The “Squishy Caster” Fallacy

Author: Audere / Soma

There’s a common belief among players that spellcasters are squishy, and martials are not. “Martials have d10 or d12 dice, while casters have a d6 and d8s, and thus frontline martials need to take hits up front and protect the backline casters.” In The Myth of Party Roles, we briefly discussed some of the reasons why this isn’t the case. In this article, we will explore some of the mathematical underpinnings of why casters can be just as or more sturdy than martials, and explore the power of well-built casters in more depth. We’ll explain the strengths of a defensive dip on casters, and the value of increasing AC as much as possible in general. Finally, we’ll briefly go over the various ways casters can increase their sturdiness. 

The intent of this article is to explicate upon the concept of “sturdiness,” and how a common notion of “squishy casters” is a fallacy. But to do that, we’ll need to establish some common terms.  

For the purposes of this article, “sturdiness” is a specific measure of a character’s defensive capabilities. Increasing sturdiness comes down to being able to minimize effects of enemy abilities with save DCs via saving throws, and the ability to avoid enemy attacks via Armor Class. Of course, both are functionally also tied to the total amount of hit points a character has. We will refer to the overall concept of sturdiness at points in this article as “effective hit points”—the idea of a value that combines all aspects of a character’s defenses (total hit points, Armor Class, saving throw bonuses, resistances).

There are other factors that influence sturdiness, such as the ability to deny enemy turns (via control spells and other features), specific party synergies, tactics, battlefield positioning, etc. However, we will not be focusing on those elements here, as they are outside the scope of this article. Instead, we will be diving deep into the other factors previously mentioned, primarily Armor Class and saving throws.

Having a lot of hit points but poor AC doesn’t necessarily make you more survivable than having a mediocre hit point total but high AC—this is our effective hit points concept in action (sturdiness isn’t just about high hit points, but includes some combination of hit points and Armor Class). In fact, given how total hit points scales poorly relative to enemy damage output, having higher AC is often as or more valuable than higher total hit points. 

This becomes obvious if you consider the extremes (1 AC character with 100 hit points vs. 19 AC character with 75 hit points), but it becomes more and more difficult to intuitively ascertain what has more effective hit points when the hit point and AC values edge closer together. Clearly, sturdiness with respect to attack rolls is some combination of AC and total hit points. But how can we assess the value of Armor Class and hit points together? Well, first…

The superlinear value of additional AC

Something that many players don’t intuitively understand is that 1 additional point of AC becomes more valuable at higher AC values than lower ones. This doesn’t seem obvious at first. After all, one more point of AC just means a 5% reduction in hit chance, right? 

Instead of just looking at hit rate, we’re going to look at a new metric: attacks (or attack rolls) per hit. This means the amount of attack rolls required to land a hit. Let’s construct a specific hypothetical scenario to help us along. 

Here’s the example: Snyder and Victor are two members of a level 6 party that have come face to face with a pair of stone giants. Snyder is playing Redyns, an Artificer 1/Wizard 5 multiclass, meaning Redyns can wield a shield and don half plate with no problems (19 AC). Victor is playing Rotciv, a Samurai Fighter wielding a hand crossbow and donning half plate as well, but in order to Attack, they must keep one hand free (17 AC, see the Sage Advice Compendium for more details). Each stone giant picks a puny adventurer of their own to focus on, and they attack.

Let’s look at the stone giant attacking Redyns. 19 AC against +9 means 55% to hit. If Redyns had a +1 set of half plate armor, that would be 20 AC against a +9 for a 50% to hit—a linear reduction of 5%, as expected. That would be 1÷0.55 for 19 AC, around 1.82 attacks per hit. For 20 AC, that’s 1÷0.5 for 2 attacks per hit (this makes sense: a 50% chance to hit means, on average, you would expect 2 attack rolls before a hit). Now we have a more concrete idea of what a 5 percentage point decrease in to-hit chance (+1 AC) really means: about a 10% increase in survivability ((2.00-1.82)÷1.82).

Alternatively, consider a 12 AC Wizard versus a 13 AC Wizard. A +9 has a 90% chance to hit against AC 12, one additional point of AC means an 85% chance to hit. But 1÷0.9 = 1.11 attacks per hit, compared to 1÷0.85 = 1.18. The difference between 12 to 13 AC does reduce the stone giant’s hit rate by the same 5 percentage points that 19 to 20 AC does, but the relative jump in attacks per hit is much lower, 6% compared to the 10% from 19 to 20 (and consider that every jump in AC prior from 13 to 19 is also increasing your survivability). This becomes even more extreme the higher the AC values become, which is why shield on armored casters is so effective. A 12 AC Wizard casting shield increases their expected attacks per hit for that round by 30%, but a 19 AC Wizard doing so increases their attacks per hit by 83%.

The mathematical underpinning for this is because expected hits per attack, x, decreases linearly with AC, but expected attacks per hit, 1÷x, is an inverse relationship where the shrinking denominator makes each successive increase larger than the last in attacks per hit increase faster and faster. (If you care about technicalities: this is only a first-order approximation, and in reality is complicated a bit by critical hits doing extra damage and an effective AC ceiling against certain monsters who would need a 20 to hit anyway, but none of that changes the qualitative relationship.) 

We looked at attacks per hit here first because, hopefully, looking at a simplified version of the formula more clearly demonstrated the type of relationship between sturdiness and successively higher AC. This is one of the reasons why we stress armored casters and access to the shield spell in many of our builds: it might be even better than you think!

Attacks until downed

You might be thinking, “I don’t know, Tabletop Builds. This all still sounds like a lot of jargon to me.” Now let’s introduce a concept that’s hopefully more intuitive in the context of a combat encounter called “attacks until downed.” We’re going to combine the expected number of attacks per hit value from above (based off of AC) with the damage on hit of the attack, and the value of each individual character’s total hit points, thus creating a metric of sturdiness that combines AC and hit points, not just one or the other (that would have to be recalculated for every scenario you find yourself in, so again: this is all just a demonstrative example, not some sort of axiom or theory!)

We’ll start off with hits until downed and work our way forward from there.

Hits until downed is simple:

For example, a character with 100 hit points versus a creature that does 10 damage per hit is downed in 100÷10 = 10 hits.

From hits until downed we can get to attacks until downed by multiplying by attack rolls per hit (now, we factor in the hit rate of attacks).

Just to once more hammer home the relationship of attacks until downed to AC (we’re almost done with the math, we promise):

Hits per attack can be calculated as follows:

In other words, attacks per hit is:

So the final formula for attacks until downed is:

You can see that Armor Class ends up in the denominator: this is why there is an inverse relationship between attacks until downed and AC, and why higher AC values are more valuable per point increase than lower AC values.

If you don’t believe any of the math, here’s a graph of the above function assuming 50 hit points, 20 damage per hit, and a monster attack bonus of ranging from +4 to +9 (though any values within a normal range for CR appropriate encounters would result in a similar graph):

Let’s go back to Redyns and Rotciv. A stone giant can make two attacks per turn with their greatclub, an attack with +9 to hit that does 3d8+6 damage. Redyns has 46 hit points and 19 AC. They have a 55% chance of being hit per attack roll, or 1.82 attack rolls per hit. With critical damage taken into account, one hit from the stone giant does an expected 20.7 damage. Plug these numbers into our formula above: 

This means we would expect a stone giant takes at least 4 attacks to down Redyns on average.

Now let’s look at Rotciv. Rotciv does have more hit points than Redyns—58 to 46—but a lower AC of 17 compared to Redyns’s 19, because they cannot wield a shield if they want their Attack action to actually do good damage. Plug in the numbers and we see that means they take 20.5 damage per hit, and with 1.54 attack rolls per hit, and thus we would expect the stone giant would need at least…4 attacks to down Rotciv, a very similar number to Redyns!

You can combine this with the number of attacks per turn the enemy creature can make to get to a number of turns you can survive (or rather: not be put unconscious): in this case, with 2 attacks per turn, we would expect both Redyns and Rotciv live through at least 2 turns.

(Our Wizard friend with 12 AC? Expected to be downed in 2.6 attacks, meaning one less turn for that Wizard compared to his better armored colleague!)

Now, Rotciv does have a slightly higher expected number of attacks until downed. But Redyns actually has something up his sleeve—shield. While this is a resource that must be consumed, resources are meant to be used! Committing to casting shield once would be enough to increase the number of attacks needed to down Redyns to more than 5, not to mention the benefits if the Wizard was targeted by additional enemies (we understand that this is a form of resource expenditure for the Wizard compared to the Fighter). The relative benefits of 1-2 additional points of AC, plus shield in your back pocket, in a game system defined by bounded accuracy can often eclipse the marginal differences in hit die size when it comes to this measure of sturdiness.

This is obviously a simplified example, and there are significantly more variables in actual play than what was presented (after four attacks against each, Rotciv will, on average, have more hit points left over than Redyns, it’s possible that certain breakpoints in the variables of the encounter would result in Redyns being downed in less attacks than the Fighter, it’s possible shield could increase the number of turns lived in the Wizard’s favor, etc). But hopefully this small scenario reframed using the attacks until downed metric, explaining how a “squishy” Wizard with a d6 hit die can in many situations be just as durable to attacks as a “tanky” Fighter with d10 hit die (or at least, survive the same number of turns).

A final note is that we do not take into account features like death ward here either, even if it can increase the amount of attacks until someone is downed greatly, but this is another benefit to playing casters to keep in mind.

Fellow Tabletop Builds author Haen the Heretic has their own blog, Form of Dread, where they have a post that explains this phenomenon more in-depth (see the Damage Dealt versus Damage Taken section). While they present a simplified model and the graph in the post does not factor in damage from non-attack sources, similar to us here, it should suffice to demonstrate the point that an edge in AC can be of comparable, or even notably greater value for sturdiness than the higher total hit point pool afforded by martial classes.

But Tabletop Builds, Wizards wear robes and have 10 AC! This doesn’t make sense! 

Casters being harder to hit than martials tends to not align with many players’ perception, in part due to common genre conventions. Casters are thin and frail, wear cloth robes, wave wands around casting spells, and go down at a touch, often called the “glass cannons” of a party. Meanwhile, bulky knights in heavy plate armor shrug off multiple blows and stay upright while nimble rogues and martial artists bob and weave to deftly avoid blows. 

However, this classic dichotomy of magic users versus weapon users doesn’t hold up in 5E. There are several reasons for this:

Spellcasters can wear armor too

In 5E, casters only face a downside to wearing armor they are not proficient in (this is a contrast to previous editions, where arcane casters were hit with Arcane Spell Failure rolls). Armor and shield proficiency is easily obtained for casters through multiclassing, race choices, or the Moderately Armored feat. Martials do have access to the Defense Fighting Style, which can boost their AC. However, even if they do have the Defense Fighting Style, casters can still pull even, because…

Spellcasters can wield shields, while damage-optimized martials typically can’t

In 5E, martials primarily exist to do damage. Non-caster martials have very limited means of exerting battlefield control, and any methods they do have for it are typically triggered on attack rolls anyway (Battle Master Maneuvers) or are single-target lockdown strategies of variable effectiveness (Grapple + Shove prone, Sentinel opportunity attacks). As such, the most valuable contribution pure martials can typically provide is in the form of pure single-target damage (which is a valuable contribution, don’t get us wrong!). As far as weapon damage goes, obtaining a reliable bonus action attack and a “power attack” (-5 to hit, +10 to damage) are essential, which leaves few viable paths: Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter with a hand crossbow, and Polearm Master/Great Weapon Master with a heavy reach polearm (a few builds, such as a Monk with Gunner and Sharpshooter, can also be competitive using a longbow or renaissance era firearm).

With few exceptions,* wielding a shield isn’t possible, either because of the weapon itself needing two hands (as is this case with heavy reach polearms), or because a free hand is needed to reload your hand crossbow. Casters, on the other hand, if they have proficiency, can wield a shield and leave their other hand open to access a component pouch or spellcasting focus. Spell foci are cheap, so you can even have more than one on your person and drop staves and the like if you really need to do some free-hand juggling (check out our article on spellcasting components if you need a refresher).

* The handful of exceptions include having a friendly Artificer to infuse your hand crossbow with the Repeating Shot infusion every day, or having extra limbs (currently, additional limbs dexterous enough to wield shields are exclusive to the Thri-kreen in the Travelers of the Multiverse Unearthed Arcana playtest content). As we’ve noted in an article on ASIs versus Feats and our Race and Lineage Guide, being a starting feat race is imperative for damage-dealing martials builds, and thus we don’t consider extra limbs to be a relevant consideration here. 

Spellcasters can cast shield

Shield temporarily increases the AC of a caster by 5 for an entire round, an ability that martials are not afforded unless they dip a level (and is entirely unavailable to Barbarians while Raging). Martials pay a higher price for dipping a level in a spellcaster class before level 5 than spellcasters pay for dipping a level in a class that grants armor proficiency. Even if a martial dips caster levels after level 5, they will have limited spell slots (though they can likely commit all of their resources to personal defenses). Martials will generally have a resting AC of 17 (half plate with 14 Dexterity) or 18 in full plate or with the Defense Fighting Style (our definition of resting AC is the AC a character has with no resource expenditure and no cover). A caster in half plate and wielding a shield, on the other hand, has a resting AC of 19, enough on its own to rival or exceed the effective hit point total of most martials, and can raise that to 24 for a full round with a reaction and a 1st level spell slot. Since each additional point of AC increases effective hit points more than the one before (see the section on superlinear AC values above), spellcasters who manage their shield slots well are extremely resilient to enemy attacks.

Spellcasters can afford to take the Dodge action

Due to the fundamental design of optimized martials, these characters typically have to commit their action and bonus action to attacks in order to deliver the full brunt of their damage-dealing potential. In contrast, maintaining concentration on a powerful control spell such as web, a twinned phantasmal force, hypnotic pattern, spirit guardians, polymorph, etc., is usually a casters’ biggest contribution to an encounter. In many cases, supplementing your concentration spell with area of effect damage from a fireball, utilizing the on-hit forced movement from a Repelling Blast-enhanced eldritch blast, or simply throwing in some minor damage from a damage cantrip will be a good use of your action. However, in some cases, the additional resource expenditure of a spell slot won’t be necessary, and the cantrip damage may not be significant, and holding concentration on the spell is much higher priority. In these cases, casters can afford to Dodge. Some spells with longer durations, like the ones mentioned prior, can even allow spellcasters to Dodge on turn 1! Dodging confers advantage on Dexterity saves and disadvantage to enemies that target you with attacks, which adds another layer of sturdiness and protection against attack rolls (some quick numbers to keep in mind: a 50% to hit becomes 25%, 60% becomes 36%, 70% becomes 49%) and abilities that force Dexterity saves, which we will explain in more depth below. Clerics in particular can get a lot of use out of simply casting spirit guardians, using the shove from the Telekinetic feat to “double dip” an enemy target if they fail their save, and Dodging. 

The bottom line is: within optimized 5E play, there is an inversion of the standard trope of a frontline of martials protecting a backline of squishy casters: instead, parties may well be served by having Dodging casters in front of the martials who are hanging back and do damage with their crossbow.

So we can see that spellcasters can acquit themselves favorably in one aspect of sturdiness: Armor Class. But what about against saving throw effects?

The base class design of 5E indicates that starting saving throw proficiencies were meant to be balanced across classes. Saving throw proficiencies can be split into two categories, which we will dub “primary” and “secondary,” with every class getting proficiency in one of each. Primary saves are Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom; secondary saves are Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma. Every class gets proficiency in one primary and one secondary saving throw (no class has proficiency in two primary saves or two secondary saves). The core conceit seems to be that primary saves are more common to face, while secondary saves are more rare. Every class getting proficiency in one primary and one secondary save should mean that saving throws across all classes are balanced…right?

Unfortunately, in actual play this isn’t the case, for a variety of reasons.

Saving Throws are not balanced

First is that saving throws are not perfectly balanced. In our view, which is fuelled by extensive playtime both sides of the table, the six saving throws can be summarized as follows:

Primary Saving Throws (More Common)

• Dexterity: saves are almost always purely for damage, which is generally preferable to more dangerous control effects, especially when they can often be mitigated with absorb elements.
• Constitution: split between damage and debilitating effects. Most notably, casters with Constitution save proficiency can, in addition to bolstering their own defenses, help the sturdiness of the entire party by maintaining concentration on their spells.
• Wisdom: the most debilitating saving throw to fail. Most characters will want to obtain Wisdom save proficiency at some point, though typically the earliest most characters that don’t start with it can afford this is late in Tier 2 or Tier 3.

Secondary Saving Throws (Less Common)

• Strength: typically lower-risk to fail; generally results in the prone or restrained conditions being applied with repeated saves to break free. 
• Intelligence: very uncommon but can be risky to fail: see intellect devourers or mind flayers.
• Charisma: very uncommon but can be risky to fail, can result in being banished or possessed.

We can see that failing a mental save typically has devastating effects, while failing physical saves is less debilitating. As spellcasters typically prioritize a mental ability score, they already start with a small leg up here. Additionally, the starting saving throw proficiencies of martial classes do them no favors. Monks (and Rangers, though they are a half-caster class) have Dexterity and Strength proficiency, the least desired saving throw proficiencies of each category. Barbarians and Fighters have Constitution and Strength proficiency, which is a slight improvement, but leaves them with no coverage on mental saves. Rogues have Dexterity and Intelligence saving throw proficiency, which at least pairs nicely with Evasion. Paladins, on the other hand, are all set: Wisdom saving throw proficiency and then their Aura of Protection at level 6, which is the best save protection the game has to offer. 

Access to saving throw proficiencies

Because saving throws aren’t created equal, that makes obtaining specific saving throw proficiencies more desirable. And builds that have more build flexibility have an easier time building around choosing the saving throw proficiencies they want. We’ve already gone in depth on why martials generally need to commit their first two ASIs to specific feats, while casters don’t—this means that casters can more easily afford to take the Resilient feat early in the game. On top of that, in games that are mostly focused around Tier 1 and 2 play, delaying Extra Attack as a martial means hamstringing yourself for at least one level, which can be a significant portion of your campaign. Almost every class sees a significant power bump at 5th level from either Extra Attack or 3rd level spells, but spellcasters with good 1st and 2nd level spells (like bless, spike growth, and especially web) pay a lower opportunity cost at level 5 for delaying their big bump by a level. Thus, spellcasters can more easily afford a 1 level dip in one class to opt for certain saving throw (and other) proficiencies they want, a choice less available to martials. In all cases, casters have more build flexibility afforded to them to get the save proficiencies they want, while martials do not. 

Dodging and absorb elements

There are a couple of other considerations that help spellcasters in this area. As discussed earlier, Dodging is more available to spellcasters than martials. Dodging confers advantage on Dexterity saving throws (and disadvantage on attack rolls, see above). On top of that, absorb elements exists, countering the most devastating type of Dexterity saving throws: those that would typically deal massive amounts of elemental damage. Obtaining access to absorb elements can require some specific build choices, but can typically be bundled together with access to other defensive priorities such as armor proficiency or access to the other 1st level reaction spells (shield and silvery barbs), and so is a presence on the spell list of every optimized caster. Dodging and absorb elements (despite being resource intensive) both serve to mitigate the weakness of no spellcasters (except Bard) starting with Dexterity saving throw proficiency.

Martials have better passive save defenses

All martial classes have some form of innate passive save defenses, which spellcaster classes do not innately have. Monks and Rogues get Evasion, Barbarians have Danger Sense, Fighters get Indomitable, Rogues can use their reaction to use Uncanny Dodge, and Barbarians have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while Raging. Rogues and Monks get additional saving throw proficiencies via Slippery Mind and Diamond Soul respectively, both late in Tier 3. 

These features are so different and are acquired at such different levels that evaluating them as a whole is difficult. Many of these features come late in the game, especially considering the levels of play that most tables reside in—Monks and Rogues may have access to Evasion for a third of the campaign or less, and may never come close to getting Diamond Soul or Slippery Mind. The reroll from Indomitable is nice, but is a very limited use feature and once again comes at the end of Tier 2. Danger Sense is obtained at a low level, costs no resources, and is one of the best passive save defenses in the game, so no complaints there. Uncanny Dodge costs a reaction, which does hurt for Rogues that are trying to optimize for two Sneak Attacks per round, but comes at a reasonable level for a reasonable cost. 

We will not go into individual subclass resources that provide for save defenses for the sake of brevity, but we also would not consider any subclass feature to swing the needle towards one direction or another in our assessment in any way. 

All things considered, though many of these features are potent, we consider spellcasters to have a slight edge here as far as defenses against saving throws go. They innately prioritize mental ability scores, which are the most debilitating saves to fail, they have more build flexibility to prioritize the key saving throw proficiencies, they have more leeway to Dodge during combat, and they can typically fall back on absorb elements if necessary. Martials have a larger health pool and more class-based passive save defense features, which are nice, but the most impactful features often come very late in the game and are not enough to sway our judgment in their favor. While spellcasters do have to commit some resources to defenses, even having the resources to commit to defenses makes them more resilient and sturdy in the face of saving throws. 

• Martials have a higher total hit point pool, but spellcasters can have equal or greater effective hit points against attacks due to a better resting AC and access to shield.
• Spellcasters can contribute to encounters by concentrating on powerful spells, which opens up the ability to Dodge, which makes casters harder to hit.
• Dodging and access to absorb elements mitigate the lack of Dexterity saving throw proficiency for spellcasters. 
• Spellcasters have more build flexibility in obtaining the saving proficiencies that are valuable.
• Martials have better passive save defenses from their base class features. 

So we have our three pillars of sturdiness: saves, Armor Class, and hit points, which together can be represented by effective hit points, and we have shown why we believe casters have just as much if not more effective hit points than martials. But how are these things achieved practically, both in build space and in encounters during actual play?

We have explained how armored spellcasters can compete with or supersede martials in terms of effective hit points and overall sturdiness with regards to Armor Class and saving throws. Now, let’s focus on how we can actually build such a character.  

The Ingredients 

To summarize, you should focus on having:

• A high resting AC. Most often, this comes from wearing medium armor and a shield, for a base AC of 19. Some builds, especially Clerics and Paladins, wear heavy armor for a base AC of 20, and some like Forge Domain Clerics or particular races can go even further. 
• The reaction spells shield and absorb elements. The prototypical sturdy caster has an AC of 24 during shield, which is significantly higher than the ACs of most martials. Survivability scales superlinearly with AC, so this makes them extremely resilient to attacks. Ideally, the spellcaster has absorb elements as well.
• Concentration protection. This usually takes the form of proficiency in Constitution saving throws, the War Caster feat, or both. Lucky or certain class features can serve as a backup to either. Being able to contribute to combat with persistent effects via concentration opens up our turn up for evasive actions, like Dodging.

Now that we have explained the necessary ingredients for creating a sturdy character, we will now focus on how we can go about obtaining these “ingredients.” Building a sturdy caster is a bit of a puzzle. Every spellcasting class has some defensive elements built in and others that they lack. 

Multiclassing

By looking at what pieces each class needs, we can find the best multiclasses to eliminate their weaknesses with minimal investment, resulting in a powerful, well-rounded character. Multiclassing just a few levels is a cost efficient way to gain exactly what you want, but it can be scary to figure out what exactly you should and should not do. To help you along, we will release a guide to multiclassing soon that goes in depth on how to build well-rounded spellcasters. However, we will list some of some the best dips for many of the classes below (consider this a bit of a preview: the actual guide will go into far greater depth).

• Bard: Hexblade Warlock 1-2 and/or Divine Soul Sorcerer 1 with Moderately Armored feat
• Cleric: Divine Soul Sorcerer or Clockwork Soul Sorcerer 1
• Druid: Life or Peace Cleric 1 and/or Divine Soul Sorcerer 1
• Sorcerer: Hexblade Warlock 1-2
• Wizard: Artificer 1 or Peace Cleric 1

Straightclassed Alternatives

If you decide to play a straight-classed build, perhaps so that you can play with wall of force or animate objects before the campaign ends, this doesn’t mean you have to flush defense down the toilet.

At base, something like a Wizard or Sorcerer with mage armor, shield, and a high Dexterity and Constitution isn’t actually much less durable than a martial. When one of these characters has shield up, their AC is likely 20 or 21, which is still better than a martial wielding a two-handed weapon or a crossbow—the standard that we expect from damage-optimized martials. These casters also have smaller hit dice, but compared to the d10 of a Fighter, a d6 hit die only results in about a 25% reduction in maximum hit points—and remember that in terms of “effective hit points,” the increased AC will do enough to offset this. Relying on shield makes these casters less survivable if they have to take attacks for many rounds, but the vast majority of the time, casters thought of as “squishy” really aren’t all that squishy in the first place!

Still, we can do better, mostly through feats. Any spellcaster should consider Resilient (Constitution) or War Caster to protect their concentration, which is their biggest contribution in combat. Bards and Warlocks should also still take Moderately Armored to gain an AC comparable to those of martials. But what about Sorcerers and Wizards? These classes can pick a race that provides an armor proficiency, the most powerful of which is Hobgoblin and take Moderately Armored at level 4. This route is not as robust as a multiclassed one, as it results in weaker concentration saving throws, but it still thoroughly trounces any notion of squishiness.

This was a long article and a bit of a dry and technical one, so hopefully you all made it here. Our goal here was to show how just looking at the larger hit die of martial classes, combined with some pre-existing notions of how the game is or should be played, can lead to misleading perceptions of how sturdy or survivable casters actually can be compared to martials. Hopefully this leads you to re-examine how blended “party roles” can be in 5E, and build more survivable characters of your own!