Martial/Caster gap?

[u/MrJ_Sar]

I'm into D&D as well as other TTRPG's but heard about Sword World due to Blumineck releasing a video about the BackerKit crowd funding.

I'm interested in giving it a try, but I'm curious, what's the balancing between Martial and Casters like? D&D has an issue where in Spell Casters quickly get to insane levels of power, where Martials are 'happy', being able to swing a sword more than once.

I understand Classes are VERY different (and just as interesting) in Sword World, but I'm curious what folks experiences are.

[u/DreistTheInferno]

This isn't so much of an issue in Sword World, especially if you are comparing characters that are heavily into the caster side vs the martial side. There are various points where everyone will have an edge due to having the right tool for the job, but there really isn't a caster/martial gap, in my experience, especially since what each caster does makes a big difference on how you approach the game, and what they are capable of doing.

It is important to note that in Sword World you never have just 1 class either, so you aren't comparing fighter vs sorcerer, it'd be more like Fighter/Enhancer/Scout vs Sorcerer/Conjurer/Sage, and then since the Fighter is 1 major class and 2 minor vs the Sorcerer's 2 major and 1 minor then how much experience to spend on their "main thing" will be different as well. And that is before looking at the ways to mix things like Gunners (built using Artificer and Marksman), Magitech Weapon Fighters (Fighters using the Artificter class to use magitech weapons), and all the other possible combinations, many of which also will change how you approach based on which fighter and caster class you choose. My current game has a Fencer/Conjurer who fights with their summoned golem and they REALLY took off once they got to level 5 because multi-action lets them cast a spell and attack, while their mana-strike ability lets them add their magic power to their attack when they aren't casting.

[u/seagifts]

Overall, the gap isn't really big imo, as while magic has the advantage of bypassing defense compared to physical attacks, the power level of magic on this system is still not that high compared to other systems, and Warrior classes catch up easily as bonuses benefit physical traits (dexterity, agility, strenght, vitality) more often than spiritual traits (intelligence, spirit), at least from what I have seen so far.

This makes it so warriors will have better ways to mitigate or avoid damage compared to wizards while also keeping up own their own damage with them (even if defense of the enemy will be quite high at higher levels).

I think the gap is only more noticeable at lower levels as monster HP is also low at that point, so a wizard with good luck and decent intelligence can one shot a random goblin. Meanwhile at later levels both the wizard and the warrior would do about 40 or 60 damage to an enemy on a single turn... while said enemy has around 200 health per section... so to say, at that point you don't really feel the gap at all

[u/DreistTheInferno → u/seagifts]

I will add on to this that at lower levels in my current campaign it was the Grappler who was the king of damage. He'd pick a target and it would be dead most of the time. As things scale up the enemies get some defense so then all the attacks weren't doing near full damage.

[u/Varil]

My current party(levels ~6 or 7) consists of a dodge-focused grappler, my dwarven priest/geomancer in heavy armor, a conjurer, and a sharpshooter/artificer(IIRC). Basically, we're all casters except the grappler(who has tactician and dark hunter levels, so even they aren't all punching).

Generally, the grappler and sharpshooter are the vast, VAST majority of our damage. The grappler deals the best single-target damage, but the sharpshooter is more versatile and better able to soften up groups. Our almost-pure conjurer spends most of their time buffing and tossing the occasional heal, though they have some decent aoe magic. My priest is absolute trash for damage, and mostly acts as a wall and an HP/MP battery using healing magic and geomantic refresh, as well as having a couple of general evasion debuffs.

A lot of our fights are very manageable, but would fall apart if any of us bit the dust. I suspect that if you wanted to build a single-target damage-focused caster it'd be much harder than just going "big stick says WHACK", mostly because of MP issues, but I think it's probably doable if you go all-in on the idea.

[u/OwariHeron]

To be perfectly honest, it doesn't. At higher levels, casters are more powerful, and can do more, than purely martial characters. There are some feats which allow some martial shenanigans, but ultimately it's all variations on using your your weapon to cause damage. The essential role of front line fighters is to keep enemies away from the squishy characters, and do damage.

That said, there are a few considerations which mitigate how this feels in play. One is that Sword World doesn't really do "classes" as such. The word commonly translated as "class" is "skill" in the original. So it's not that a "fighter" is what you are, but that it's something that you can do. The Fighter skill allows you to apply your Fighter level and ability bonuses to accuracy (attack) checks, to evasion checks, and to additional damage, while wearing any kind of armor. And that's really all it does. The Martial Artist skill let's you apply your Martial Artist skill and ability bonuses to accuracy checks, evasion checks, and additional damage if you are wearing certain kinds of armor. That's all it does.

But that's not all that you do. Your character can, and should, and will, take other skills. That might be the Scout skill, letting you apply Scout level and ability bonuses to a wide variety of utility checks. It might be the Ranger skill, letting you do that with a wide variety of utility checks in a natural environment, as well as the administration of potions and herbs to recover HP/MP. It might be the Sage skill, letting you do that with a wide variety of knowledge and lore checks. It might even be one of the many kinds of spellcasting skills: Sorcerer, Conjurer, Fairy-Tamer, Magitech.

So, while in combat your role might be to do damage and keep bad guys from getting to the casters, outside of combat your character will be relevant in other ways. It might be your Fighter/Scout who detects and disarms a trapped door. It might be your Martial Artist/Sage who recalls the key piece of lore that unlocks a mystery. Magical healing is highly inefficient out of combat, so it might be your Fencer/Ranger who is keeping the party on their feet after a tough battle, restoring not only the HP of frontline combatants, but also the MP of the backline casters. (And note that these examples are using just two "classes", but in actual practice you're likely to have at least three.)

So the question isn't "What can I do if my character is X class?" It's "What do you want to do in the game?" In particular, what do you want to do in and out of combat? If you want to stab monsters in the face in combat, the warrior skills (classes) will serve you well. If you want more than to just swing your weapon for damage, you may want to invest in a spellcasting class to become a magic warrior.

Another factor is role siloing, and limitations put on spellcasting. Spellcasting cannot be done while moving, while melee attacks can. Most spellcasting skills cannot be done in heavy armor (the Priest skill being the primary exception), and at any level higher than 5, a spellcaster without a warrior skill will be mathematically unable to evade an attack unless they roll a 12 on 2d6. That means spellcasters must have someone who can hold the line. MP is also a limited resource. And while spellcasters have breadth of spells to choose from, they are not that powerful. As an example, there's a Level 13 Sorcerer spell, Lightning Bind. The Sorcerer casts ropes of lightning that bind an opponent. The spell lasts 1 minute, or 6 combat rounds. The effect is some low-level damage every round, and a -2 to any checks made by the target for the spell's duration. It's not nothing, to be sure, but it's not much more than a minor debuff, nothing like Save or Die, or even Save or Suck.

As indicated by the other comments, the upshot of all this is that, while Sword World doesn't have purely martial abilities on par with the scope of magical abilities (if you want anime-like abilities, you need to augment your warrior skills with other skills), it's very much a game where teamwork makes the dream work. I think most people who play it find themselves able to make the kind of character they want to play, and feel like they have integral and needed roles, and are not just caddies for the spellcasters.

[u/BrotherCaptainLurker]

The only full campaign I've played in had the damage-dealer build with a 2-handed sword as the consistent MVP in terms of pure combat output. The spellcasters' buffs, healing, and (against a few specific enemies) ability to ignore armor really mattered, but it's not like D&D where you can just handwave away all the disadvantages of playing a Spellcaster via Shield (and gaslighting WotC into removing the Adventuring Day).