Addressing the martial/caster disparity outside of combat

Reducing caster capability doesn't really address how martials feel underpowered and just serves to make casters have a less good time. Martials have no real mechanical oomph for utility powers outside of a few niche class abilities, which is the problem. Give them a pool based on proficiency to give themselves free advantage or even guarantee success on certain skill and ability checks. So, for example, Barbarians can use this pool to gain advantage on Strength checks or even spend multiple parts on the pool to do a heroic feat of strength,, taking 20 on the roll to auto-succeed. It would go a long way towards making martials feel like they do in movies and stories, performing stunts and feats with relative ease.

I don't think that nerfing casters is going to fix the problem because the problem is that martials besides rogue don't really get anything to address their out of combat utility. Making something like "Sending" for example cost hp for the caster isn't going to make the martial feel any better about not being able to have the same utility. Its just going to make it feel more unnecessarily punishing to play a spellcaster.

I think that it would be best to find ways to give martials more pull in certain social encounters, or allow them more chances to put their physical abilities to use for the party if they want to. Maybe giving them magic items or homebrewing some new ones to help augment their utility out of combat could help bridge the gap?

I do not see a disparity worthy of being corrected. Mechanical impact is one thing, but I do not think my character is inferior because it cant do something that another character can do.

Put another way: i am aware that my dissatisfaction with something does not make it inherently dissatisfactory.

A mage cant do handstand pushups, and a fighter cant make an interdimensional portal... i chose the class that I wanted to play and I am not gonna gripe that my friend has a different toolkit...

Mundane solutions almost always require significant investment in physical attributes and skills, so I do not accept the argument that "a mage can do all those skill check things PLUS magic". A mage needs to fly over the cliff because it can't succeed the athletics checks needed to climb it. That doesnt make either option better, just different approaches to the same goal. The fighter CAN'T open an interdimensional portal, but THEY CAN travel to an npc, speak with them, perhaps do a task for them to gain their favor and have THEM open an interdimensional portal.

Mundane characters cant snap their fingers to do "the thing", but they are not incapable of producing the same effect if given enough time. Sure, sometimes you need to teleport somewhere NOW, but I think we should all be honest and accept that if a party isnt capable of doing something that the DM won't require that they do that thing -- they will provide some other avenue of success or introduce some item or npc to allow the party to do the necessary thing.

Once you accept that "what is necessary" will be accounted for you run into the realization that anything else is just... vanity. Its NICE to be able to pop back to someone's home town and rp with npc friends... but it isnt something that the game requires. Its a bonus, just like the mundane character's quest to ask a npc to open that portal is bonus content.

For me, normally the utility of martial combatants comes from their status in the story.

Like the Bard could always talk for the Party. But they're not going to be able to hold the same sway as the Fighter from a honourable noble bloodline making the Party's case in a Royal Court or the Barbarian who has proven their strength in front a groups of other Barbarian Clans. In both cases though the Bard could always throw an Eagles Splendor the Martials way when initiating these plot points.

I wouldnt play with either of those rules tbh.

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Does anyone actually run 6-8 encounters in a game-day, aside from maybe the odd dungeon??

We just had a 6-hour session tonight. It was a brilliant session: loads of roleplay, some lore, travel, some shopping, a random encounter where the party had to choose to rescue a guy from a burning blimp factory despite realising that he and his friends had started the fire (2 characters almost died in that fire and they’re level 9)… and then we ended on a long rest with

I just can’t imagine actually playing in or running a game with regular 6-8 encounters.