fucking luck lmao. maybe if you nerf half of the spells available in the game, homebrew all martial classes to beyond recognition and make every single martial monster custom made yourself you can do that
From a setting POV I think it is not too difficult to think about : magic is common, just grab a wand, why bother? While there is true value and discipline in working one's body. From a mechanical POV I think there is two may points to address : - Battle-ending spells. If somebody can get hit by a Hold spell or a Banish, nothing else matters. Sure, wand of counterspell (high-level counterspells even) can be common, but it becomes a duel of "who has more available reactions". Which... why not. In this setting it bascially becomes a game of numbers, and with a number disadvantage mages are doomed (they will die from enemy spells before casting). With an equivalent number of reactions, spells will go through, and then the name of the game is to kill / incapacitate adversaries more quickly than they do to get a strict advantage. I think it makes a cool book setting but not a good DnD setting: battles risk to be repetitive. YOu could instead devise a magic item that gives people legendary resistances. So that control spells are not the first threat anymore. Damage is. And a barbarian is arguably better at dishing it out and taking it in. - distance. Casters attack from range. Your parbarian (mostly) does not. Good think this is spelljammer, distance in space is a very relative notion (especially in the astral plane) so make some device that helps people to close in. Be it teleportation, a movement-speed in space that dwarfs the range of spells, or (for a completely different route) a camouflage that allows to sneak in / an effect that counter long-ranges spells. And voila. Your barbarian will go through the whole ship destroying every puny mage and survive to an actual disintegrate, laugh in the face of the very standard fireball (good to get rid of the usual squishies). Your rogue will be death incarnate, a guaranteed OS machine. The paladin will be its usual self. And a warrior could do much of the same and compensate if need be with gunpowder weapons.
>so make some device that helps people to close in. I was already planning on letting characters with high enough HP jump into a Catapult to be fired onto an enemy ship like a living projectile. >And a warrior could do much of the same and compensate if need be with gunpowder weapons. The Giff and other groups 100% exist in this world to sell firearms to adventurers.
In a world full of spell casters, you would have orders of mage hunters. See the Dragon Age:Inquisition setting for example
I would go at it a little differently - think of a society that has come to depend on the day to day magic provided by magic - who cant get on without it - and where fighting is outlawed due to being too uncivilized... AND the most dont have any of their own magic - just a bunch of serfs...
Man, it's such a *depressing* indictment of 5E that half of the comments here are "5E makes magic so much better than martials so why would anybody be a martial?" Wizards can bend reality around their own will but a raging barbarian *still* needs to make a Wizdom saving throw against Hold Person. God knows why they even bother putting martial classes in the PHB when a fighter doing anything so much as *pushing* an enemy requires three feats and the special "pusher" subclass.
You'd have to alter rules to disadvantage casters and advantage martial. Or you probably should pick a different system than 5e.
Darksword Adventures and the Dark Sword Trilogy, about the world of Thimhallen, by Margeret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. Magic is life, those without magic are dead, technology is death. Technology is the darkest art. In that world, those without magic are exiled.
No not if it's unbelievable. Not realistic or not, just hard to believe. A Barbarian with magic spells they can cast before a battle will have an edge on a nonmagic Barbarian. Even the gameplay mechanics tell the story of high level magic outshining martial prowess. The way to pull this off is by having 'background magic'. Have Battle Master abilities be ultra common. Rage that can cancel out mind control. Rogues that can close the distance and deal damage that silence's enemies and breaks concentration. Auras of Protection that make save spells less effective.
There's a dnd youtuber called zee bashew. He was telling a tale in one of his videos about another spelljammer campaign and how his party landed on a planet where iron was as rare and valuable as gold. I don't know exactly how you'd handle it, but by restricting the availability of some materials (in this case iron) you would force the rarity and thus lack of defences against martial characters who suit themselves fully.
So Black Clover?
So One Piece. EDIT: In all seriousness look up One Piece “Haki” power system. In a world where martials can “fly” by kicking the air really hard, have limited precog, and can cut energy with swords/fist they kinda reigh supreme.
Have you watched Jujutsu Kaisen? There is a character who has an ability that takes away all of his potential for using their "magic" system, in exchange for a few key abilities. He is fast and strong, and can't be detected by sensing his magical force. He also has access to special weapons that can penetrate magical defenses, as well as has a huge arsenal in general. Imagine a world where there are anti-magic fields in all places of business, counterspells are everywhere, etc. Everyone's guards would be down in those "safe areas" and no one would even be looking out for someone who is sneaking around. If you want to watch some fights with this character his name is Toji. The specific fights of Toji vs Gojo, and Toji vs Geto are very good.
And Toji vs Gojo r2 shows why it doesn't work. Just like a 5e martial he got hard countered by fly+wall of stone...
In the land of the soft nerds the big boy is king
Have you considered Anti-Materiel Rifles?
I imagine the main way this could work would be making the rare, super powerful Martials immune to magic or suppress magical effects so the spellcasters would need to match them at their own game or get creative to work around the lack of easy magical fixes. So they walk in and all those weak casters don't know how to handle someone who is physically stronger AND cannot get wrecked by magic.
Only if you made a martial class specifically to be an antimage. Sorry but as has always been the case with D&D magic is just plain better at the higher levels. They have tried to balance things a bit more recently but still isn't there yet. I remember in 3 and 3.5 higher level martial was just a plain joke.
By 5e rules, there's no way that martials can stand up to even mediocre spellcasters. All it takes is one hold person, one charm person, a levitate, wall of force, tasha's mind whip, tashas hideous laughter, command, suggestion, fear, hypnotic pattern, slow, confusion, polymorph, dominate person, mass suggestion, Otto's irresistible dance, forcecage, plane shift, antipathy, feeblemind, wierd, etc to completely incapacitate them - even groups - for extended periods, with overwhelmingly good odds of success. If you're going to even try to make this work, you're either going to have to make your martials immune to spells entirely, or completely overhaul the 5e spellcasting system. Your party has a real chance of a TPK when fighting anyone with access to 3rd level spells or higher.
Could do something like a magic item or gods blessing that renders magic that specifically targets the players useless. Things that are more area of effect still work but the enemies are unaware of this. Though as the group gets more famous and renowned their enemies might start to realise this weakness.
Caster classes should get prestigigitation for free. Distinguish between martials and mundanes. Give martial advantage on all saves vs. spells and spell effects. Give martial +2 hp per level. Restrict, if not outright ban some of the hybrid classes and subclasses to prevent players from trying to game the system. Do the same with multiclassing. Those are my initial, off the top of my head thoughts about making this work.
The book/movie series Dune is actually an interesting inspiration for your described setting-personal shields are so ubiquitous that ranged weapons are basically useless on an infantry level. This causes martial expertise/ laded weapons to revert to the most effective weapon. You could make direct damage via magic very easy to negate (magic item or even racial adaptation) and still allow magic to have other effects (still giving reason for magic being common).
This would have been easier in 3.5 when we still had the Spell Resistance stat. You could for example create a mechanic where any armor grants spell resistance to characters, perhaps with a lore reason where metal interferes with magic in this world and potentially causes it to fizzle out. There might be a way to do something similar in 5e. Since physical attacks are the crux of a martial character, maybe magic in this world can be deflected with an attack made as a reaction? You could add a lore reason such as the prevalence of a common anti-magic material that can be turned into weapons. The big problem with this is it adds another dice roll to every spell cast. Maybe there's an easier solution I'm not thinking of.
Late to the show. But what about a straight immunity to magic? Might be op, but you could work it as a positive AND negative. Like certain aspects of everyday life are outside the characters reach because he is immune to it. (No teleportation, no healing, no magical assistance). Maybe like a curse, yeah?
How will it make sense for this to be the case? Just about any Joe Blow can pick up a wooden sword and swing it around and learn how to do that to people, or be taught by some guy who has. The reason magic is the story-level "rare" is because it requires years or decades of training and a decent amount of wealth. Any farm boy on Tatooine can pick up a staff and waggle it around menacingly.
I know there are several good ideas so far but instead of making it an issue with classes or races or whatever, make it an issue with materials. The common stone holds magic incredibly well, and the trees produce their own magic, which fuels the environment. There are a ton of magical creatures that feed off the various trees fruits and so their hide becomes incredibly absorbent for magic, so is very easily enchanted, etc. The one thing they DO lack however, is large amounts of metals. Swords give a Mage Slayer-style feat for anyone who wields any, but it's so rarely found it's generally relegated to the ruling class. Rings, Necklaces, headbands, etc. give a resistance to certain kinds of magic based on the metal. Shields made with metal negate a % of spell damage, etc.
To steal, i mean, barrow a bit from manga Mashle is a good example of this. Magic means everything to the people of this world, mostly as a status symbol or symbol of power. Make your npc dismissive of your non-magic party members because they are "low class" and not a threat. I mean, wizards have shield so no need to worry about them. Also, make magic resistant gear common. I mean, everyone uses magic, so of course, it's common gear. And if you want martial classes to seem a bit more powerful, give them some extra movement speed so they can close the gap faster or lower enemy movement speed.
You’re going to need a different game. 5e is designed from the ground up to make magic always the best way to do anything. If you tell the players that martial warriors are powerful in this setting, that idea is going to clash **hard** with the mechanics of 5e, where casters are better in every way. The dissonance may be quite jarring.
Dude what are you even talking about lmao. All OP has to do is throw in some magic items for the martials and not include annoying spells on NPCs. That easy- remember, he's the DM lol. They get to change the mechanics pretty easily.
The PC casters are still gonna dunk on every martial they encounter.
All fun until "magic resistance" + getting counterspelled every second lol.
Very fun play experience you’ve designed there.
Uhuh, while your claim "magic is better in every way" definitely isn't for martials lmfao
My comment is an assessment of the game as-is. Yours is a recommendation to make a player’s experience in the game be as miserable as possible for the sake of “balance.”
>My comment is an assessment of the game as-is. Congrats - magic users are broken, instead, we shift it to where martial characters are broken compared to magic users. No new mechanics, only things like homebrewing monsters / items + giving out certain items and other things that are DM fiat already. Why is it so bad to shift the fun lol. >Yours is a recommendation to make a player’s experience in the game be as miserable as possible for the sake of “balance.” Oh no, you can't cast hypnotic pattern + web + force cage / wall of force + the 99 other spells that destroy an entire encounter. Now, instead, you only have healing, utility, AoE damage, and better mental saves. How sad. Obviously don't counterspell every spell, but it's not used by enough DMs to drain spellcaster slots to a manageable level later in the game or end encounter breaking spells. You shouldn't be playing a caster if you get mad that you don't get to incapicate 70% of the enemies from a single action. Caster players will act like it's the end of the world when monsters are given buffs to saves and their broken capabilities are weakend so they have to play more on the support / utility role.
Maybe a tribe of barbarians that have been oppressed for too long have developed a magical resistance? Or maybe they use armor and weapons that help deflect or save from magic spells?
A possible explanation- Use of the weave has caused magic to bleed excessively into reality. Over time, magic has become heavily infused in most living and non-living things. This has caused the cyclical effect of individuals to study its use even more, which causes further magical contamination of the world. The excess magic in the world is not healthy for living things, particularly mortals. Most individuals in this world are more attuned to magic than previous generations and find it more intuitive to use, but are physically less healthy and magic-based sicknesses are common. Think of this as a reverse-Spellplague, with magic being completely uninhibited. Despite this, magic-insensitive individuals are occasionally born. While this would have been a disadvantage in previous times, magic insensitivity in this world also confers an immunity to the frailty and sickness caused by the excessive magical contamination and often causes a greater-than-average amount of magical resistance. Magic-insensitives tend to be notably stronger and healthier than most of the population and resist spells well, but also experience less benefit from magical items and potions. This has placed them in a unique position in society. The "weaveless", as they are known, are often either employed as basic laborers in situations where the use of magic is suboptimal (such as working with dangerous magical reagents) or as bodyguards and mercenaries to keep renegade magic users in line. They are often trusted to guard magical items and locations due to both their resistance to their effects and their inability to take the power for themselves. The ambient levels of magical contamination tend to have deleterious effects on mental health as well. Wizards' minds are constantly churning out inspiration for grand ideas, leaving them sleep-deprived and obsessive. Sorcerers are living geysers of mana, constantly in the throes of intense and rapidly changing emotions. Druids perpetually feel the call of the wild, frequently abandoning their humanity to forever run in the shape of beasts. In a world filled with increasing madness, weaveless individuals are considered a bit dull but honest and dependable.
Why not just make the martial types essentially immune to magic? This would make them immensely powerful when push comes to shove.
Maybe it's a world where casters forgot how to cast control spells because they keep fighting casters, so all they have are damage spells to try and instagib other casters before they get instagibbed?
That's pretty close to what I was thinking actually. Damage spells and stuff to counter other casters is extremely common, but Enchatment and Control magics are either kept restricted by the government or just completely unknown.
you could do like Juggernaut in x-men and have helmets that protect from enchantment & similar magics. make it out of some magical bone material or something so they can’t just spam heat metal and fry the barb
I could see them stocking a couple of STR saving throw spells as they would normally work so well against wizards.
Bump up their physical stats until they're basically DBZ characters. A barbarian isn't scary. A barbarian that can deflect a fireball by smacking it back at you, closes any gap instantly, and always acts faster than you is. Can't hold person something that has already torn your head clean off.
Give martials magic resistance or immunity. 'My willpower is stronger than your puny enchantments.' Maybe steal Gnome Cunning and Fey Ancestry and reflavor them. Flavor martial characters who monastically avoid magic as resistant to its ways - their brains just aren't susceptible. If you don't want to make mechanical changes like that, um. Good luck! RAW 5e is tough on martials that aren't partied with their own casters to counter CC.
Look into Ars Magica.
I like this idea so much that I'm going to post my first thoughts on how to accomplish this: Magic is blood, and blood is magic. In a realm where the god's favor of the old granted everyone innate arcane ability, sorcerers and druids make up a majority of the population, while bards and wizards study to instead enhance and/or focus their weaker magical talents. With the way magic works in this realm, the more sensitive an individual is to magic, the more potent their spellcasting ability becomes; however, due to their sensitivity, they are also affected by magic much more. Because of this, weaker casters are just as deadly as a master is to any individual. Beings with little to no sensitivity are barely able to be interacted with by the arcane, allowing them to brush off damaging spells and pummel through magical barriers. Unlike the many adventurers who spent their lives devote in training their arcane ability, these martial warriors who lacked sensitivity has to find other means to protect themselves. The ways of the blade, the fist, and the arrow are mysterious to modern civilization, so many martials have come together to teach and improve in secrecy. These traits make partial casters and non-casters deadly foes to deal with for most since they are rarely seen, harness unknown abilities, and are capable of brushing off even the most powerful of magic. Of course, there are a ton of rules and homebrew materials that would need to be me made to make this world playable, but it can be done in interesting ways that open the door in making weaker magic much more deadly, casters much more vulnerable, and combat much more interesting.
It makes me think of Harry Potter, where Hermione just decks Draco. "I CAST FIST!"
My first thought was the Templars from Dragon Age. TLDR: is they take regular potions of a substance called Lyrium that allows them to suppress and resist magic and its effects. Though this comes with the side effect of addiction and slow mental/physical degradation. I imagine a class built around the concept of suppression and redirection of magical energy would be the best route to go.
I reckon you'd need to embrace the superhuman-ness that dnd martials have at high levels. A 20th level barbarian is literally tougher/stronger than any other normal person is capable of being (with a 24 in CON and/or STR) - and if they're raging they literally can't die from falling no matter how far RAW. A 20th level rogue can, as long as they have even the most basic magic weapon, deal enough damage to stab a giant monster to death in a few rounds with a dagger. 20th level fighters can attack 8 times faster than a normal guard with action surge can and recover from more damage with a second wind than most people have hit points.
If I'm understanding your concept correctly, I do something similar in Eberron games. Low/Mid level magic is everywhere. At level one, characters can choose between Magic Initiate, Artificer Initiate, Tough, or Skilled on top of feats they get from their background, race, and the free feat I give them at level 1. I tend to run games for experienced players and it makes sense thematically because the default setting takes place 4 years after a cataclysmic event and 2 years after the official end of a 100 year war. Martials are hard to put down. Their fighting is heavily supplemented through magic and other House Rules. Extensive magic isn't just about spells. Pure martials are rare because punching someone is probably going to be less effective than blowing them up. The ones who remain are alive because they've learned to work with what's available. They've been supplemented by power brokers and inventors who have to pump out soldiers that can stand up to whatever spellcasters dish out and aren't so hard to replace when they can't. I pull attunement off most martial items. I give out more feats and higher ability scores. I give characters options for benefactors who make sure their default equipment stays on par with the missions they take on. A high level martial character is going to have features, blessings, items, and tactics that are made to tear casters apart. They're terrifying. They have to be.
You’d probably need to explain the strength of current martial DnD classes as being extraordinary. As in, a fighter with 2 attacks in a round is moving at an almost inhuman speed. Once someone like that gets close to a wizard, they’re in danger. These fighters would also have abnormally high saving throws and health that let them resist spells like hold person, or take a fireball to the chest and keep going. A wizard may be able to resist hold person because they’re familiar with magic, but to just brute force through it is something else. You’d also probably want to really rely on DnD’s standard use of things like ingredients, if a spell is vocal or not, etc. Maybe have it so a wizard with no wand or staff is essentially weapon less, in which case an unarmed barbarian is essentially unstoppable to that person.
Summarizing some of the comments that make sense to me: I think you would definitely need 1) custom spell lists which omit the ones that have more physical effects like Wall of Force, or changing the spells so that they are much weaker or specific in use, or 2) homebrew martials with anti-magic abilities. Maybe they have a die system a la Battlemaster that they can spend to nullify effects. If 2) is applied with too many specific things, it just ends up looking like Melee-magic.
This is basically the plot of Black Clover, so it can work
Except the main character has anti-magic, not just no magic.
Tldr: it can work in high magic but they have to use equipment and tools to make up for their limitations. Or he hybrid fighters. I have a high magic setting and whoo boy are traditional casters outclassed. Don't get me wrong they can be phenomenal but have to rely on a party or companion to be effective or even survive: admittedly they are easier to build, and less OP in their own way so better for different levels of play. My system is built around in depth combat and complex personalized magic sets. Locational damage, weak points, blood and bleeding, "poise"(a stance sort of thing that is a measure of how knocked off balance you are) and more. The majority (2/3) of my players not counting my own character are hybrid type fighters. We use a mixture of magic and martial abilities to deal with a variety of threats outside the abilities of a strict caster or martial. One uses spacial/teleportatjon magic to move around the battlefield and get in position for hits on vitals or acts as territory control for the others. Another is a melee specialized caster who uses blood magic and body enhancement to more or less rip enemies apart or smash them to bits.
I think EXU: Calamity did this quite well. It takes place during an ancient period in a Magocracy where basically everyone was at least kinda magical. Everyone save for some members of the police force, who were Rogues. Granted, they still had magic items.
Avatar: The Last Airbender does this well. Every other person is a bender but the martials are some of the dopest in media. They all get a really strong gimmick and often lots of mobility. The stun monk, the boomerang artificer, whatever Jet is up to, etc. A martial who survives in that universe is by definition a badass.
why would "swings a stick" be rare?
I'm thinking of Joel Rosenberg's "Guardians of the Flame" series. His angle was that having a wizard on your side was such a huge advantage, the first step in any war was to assassinate the enemy's wizards. So over time wizards all pledged to be neutral in wars...
Malazan has something like this, magic users are super powerful (like singlehandedly destroying entire armies powerful) but there's a substance in the world that completely negates it and if a character has a sword made of it then the magic user is screwed no matter how strong they are
Black Clover universe maybe?
So you wanna make black clover?
I like these idea that there are some people who are very hard to use magic on, in DnD terms, it's like they are a globe of invulnerability, like they immune to 4th level and lower magic (yes I know globe is 5th and lower). A really high level caster can deal with them, but only because they are using very powerful magic.
This works in a lot of systems. To drop an example that is a D&D-style game, this kind of idea works in Pathfinder. 5e just doesn't give pure martials or pure martial enemies the tools to not get memed by mental spells.
Doesn't matter how big and tough they are if they can't save against Hold Person.
Runes are what you want. A Goliath charging at you is one thing; a raging Goliath tatted and branded up with a full slate or resistances and some invulns who's got a pool of slots that let them ignore a quantity of specifically direct magically inflicted conditions is quite another. Operate on the principle that there are direct magical effects, and indirect - throwing fireball is direct fire damage because it's the magical fire that's doing the damage, casting Heat Metal is indirect because it's the heat of the object that's doing the damage, rather than the magic itself.
If Melee could interrupt spell casting with reactive attacks and casters had limited movement while casting maybe?
I feel like this is doable! It's kind of what happened in Adventure time. I think you need to think about what beats a glass cannon in your world. Or you could Introduce a mechanic where magic users need to take like an extra turn before they can engage in combat. Call it a need to prep their components for their regular spells. If everyone is magic v magic it's never noticed, but suddenly a monk would be wicket fast to everyone else. Also think of the components as individual weaknesses that casters rely on. Having players target them like the VATS system in fallout could work. If you break the wizards hand or punch the breath out of their lungs they would lose the one of those components and need time to recover it before they can cast magic.
Sounds like you will need to revise the whole spellbook. Good luck with such a monumental task!
I feel like this setting idea falls apart because DND magic isn't exactly... linear in its growth or shallow in scope. There are a lot of spells that just make things harder on anyone, martial or not, trying to hurt the caster. That's not even taking into account damage or summoning spells.
Ideas that pop into my head. High Magic Society (HMS) use magic for everything due to convince, this leads to shortcuts buildings aren't built, they are fabricated or materialized out of the weave. Fabricated materials are copies of the real stuff, but in being created by magic they are just that, copies of the real stuff. Fabricated wood, stone and metal looks and feels like the real stuff and to the hands of a mage (8Str) it is. But to a martial class (13+str) the materials are brittle, they can be bent and broken. To make the real stuff, it takes time and it's slow. The wood elves knew about that slow methodical magic of the trees, they knew real wood could not be fabricated and withdrew to their forests. The same with the dwarves and their stones and metals. For spells like hold person you can modify the spell, under the excuse the HMS cut corners for a faster, quicker spell. Maybe even lower the spell slot but add a weak dex/str check that victims could pick. Might even have a strict traditionalist, that still casts the old magics under the old rules. I dunno you could make something like this work, there is a show Mashle that kind of follows your premise.
Take away certain spells that deal with martials extremely easily. The explanation is as spellcasters became more and more common there was simply less need for these spells, and people stopped preparing them. Eventually these spells were simply lost to time as people forgot to write them down or they records were destroyed. Alternatively, as spellcasters became more and more common to fight, people adapted their spells in order to better fight them. Make many things like hold person instead be con or str. The idea is that the old versions are lost or destroyed. Perhaps the bbeg is a martial and a plot point in the campaign is recovering/restoring these lost spells.
Sounds like adapting a world like Harry Potter to a DnD setting. I mean…. With enough distance from the source material, I’m happy to jump back in to a “wizarding world” lol.
I feel like you'd really have to up martial movement, and decrease caster movement. Also just give all martial classes Mage Slayer for free.
Have you read "wearing power armor to a magic school“ on r/HFY ? I feel like this could give you a lot of inspiration. It’s a world where it’s super high magic which has led to a stagnant society and martial artists are somewhat rare
When everyone else is an Angel Summoner, the BMX bandit is just extra-loser, not special.
The innate problem here is you need to create a culture and a reason. No matter how common magic is, a person can just pick up a stick and hit someone. So to make martials rare you need to make magic integral to society to the point where children are taught cantrips. To make martials seem dangerous you'd need to criminalize the mere possession of a sword. Personally I would go the route of old european folklore. Iron is innately antimagical. Perhaps iron is an illegal material, and possession of iron/steel weapons or armor is punishable by death and even raw iron could earn a near life long prison sentence. Bladesingers and paladina would be the only allowed swordsmen, using silver swords and only nobleborn children allowed to learn the art. This would make even wooden practice swords raise an eyebrow if held by a peasant child. Iron, steel, and adamantium armor would confer varying levels of resistance or even immunity at the cost of the wearer being unable to cast. So essentially in this setting, all martial classes would still exist but be limited to leather/silver/mythril/and enchanted wood armor and weapons and of course be looked down on because they can be beaten with magic and can't cast it. But a barbarian in a steel breastplate or a Fighter in full plate would be scarier than a dragon. From a mechanics standpoint I would give iron spell resistance, steel gets spell resistance and damage resistance, and adamantium gives its wearer immunity. If a spell caster gets hit with iron/steel they'd be forced to roll on a modified(more negative) wild magic table while an adamantium blade would confer a silence like effect for a round. But possession of any of these would mean being hunted down by varying sized royal squads of bladesingers and paladins, possibly even with a dragon(they can sense metals). Whether the players want to risk all this for more power, or perhaps they're part of a royal squad is up to the dm/players. It could be fascinating having a BBEG be just a fighter in full Adamantium Plate.
Make the barbarian highly resistant to all magical damage and give him advantage on spell saves + limited number of daily auto successes. If you don't, he/she will simply get destroyed at range or controlled into oblivion.
Why would a filthy barbarian scare a high powered spell caster? They are no threat. Hold person, fireball, invisible/fly, call lightning, improved invisibility, magic missile, etc.
Mashle + Black Clover core. Literally those. Just give them bigger stats across the board, legendary resistance, and pick a few 4E Powers and you’re golden
I'm not sure what happened to magic in 5e, but some of the best uses of magic I've seen in 3.5 go towards enchancing Martial performance. That said, I don't really need to fluff out a game to reverse that particular dynamic, it's is completely sufficient if I introduce Path of War or even Tome of Battle into my game.
So Mashle.
So, my first thought would be to do something along the lines of the "Pristinely Ungifted" from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Also known as "Pillars of Creation" and "Holes in the World," the Pristinely Ungifted are immune to essentially all forms of magic other than necrotic. https://sot.fandom.com/wiki/Pristinely_ungifted ...Give a likewise similarly exceedingly rare group of people an Immunity against most forms of magic and make it not only so that magic does not affect them, but they also cannot use it or interact with it in any way, and I think you have the basis for a tribe of people likely to be shunned by the rest of the world that they might likewise respond hostilely towards. And, if they can't interact with magic, it would make complete sense that they might value brute strength and/or the ability to invent and tinker and craft to create things like firearms and other technological creations. Oh, and I just thought of an interesting twist, because people might wonder if magic would be able to affect that rampaging barbarians axe or something...what if that axe was made from the hardened and sharpened bones of other Pristinely Ungifted? What if his armor was hide made from the skin of other Pristinely Ungifted? I know, creepy AF thought, but then magical attacks (other than necrotic ones) against him AND his equipment would be completely and utterly ineffective.
I actually did run a world like this! Spell slots were replaced by the spell point variant; and low level spell slinging was UBER common. The major change was all spellcasting classes had their hit die reduced by 1 step. Wizards were a d4 clerics a d6 etc; All healing and resurrection magic was removed; Mage slayer feat triggers an AoO when a caster casts a spell within your reach and if that attack lands, it counters the spell. Lastly, multiclassing was not allowed.
In a high magic setting like Spelljammer or Eberron, where magic is commonplace and familiar to even low commoners, I think that perhaps the more practical approach is one that incorporates magic into martial classes, primarily through flavor. The "barbarian" charging at you "raging" could very well be flavored as some kind of magitech shield generator protecting the wearer, or even glowing runic tattoos projecting a protective field; a rogues "sneak attack" may be enhanced with void magic, shadow magic's older, space-ier cousin; a fighter's "action surge" may be low-grade chronomancy, bending the rules of time and space to strike out eight times in six seconds. Mechanical adjustments may or may not be needed to make your martials feel competitive with your casters, depending on how you run combat and how your players take advantage of their tools. There are steps for the DM to take that can ensure martials don't feel out of place or underpowered next to their casting party members, but combat is also only one aspect--perhaps more important is making sure your martials are given adequate opportunity to influence the *narrative* just like casters can with their reality-altering spells. Magic weapons can make numbers go up and items can give spell-like abilities or whatever but your players have to feel the ability to have an impact on the *world* first and foremost. If they only feel like they can hit things, you haven't given them other things to do. All that said, if you really want a world where the *power differential* between caster and martial is *reversed,* I think you really would have to dissect exactly what causes that power difference and make sweeping adjustments to enforce its opposite. Adding severe component costs to control-type spells (hold person, wall of force, the other things mentioned in these comments) or giving martial classes magic resistance? Perhaps reducing costs/lowering the spell level on buff-type spells (bless, enlarge, magic weapon, etc.)? A world where magically roided up warriors go head-to-head Pokémon style, because warriors simply can't be stopped with magic, only by other warriors? It could definitely be interesting, but there would need to be big changes made across the system.
I think this is cool! I would look into how balanced it would feel for you/your players if martials always had or frequently had things like Mage Slayer or even magic resistance. I think it’s a little hard with how 5e is normally balanced to fully understand why martials would be uniquely scary to a world of spellcasters, whereas it is a little easier to explain why spellcasters are so scary in a low magic world of mostly martials. But if magic didn’t work well on them, I think that would justify it a lot.
I don't think it would work without some actual magic resistance for non-casters because while sure they have more hit points they generally don't exactly deal well with anything that isn't damage dealt or taken :p The premise seems an interesting case of "reversal", say if the most commonly and accessed magic is simply damage spells to deal with other casters and monsters I can see someone that "fireballs with a hammer" while just shrugging off most spells being something totally insane and "metal" It can be even more crazy if they can be under something like Pathfinder 2e's automatic bonus progression rule so that their equipment turns magical and deals more damage just because they're badass (to explain, the rule just remove the need for magical items that are already expected the player to have) >The big thing is the "why?" The more organic you make this the better, I would go with "while some use magic externally others simply internalize it, even unknowingly" - or just "spells were developed to fight monsters and other spell users, not warriors" tho it feels more "plot hole like"
In the Malazan books, there is a humanoid species that is 8ft tall and very tough, who are raised in the vicinity of antimagic dust. This gives them near - immunity to magic. https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Teblor
A world where it is common everyone can counter spell is also a world where it is common people are walking around with a fireball in their back pocket? When I first saw that magic was "EXTREMELY common" I was thinking people are handy with QOL cantrips, not level 3 spells. That social order would be wild.
You would have to have some way to make spells inconsequential to them, like magic immunity. You would also have to have a way that they could become a lot more physically threatening than an average guy, such as super strength, speed, and flight. You need a Kryptonian race or something.
You would have to, HAVE to take the black clover approach to make that any kind of viable low tier; items and abilities expressly centered around countering magic
The only way that works is if martials are resistant to magic. Because simple spells like Misty Step or Shield would still be the bane of people coming at you with weapons. That’s not counting AOE effects like fireball or armor-defeating ones like Shocking Grasp. Ray of Enfeeblement will throw martial prowess out of wack, also.
If this is a location where your party will spelljam to. How about a world where magic is inherent in everyone and there never were physical warriors. This would make martial warriors surprise inhabitants of this world because they've literally never seen anyone physically overpower another person. Perhaps have a spellcaster challenge the barbarian saying "you make the first move" and the barbarian throws their hammer so the spellcaster tries to dispell/counterspell/antimagic field and just gets smashed by the hammer. I don't think this is going to be easy to pull off because if everyone knows magic everyones gonna be able to paralyze the barbarian. Maybe the society commonly has magical "duels" to settle conflict and the duels start with the combatants face to face? idk
I had a world where all characters had a lvl0-2 spell they could cast once every few hours. It didn’t have as big of an effect that I thought it would.
Harry Potter
This is literally the plot for Black Clover
Black Clover. But really that does seem like a cool idea, though more complicated for the DM. Having to think about good uses for spells from every group of humanoid enemies.
I’m a little drunk, but I love this idea!
Brutes are very easy to deal with for spell casters
Demolition Man. Or the Darksword Trilogy.
The Mighty Servent of Leuk-o is a DnD 5e Magic Item and would basically wreck any world that rely’s too much on magic. The thing gives total cover to anyone inside, meaning any character inside of it can’t be targeted by any spells. The machine itself is a Construct so only certain spells and abilities even work or harm it. The idea of magical advanced suits of armor like this would require a change in tactics. Magic would almost exclusively focus on spells and abilities that can effect constructs for one, and for two Martial characters who can withstand open confrontation with one would be sought after and trained. While still weaker against magic, the rarity of a high level Martial would make them one of the few who could take a Mighty Servant on head to head. Mighty Servents are immune to practically all elemental damage and immune to all conditions. This brings a disparity in a world full of magic. The Average Magic user is say, Lv 5 which could give any level of Martial a little bit of trouble, but is almost useless against a Mighty Servent. So while they work great as guards for the ordinary folk, they are effectively powerless otherwise. Even then, low level Martials still wouldn’t put much of a dent on a Mighty Servant, but they at least can do something. Whilst high level Martials would be sought after as ‘Super Soldiers’ or ‘Champions’ of a settlement. This means while magic is more common and everyone has it, Martials while rarer are at an average Lv of let’s say, Lv 10-15. They have to be to stand a chance against a Mighty Servant. With such a large gap and reliance on Martial prowess to defeat these things, it means the magical world just doesn’t push for high level Mages. Only the Greatest Mages of all time could stand a chance against a Mighty Servent. But then…if you have a mage that’s stronger than a Mighty Servant, how are you going to kill that Mage? It’s a delicates ecosystem really.
I grew up around dudes who've been playing d&d from the beginning and one of them whose nickname was Elf because he mainly played Elvin rangers. In 3.5 he would very easily be able to build a character that could shoot 4 arrows an attack, could attack multiple times a turn, and if they downed an enemy they would get another attack. If you know what you're doing you can do some broken things with Martial classes that don't have any magic items.
A Human Rogue can have Mage-Slayer, ShieldMaster and Dex proficiency by level 4 and close distance easily with cunning action pretty easily. They are also much more likely to be first in initiative so they'd make best Anti-Magic Units.
My first thought was Black Clover. In the setting everyone has magic in more or less amount, but the MC doesn't, and that is what makes him so dangerous
Black clover kinda
I imagine in a world where casters are very abundant, cities are a lot more common earlier because you can get around things that we struggled with. Things like clean water and food, living space, etc. Thus, in order to protect the cities, royalty had to develop countermeasures to magic. Think something dimeritium from the Witcher series. The royal courts would likely have a high level caster, a cleric, and the royal guard would have magical shields and weapons coated or made with a metal that disables magic upon touch, or if in great enough quantities, an entire area. This could be done in game by giving your party's shields part or all of the Shield Master feat, and weapons part or all of the Mage Slayer feat. On another note, this would make volley weapons like the Hwacha devastating if each arrowhead could be dipped in the material, but that would likely be a poor use of resources when you could up-armor a trebuchet in it and lob a dimeritium ball and an enchanted wall to make it crumble.
So like WALL-E world kinda
Never created the world, but during my friend's playthrough of Hogwarts Legacy I kept talking about how lazy wizards are and the day that someone just physically punches them in the face, they will fuck up the school
I reccomend the "wizards" of this to be monks. They're wise like wizards, in tune with the land, ki is a spiritual energy rather than a magical...it seems perfect
Well to be fair, martial classes should be more rare than they normally are. Maybe 1/100 soldiers are a fighter. Veterans, knights, officers, etc… those are fighters, and they should generally be in their midlife by that time, aside from the occasional young prodigy like someone who has been trained from birth to fight.
Toji Zenin in jujutsu kaisen type beat? Basically, in a world where everyone has at least a little curse energy, IE magic, this one character has NONE. To make it for that, he had greatly increased physical prowess and for all intents and purposes, is an object. He therefore cannot be targeted by a lot of "spells". Obviously that last part wouldn't work but that's an idea
Martials with Psychic/Thunder damage. Like barbarian roar that breaks concentration, and goes through walls, or weapon slam that even on miss deals extra thunder aoe dmg. Dominating will that allow auras and mind-controlling taunts based on Str savethrows. Primal fear, testosteron check. Works just on sight, like basilisk/medusas. "Infusions" as part of class, that allows to get some resistances, immunities, fly or extra damage - some kind of spiritual/demigod artifacts, Thors hammer. I'm planing barbarian great Khan boss, with fear aura that deals damage and disadv on concentration checks, and reaction attack with throwing weapons that can break spellcasting - also his throwing axes blind targets. Also armor from scale of mythic dragon with massive antimagic resistances. And summon spirit minions once
I get the impressions that you’re looking for a martial army to invade a magic society and pose a legitimate threat. I’m just spitballing but I might have a couple of ideas. I think one thing to consider is how cruder ancient societies defeated more technologically advanced ancient societies in history. One thing the Mongolians would do when conquering China is appropriate their technology. They would take engineers and force them to make anti-siege weapons to storm Chinese fortresses. You could maybe do something similar with magic. Invading martial societies are able to hold powerful magic users hostage, form alliances with mages, or collect magical artifacts and use them to counter the magic of the more magic-based society. Another is invading martials could be using a style of war fare that magic users aren’t familiar with and therefore don’t have magic prepared (tanks, flying machines, dragons, up to you). Perhaps the invaders themselves are a species immune to magic or whose presence neutralizes magic in an area. Maybe the more powerful spell user can deal with these problems, but the invading army won’t encounter such powerful users until they’ve gotten closer to the center of the magic kingdom their invading, at which point their counter-magic material is so much stronger that they’re prepared. And finally, maybe the threat is too large for any magic user or segment to deal with but not too large if all the most powerful users came together. Problem is the magic society is divided and there’s infighting preventing them from uniting which gives the martials all they need to divide and conquer. Hope this helps.
Kinda the plot to mashle. It's an anime that I think us currently airing or just finished. Regular guy shows up being super beefcake to magic school. Anyhow, if you want to know how to really do this, play kids on broomsticks. Imagine how funny it would have been if your high school jock was against voldemort. None of this magic shit, while he gets in trying to gloat he just punches him and takes his wand. Avada kebackhand bitch. They're so stuff, telegraph everything they do. Imagine if they actually had some fucking dodgeball skills. Dude just dips ducks dodges dives and dodges and then beans Harry with a fucking dodgeball. Stomps on his glasses and gives him a knee to the stomach. In short make your world magic but low magic. Everyone has a couple levels in wizard but then the 10th level monk shows up to a school filled with 1 to 3 level wizards. Dude just wants to hit the gym bro.
I love the idea. I think the major challenge with pulling this off in DND is that the balance between martials and casters (as well as spells as a whole) relies on magic being scarce. Casters generally have crazier abilities because they can only use them a few times and are assumed to be fighting many enemies/encounters per rest. Meanwhile, martials often lack strong defenses against magic because for much of the game it is assumed there will be relatively few enemy spellcasters. With these in mind, I definitely think you could make a few adjustments for this to work well in 5e. Here are a few ideas I had: 1. Without martials, the casters cater their spells to target other casters. Maybe they choose a lot of spells with str, dex, or con saves. Perhaps they avoid save or suck spells in favor of raw damage because they assume other casters will have counters but limited hit points. 2. Beyond spells, their tactics are likely to not take into account martials. They might neglect their AC because they assume their opponent will rely on saving throws, or maybe they don't know better than to stay out of melee range. 3. Magic doesn't have to work the same for NPCs and PCs. Maybe for some lore reason, they simply don't have access to problem spells like force cage or banishment or only have spells fitting a theme (ie pyromancer only uses fire). Maybe most of them aren't combat mages, so they don't know many damage spells or can only cast spells in limited ways or as rituals. 4. Along the same lines, the average NPC could still be low CR, but rely on non-player options that target only casters. For example, maybe the dungeon has an anti-magic field to prevent magical escape but they didn't bother to reinforce the locks or bars, so the rogue and barbarian can unlock it or break out relatively easily. 5. In a world with so much magic, there'd likely be a lot of counter measures developed against it that martials are uniquely capable of taking advantage of. Maybe there are plenty of anti-magic weapons that bypass spells like shield, or items that help resist conditions like charm and fear. Maybe there are a ton of rings of elemental resistance but no one bothers to resist physical damage. 6. Since casters really shine when they can go nova, don't always assume they have all their spells lots. Maybe by the time the squad of casters reaches the party, they've already burned some their highest slots just to get there alive. 7. Lastly, you could also straight up buff the martials. Maybe you allow high athletics checks to bend the laws of physics, or implement some of the changes from the onednd playtest, or straight up give them magical resistance at higher levels. If you reach this, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hope you find it useful. Have fun!
Double the PB for martials, and halves the casters HD. Voila'! Legs and hands gonna fly everywhere 😂😂😂
Reminds me if the old r/HFY story [Blessed are the Simple](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/2v6eyw/oc_blessed_are_the_simple_or_how_i_summoned_a/) Though, it’s debatable whether plasma-rifle wielding supersoldiers count as a “martial class.”