One of the bits of received wisdom in D&D is that spellcasters are basically always more powerful than martial classes. But first, a definition of terms:
We're referring here to Spellcasters as full casters, which are Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards. Warlocks are kind of a special case here. There are, of course, also half casters in the Artificer, Paladin, and Ranger, and third-casters in the Eldritch Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue. The only classes that truly cannot be any kind of spellcaster are the Barbarian and Monk.
When we talk about "Martial" classes, we're referring to classes whose primary role in combat is to make weapon attacks (including unarmed strikes in the case of a Monk). With the exception of the Rogue, all of these are classes that get the Extra Attack feature. We're going to exclude for our purposes here full-caster classes that can "go martial" via the Bladesinger, College of Valor, or College of Swords subclasses because they don't give up very much to get empowered this way. Once again, Warlocks become a weird asterisk in all of this.
Let's then talk about how the trade-off works in theory:
Spellcasters are limited by spell slots. They can pull off some very powerful effects, but only a finite number of times per day. The general balance that should be struck, thus, is that a Spellcaster needs to play conservatively and weigh their options, because in a day with four separate combat encounters, if they blow all their leveled spells early on, they're going to be running on fumes in potentially higher-stakes situations.
Martial classes, in theory, are more reliable in this way - your Extra Attack doesn't require any additional resources, and so even if you've used up absolutely everything else, you can still reliably put out more damage thanks to having harder-hitting martial weapons, a focus on that weapon damage, and multiple attacks.
Let's investigate this. See, I suspect that this actually remains somewhat true in tier 1 and to an extent in tier 2.
Let's imagine I'm one of the Strength-focused melee classes, going with a Barbarian, Fighter, or Paladin. We're looking at a resource-free scenario here (ignoring things like Rage, Action Surge, or Divine Smites, because we're trying compare sustainable damage here). In tier 1, we're probably spending most of the time with a +3 to our main stat. We only have one attack this level.
One of these classes wielding a Maul is going to do 2d6+3 damage on a hit, once per turn if they hit. That's 10 damage.
Meanwhile, a spellcaster who is conserving spell slots or out of them is going to likely be casting a cantrip (we'll ignore the actually viable new version of True Strike introduced in the latest UA playtest). The highest-damage cantrips in the game are Poison Spray and the far-more popular Toll the Dead, both of which have d12 damage dice (the latter only if the target is below max health, but that's most of the time in combat). So, on a failed save, each of these deals 6.5 average damage. Clearly we're doing more with our Martials.
The math here more or less just doubles when we hit level 5, with a slight advantage to martials given that their damage modifier goes up.
Now, things do fall apart a little when we get to tier 3 - though I'll note that Fighters and Paladins both get a compensation for this. Rangers don't really scale up their damage outside of their (limited) spellcasting ability, and Barbarians scale more in the number of Rages they can use per day while the damage bonus goes up only modestly. Rogues have the smoothest scaling here, getting a new Sneak Attack die every odd level.
If our caster doesn't get some extra damage, such as from a Cleric's Potent Cantrip, that Toll the Dead has gone up to 3d12, or about 18.5 average damage. A Ranger with a Longbow is, by tier 3, likely doing two attacks that each deal 1d8+5 (maybe +6 or +7 if they have a magic weapon). If we're generous and assume they have a +2 weapon, we'll say they are dealing 11.5 per hit, or 23 damage per round. It's ahead of the Toll the Dead spellcaster, but only by 4.5 damage.
The thing is, yes, spell slots are limited, but how much fighting are you doing in a day? If every day is a slog with eight full combats, then sure, I could see you hitting a point where some casters are going to avoid using spell slots if they can.
But we should also consider just how powerful a spell slot can be.
It might be unfair to look at Fireball specifically, because it's an intentionally overpowered spell (though I'd worry that WotC would get burned to the ground if they nerfed it in 2024). So let's instead take a look at Shatter - a 2nd level spell that I don't think anyone would consider too powerful.
Shatter deals 3d8 thunder damage to creatures in a 10-foot radius sphere, or half as much on a successful Constitution save. So, that's an average of 13.5 damage.
If we hit two targets with this spell, and both fail their saves, we're dealing an average of 27 damage in a single action. We can do this at level 3.
If a Rogue gets sneak attack on an enemy with a shortbow at level 3, they're going to deal 3d6+3 (assuming a +3 Dexterity in tier 1) damage, or 13.5. So, they'll need two turns to match this single spell slot. Ok, that seems reasonable - the spell slot is a limited resource.
But let's go to higher levels. At level 9, our caster uses Cone of Cold, which can potentially hit a lot of targets for 8d8 cold damage, or an average of 36 damage. With a 60-foot cone, we're probably not bothering casting this unless we can hit three or more targets, so we're looking at 108 total damage dealt in a single action.
If we have a Monk with a +1 Quarterstaff at the same level (and assume we've maxed out Dex at this point), they're going to make two attacks that each deal 1d8+6 (naturally we're going to two-hand our staff) or 10.5 for each, then an unarmed strike for 1d6+5 (8.5) so we get 21 from the staff and then go up to 29.5 with the bonus action strike. Thus, to equal the damage of that one action, we're going to need a fourth turn. (Yes, the Monk can burn Ki for Flurry of Blows to reduce that to three turns, but the whole point here is that Martials are supposed to be more effective when not burning resources.)
Again, this is kind of how it's supposed to go.
But I think there's a limiting factor that comes into play before spell slots. And that's HP.
In my experience, while spell slots are certainly considered, there's also the universal consideration of HP to contend with - going into a fight at less than half health is usually not a great idea, because things can go bad very fast when a party member goes to 0 hit points. While I think low-level D&D is going to see people getting knocked out all the time, for high-level D&D, you sort of never want to hit that point.
And Martials are not really much more durable than spellcasters.
Ok, so obviously if you're playing a Fighter or Paladin you can deck yourself in heavy armor and get a very high AC - my Eldritch Knight had an AC of 22 and could cast Shield (though, again, limited resource, albeit one I almost never ran out of). But there are plenty of sources of damage that don't involve an attack roll. Furthermore, it's not actually super hard to get a spellcaster a high armor class. Medium armor is pretty easy to get on Clerics, Druids, Artificers, and some Warlocks. With that, and a modest 14 in Dexterity, you're only missing out on the benefits of heavy armor once there's enough gold to purchase Plate, and then only by 1 point of AC. AC is definitely a good thing to have - in the Ravnica game I run, I only have I think two characters with an AC lower than 18, and so even when I have pretty beefy monsters with +8s and +9s to hit, they're only getting them about half the time.
But what about HP?
Well, hit dice determine the HP you get as you level up. But two of the "martial" classes have d8 hit dice, which is no better than a Cleric, Druid, Bard, or Warlock. And indeed, with the Monk requiring heavy investment in both Dexterity and Wisdom, I think you're likely to have higher Constitution on those spellcasting classes.
So, essentially, I think that the scenario in which a martial class is supposed to shine - which is basically when the party is sucking fumes - is usually when the party wants to rest anyway because everyone's HP is low. Or it's one in which you're fighting a ton of trivial fights and the casters have somehow been baited into blowing all their limited spell slots.
So, how do we fix this?
Well, the first option is one I'll come out and say I do not endorse: get rid of cantrips. Earlier editions of the game forced wizards and their ilk to carry a light crossbow around and shoot things if they wanted to conserve spell slots. Nowadays, though, you can use some pretty powerful spells with extra beneficial effects - such as Ray of Frost slowing down targets. Weapon Mastery, coming in 2024, will at least give weapons similar bonus effects. But I think you might see martials as more powerful if spellcasters literally had no other option if they wanted to do magic than spend a resource. But, like, I don't want this. I don't want wizards and sorcerers to have to fire a light crossbow or whack someone with a quarterstaff, unless it's using the new and shockingly actually good True Strike cantrip from playtest 8.
The next option would be to super-charge martial class' single-target damage. A lot of the scenarios in which a spellcaster starts doing absurd amounts of damage are when they have a lot of targets. There are spells like Disintegrate, which deals an average of 75 damage to a single target, but that's a high-level spell with a chance to deal nothing if the target saves, and at tier 3, 75 damage is high but not unthinkable for a martial class (a Fighter with a +1 Greatsword is doing 2d6+7 at this level, and has three attacks, so 39 damage on average if all hit, so an action surge could get you to that same level). Alternatively, as a kind of "2.b" we could expand the AoE capabilities of martial classes, giving them lots of options to hit multiple monsters at a time and catch up in that manner.
The third option, though, I think could be controversial but would also potentially give martials a clear edge: give them way more HP.
See, if you're a martial class - especially with a melee build - all that sustainability is also working against you, because monsters will hit you. On my Wizard, I'm able to do basically everything I need to do while more than a monster's movement away from them, so it's rare that I actually take damage. But even if a Paladin's AC means they're only getting hit once every three attacks (compared to a Wizard getting hit two out of three times) that advantage goes away when you're getting attacked well over twice as often.
So if you really wanted to make martials feel sustainable, you could give them enough HP that the damage required to knock a Cleric out wouldn't even be enough to get a Fighter down to half their maximum.
This would either require a big nerf to hit dice for casters - maybe putting wizards and sorcerers at a d4 and the others at a d6 - or, more likely, just changing the way that HP is calculated.
This is probably not the right solution either, though: giving different characters wildly different amounts of HP has implications for things like healing - a heal that lands for 20 is going to feel enormous for a character with a max HP of 32 and like very little for someone with a max of 160.
So, going back to the drawing board, we should maybe just address the power of martial classes.
And I think here we also need to consider the following problem:
Spells are useful for more than just damage. A Wizard can toss a Fireball, for sure, but they can also give someone a 60-foot flying speed. And that versatility is something that martial classes really lack. A Barbarian or a Fighter is really only going to prove the power of their class in combat. And if that's the case, they really have to be better in combat than those more versatile classes. Or, they need to have a true, broad suite of out-of-combat abilities.
In a sense, then, I think the focus of D&D's balance is on combat, and particularly in damage-dealing potential. But when you have spells that can be super-useful outside of combat, as well as powerful crowd-control spells like Hypnotic Pattern that can basically trivialize large groups of foes, and then powerful area-effect spells that can deal more damage than a martial class can do in several turns, it does feel like something has got to shift.
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