D&D 5E Spells and Extra Attack Balance

[Dragongrief]

I'm looking at removing classes from my game, and am trying to figure out balance on one key combination: multiple attacks and spell-casting.

Assuming someone could take both full spell-casting and multiple attacks, what would be the concerns for balance?
*Unless other abilities are in play, you can only do one or the other in a given turn.
*Only a few spells directly enhance your physical attacks, and they can generally be cast on allies, so someone else could do it if you couldn't. Hex and Hunter's Mark seem to be the most likely for abuse, but those classes already have multi-attack options.

Is there anything I'm missing?

 

[Lanliss]

I'm looking at removing classes from my game, and am trying to figure out balance on one key combination: multiple attacks and spell-casting.

Assuming someone could take both full spell-casting and multiple attacks, what would be the concerns for balance?
*Unless other abilities are in play, you can only do one or the other in a given turn.
*Only a few spells directly enhance your physical attacks, and they can generally be cast on allies, so someone else could do it if you couldn't. Hex and Hunter's Mark seem to be the most likely for abuse, but those classes already have multi-attack options.

Is there anything I'm missing?

I was thinking of doing something like this. Each thing had prerequisites, and costs. For example, you had to buy 1st level spell slots, and that was required before you could buy 2nd level slots. It was the same way with attacks. This meant that Full spell casting and multiple attacks worked out to serious investments, and you were likely to not have much else to do outside of cast a spell, and attack. That isn't even counting weapon and armor proficiency, which cost certain (as yet undetermined) amounts dependent on what weight of armor, and whether the weapons were simple or martial.

 

[Li Shenron]

Assuming someone could take both full spell-casting and multiple attacks, what would be the concerns for balance?
*Unless other abilities are in play, you can only do one or the other in a given turn.

Balance is already taken care of, "Attack" and "Cast a spell" are two separate actions, you don't normally do both in one turn unless some specific ability tells you that you can.

There are other core characters which cast spells and gain Extra Attack: the Paladin, the Eldritch Knight, multiclassed characters, anyone with the Magic Initiate feat.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Assuming someone could take both full spell-casting and multiple attacks, what would be the concerns for balance?
*Unless other abilities are in play, you can only do one or the other in a given turn.
*Only a few spells directly enhance your physical attacks, and they can generally be cast on allies, so someone else could do it if you couldn't. Hex and Hunter's Mark seem to be the most likely for abuse, but those classes already have multi-attack options.

Is there anything I'm missing?

In general, primary spellcasters are in general balanced on the basis of spikier damage/effectiveness than martial characters with extra attacks. While a spellcaster is burning their upper-level spell slots, their damage is higher than that of an equivalent martial character's at-will attacks. When not burning resources, their at-will cantrip or attack damage is lower than that of the martial character's. As the spellcasters get higher-level and better spells, the martials get extra attacks and other effects that increase the damage of those attacks and the difference generally increases.

Even in those cases where a caster class or subtype has a feature dedicated to increasing at-will damage (such as ability damage on a cantrip), that generally isn't enough to bring the damage level with the attacks of a full martial class. The exception being the Warlock Eldritch Blast with Agonising Blast invocation picked. However Warlocks have somewhat more limited spell lists and casting capabilities than most other full spellcasters.

Overall, giving a full spellcaster an extra attack, at a level later than the martial characters tend to get it (such as the Valor bard) probably won't be a problem. Giving Fighter-level multiple attacks and capabilities alongside full spellcasting would be a definite issue I think.

 

[Xeviat]

Valor Bards, Blade Warlocks, and Bladesingers already get Extra Attack and full 9th level spellcasting.

Extra Attack is kind of part of necessary weapon damage scaling. Kind of. It's definitely more powerful than the cleric's +1d8 damage, and it's more powerful than a feat.


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[Dragongrief]

Thanks for the feedback.

It seems like the consensus is that a 2nd attack wouldn't be much of an issue, but a 3rd or 4th could increase the non-burst DPR by a noticable amount.

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[Saeviomagy]

Look at the level of damage and range acheivable by cantrips. That's the expected level of non-resource-expending damage available to a full caster. If the damage dealt by extra attacks exceeds that average, then you've probably made the caster stronger by adding extra attacks.

It makes sense to consider the extremes, so if you've got a greatsword being swung by someone with maximum strength, you're looking at 12 points of damage per attack.

To equal a second attack you need to be at 4d10 cantrip damage, so giving everyone a free second attack at 17th level won't change balance too much.

Obviously if you're going to arbitrarily restrict weaponry, you can bring that number down by a fair bit: a second one-hander attack comes in at only ~3d10, making 11th level work.

 

[Tormyr]

You could make the third and fourth attacks separate instances of taking an extra attack feat. It adds a lot of martial damage, but you sacrifice ASIs to get it.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Is there anything I'm missing?

Possibly the existence of classless RPGs?

I don't mean to be mean, but if you want a classless RPG, why not play a classless RPG? For example, GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE.

Or perhaps a low-number-of-classes system. For example, Numenera/Cypher.

 

[Lanliss]

Possibly the existence of classless RPGs?

I don't mean to be mean, but if you want a classless RPG, why not play a classless RPG? For example, GURPS, Savage Worlds, FATE.

Or perhaps a low-number-of-classes system. For example, Numenera/Cypher.

For me personally, my reasons were
1) I like 5E, and don't have experience with other RPGs. Also don't feel like buying and learning something new when I can just adapt what I have.

2) The design challenge is fun. Homebrewing and tweaking the rules is much more fun than going out and paying someone else to do it for you, and allows you to get exactly what you want instead of almost what you want, or sometimes even the exact opposite of what you want.

3) On the flip side of 2, I might be active enough to homebrew, but I am too lazy to surf the web looking for alternatives, and quite often too lazy/don't care enough to even click the links offered by others as alternatives. It ties in with 2 as well, because the fun makes homebrewing the item worth it, while there would be no fun in just browsing the web.