• During the 1980s, AMD was a second-source supplier for companies using Intel processors. Companies like IBM didn't want to rely solely on Intel for one of the primary components in their computers, so they licensed AMD to produce versions of Intel processors. However in 1985, Intel stopped giving AMD its designs which forced them to reverse-engineer versions of Intel parts. By 1990, Merrill Lynch had declared AMD "dead", as the smaller company couldn't keep up with Intel product releases. This would not be the last time, as its aggressive pricing throughout the first half of the 90s had left AMD in a poor financial position.
• In 1994, a tiny Silicon Valley outfit named NexGen began shipping a chip that was comparable to Intel's flagship Pentium. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates had taken an interest in NexGen, in particular, its brilliant CEO, Atiq Raza. Gates suggested that Raza speak to AMD since the company owned a chip fab but needed a better product to build in it. Raza met with then-CEO Jerry Sanders, who threatened to run NexGen out of business. Upon hearing about the exchange, Gates picked up the phone, called Sanders, and convinced AMD to purchase NexGen for $615mn in 1995. Soon after, Raza, dubbed by Sanders as the "Michael Jordan of microprocessor design", helped AMD develop the K6 - a major turning point for the company.
• The K6 rivaled Intel on speed and price, and its revisions led to one of AMD's most successful architectures: K7, marketed as the Athlon. Athlon received "CPU of the Year" in 1999 from ArsTechnica and helped AMD grow sales from $2.5bn in 1998 to $4.6bn by 2000. With the company having just pulled in nearly $1bn in profits, Sanders rented out San Jose's entire HP Pavilion (now the SAP Center) for a party in which he paid for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill to perform and proclaimed AMD's share price would soon hit $100.
• Around this time the company started spending too much and spreading itself too thin. AMD was making most of its profit from memory, but was also dabbling in logic, microprocessors, and communication products. Sanders had also decided to build a massive fab in Germany with borrowed money. Despite this, AMD continued to find technical success. AMD utilized the Athlon to develop a similar architecture that was more useful for severs. The new product, Opteron, led to AMD capturing an estimated 25% of the server market by 2006 all the while Intel struggled to produce a chip that could compete with the performance advantages of Opteron.
• While on the surface AMD seemed to be firing on all cylinders with its popular Athlon and Opteron chips, the company was a financial mess behind-the-scenes. The company announced net losses of $61mn in 2001, $1.3bn in 2002, and $274mn in 2003. The main culprit? Investments in fabs that grossly overshot initial cost estimates. Between its two locations in Germany, AMD invested roughly $4.6bn.
• AMD's competitive edge with Opteron coincided with some low points for Intel that forced the company to re-imagine its architecture altogether. The result was the release of the Intel Core microarchitecture in 2006. Core enabled Intel to take back the performance crown in the PC market, and it proved more power-efficient than AMD's laptop chips right when laptops began to outsell desktops for the first time. Intel compounded the pain by strategically releasing frequent upgrades and forcing AMD to play catch-up yet again.
• Though AMD's CPUs consistently improved, over time they became shut out of the high-end market once more and were relegated to compete mainly on price, mirroring the company's early struggles. As Intel churned out its best product in years, AMD began trying to swallow another company whole. In 2006, AMD saw an opportunity for the future by integrating a memory controller into the CPU. However, the company needed the graphics and chipset experience to make it happen.
• The solution was to purchase Canadian graphics company ATI Technologies for $5.4bn - or roughly half of AMD's market cap. This came after AMD had approached Nvidia as its first-choice takeover target. At that time, Nvidia was trading under $15 a share. But Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's outspoken CEO, insisted on running the combined company — a non-starter for AMD leadership. While ATI's technology was considered superior to Intel's, the integration process proved disastrous from the start. Employees from the two companies divided into green (AMD and CPU) and red (ATI and GPU) sides, prioritizing needs of their individual products, and causing major delays time and time again.
• With problems executing and stagnant sales, AMD ended 2007 with more than $5bn in debt and lost $3.3bn on the year after having taken a write-down charge for its acquisition of ATI. The company was having serious difficulty affording the costs of its fab facilities, when the entire industry endured a sharp downturn in 2008 that caused the stock to plummet from $20 to $4 a share.
• AMD had no choice but to spin off its foundries in 2009 (AMD spun off GlobalFoundries in 2009), weakening its competitive positioning relative to Intel. Despite efforts to engineer higher quality products, its share of the PC and sever businesses kept declining and AMD was unable to achieve meaningful share in the ultrabook and tablet segments. The low-end CPU market sent margins tumbling and increased exposure to secular declines in PC sales.
• By 2013, only one singular analyst on Wall Street was bullish on the stock — which had now fallen from $8 at the start of 2012 to just around $2. Yet after a major delay with the highly anticipated "Fusion" 32nm chip, the analyst noted that there were now liquidity concerns due to the declining PC market. Even former CFO Fran Barton thought AMD had next to no future in its battle with Intel: "...the game's been played."

Richard Dobatse, a Navy medic in San Diego, dabbled infrequently in stock trading. But his behavior changed in 2017 when he signed up for Robinhood, a trading app that made buying and selling stocks simple and seemingly free.
Mr. Dobatse, now 32, said he had been charmed by Robinhood’s one-click trading, easy access to complex investment products, and features like falling confetti and emoji-filled phone notifications that made it feel like a game. After funding his account with $15,000 in credit card advances, he began spending more time on the app.
As he repeatedly lost money, Mr. Dobatse took out two $30,000 home equity loans so he could buy and sell more speculative stocks and options, hoping to pay off his debts. His account value shot above $1 million this year — but almost all of that recently disappeared. This week, his balance was $6,956.
“When he is doing his trading, he won’t want to eat,” said his wife, Tashika Dobatse, with whom he has three children. “He would have nightmares.”
Millions of young Americans have begun investing in recent years through Robinhood, which was founded in 2013 with a sales pitch of no trading fees or account minimums. The ease of trading has turned it into a cultural phenomenon and a Silicon Valley darling, with the start-up climbing to an $8.3 billion valuation. It has been one of the tech industry’s biggest growth stories in the recent market turmoil.
But at least part of Robinhood’s success appears to have been built on a Silicon Valley playbook of behavioral nudges and push notifications, which has drawn inexperienced investors into the riskiest trading, according to an analysis of industry data and legal filings, as well as interviews with nine current and former Robinhood employees and more than a dozen customers. And the more that customers engaged in such behavior, the better it was for the company, the data shows.
Thanks for reading The Times. Subscribe to The Times More than at any other retail brokerage firm, Robinhood’s users trade the riskiest products and at the fastest pace, according to an analysis of new filings from nine brokerage firms by the research firm Alphacution for The New York Times.
In the first three months of 2020, Robinhood users traded nine times as many shares as E-Trade customers, and 40 times as many shares as Charles Schwab customers, per dollar in the average customer account in the most recent quarter. They also bought and sold 88 times as many risky options contracts as Schwab customers, relative to the average account size, according to the analysis.
The more often small investors trade stocks, the worse their returns are likely to be, studies have shown. The returns are even worse when they get involved with options, research has found.
This kind of trading, where a few minutes can mean the difference between winning and losing, was particularly hazardous on Robinhood because the firm has experienced an unusual number of technology issues, public records show. Some Robinhood employees, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said the company failed to provide adequate guardrails and technology to support its customers.
Those dangers came into focus last month when Alex Kearns, 20, a college student in Nebraska, killed himself after he logged into the app and saw that his balance had dropped to negative $730,000. The figure was high partly because of some incomplete trades.
“There was no intention to be assigned this much and take this much risk,” Mr. Kearns wrote in his suicide note, which a family member posted on Twitter.
Like Mr. Kearns, Robinhood’s average customer is young and lacks investing know-how. The average age is 31, the company said, and half of its customers had never invested before.
Some have visited Robinhood’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., in recent years to confront the staff about their losses, said four employees who witnessed the incidents. This year, they said, the start-up installed bulletproof glass at the front entrance.
“They encourage people to go from training wheels to driving motorcycles,” Scott Smith, who tracks brokerage firms at the financial consulting firm Cerulli, said of Robinhood. “Over the long term, it’s like trying to beat the casino.”
At the core of Robinhood’s business is an incentive to encourage more trading. It does not charge fees for trading, but it is still paid more if its customers trade more.
That’s because it makes money through a complex practice known as “payment for order flow.” Each time a Robinhood customer trades, Wall Street firms actually buy or sell the shares and determine what price the customer gets. These firms pay Robinhood for the right to do this, because they then engage in a form of arbitrage by trying to buy or sell the stock for a profit over what they give the Robinhood customer.
This practice is not new, and retail brokers such as E-Trade and Schwab also do it. But Robinhood makes significantly more than they do for each stock share and options contract sent to the professional trading firms, the filings show.
For each share of stock traded, Robinhood made four to 15 times more than Schwab in the most recent quarter, according to the filings. In total, Robinhood got $18,955 from the trading firms for every dollar in the average customer account, while Schwab made $195, the Alphacution analysis shows. Industry experts said this was most likely because the trading firms believed they could score the easiest profits from Robinhood customers.
Vlad Tenev, a founder and co-chief executive of Robinhood, said in an interview that even with some of its customers losing money, young Americans risked greater losses by not investing in stocks at all. Not participating in the markets “ultimately contributed to the sort of the massive inequalities that we’re seeing in society,” he said.
Mr. Tenev said only 12 percent of the traders active on Robinhood each month used options, which allow people to bet on where the price of a specific stock will be on a specific day and multiply that by 100. He said the company had added educational content on how to invest safely.
He declined to comment on why Robinhood makes more than its competitors from the Wall Street firms. The company also declined to comment on Mr. Dobatse or provide data on its customers’ performance.
Robinhood does not force people to trade, of course. But its success at getting them do so has been highlighted internally. In June, the actor Ashton Kutcher, who has invested in Robinhood, attended one of the company’s weekly staff meetings on Zoom and celebrated its success by comparing it to gambling websites, said three people who were on the call.
Mr. Kutcher said in a statement that his comment “was not intended to be a comparison of business models nor the experience Robinhood provides its customers” and that it referred “to the current growth metrics.” He added that he was “absolutely not insinuating that Robinhood was a gambling platform.”
ImageRobinhood’s co-founders and co-chief executives, Baiju Bhatt, left, and Vlad Tenev, created the company to make investing accessible to everyone. Robinhood’s co-founders and co-chief executives, Baiju Bhatt, left, and Vlad Tenev, created the company to make investing accessible to everyone.Credit...via Reuters Robinhood was founded by Mr. Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, two children of immigrants who met at Stanford University in 2005. After teaming up on several ventures, including a high-speed trading firm, they were inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement to create a company that would make finance more accessible, they said. They named the start-up Robinhood after the English outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
Robinhood eliminated trading fees while most brokerage firms charged $10 or more for a trade. It also added features to make investing more like a game. New members were given a free share of stock, but only after they scratched off images that looked like a lottery ticket.
The app is simple to use. The home screen has a list of trendy stocks. If a customer touches one of them, a green button pops up with the word “trade,” skipping many of the steps that other firms require.
Robinhood initially offered only stock trading. Over time, it added options trading and margin loans, which make it possible to turbocharge investment gains — and to supersize losses.
The app advertises options with the tagline “quick, straightforward & free.” Customers who want to trade options answer just a few multiple-choice questions. Beginners are legally barred from trading options, but those who click that they have no investing experience are coached by the app on how to change the answer to “not much” experience. Then people can immediately begin trading.
Before Robinhood added options trading in 2017, Mr. Bhatt scoffed at the idea that the company was letting investors take uninformed risks.
“The best thing we can say to those people is ‘Just do it,’” he told Business Insider at the time.
In May, Robinhood said it had 13 million accounts, up from 10 million at the end of 2019. Schwab said it had 12.7 million brokerage accounts in its latest filings; E-Trade reported 5.5 million.
That growth has kept the money flowing in from venture capitalists. Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates are among those that have poured $1.3 billion into Robinhood. In May, the company received a fresh $280 million.
“Robinhood has made the financial markets accessible to the masses and, in turn, revolutionized the decades-old brokerage industry,” Andrew Reed, a partner at Sequoia, said after last month’s fund-raising.
Image Robinhood shows users that its options trading is free of commissions. Robinhood shows users that its options trading is free of commissions. Mr. Tenev has said Robinhood has invested in the best technology in the industry. But the risks of trading through the app have been compounded by its tech glitches.
In 2018, Robinhood released software that accidentally reversed the direction of options trades, giving customers the opposite outcome from what they expected. Last year, it mistakenly allowed people to borrow infinite money to multiply their bets, leading to some enormous gains and losses.
Robinhood’s website has also gone down more often than those of its rivals — 47 times since March for Robinhood and 10 times for Schwab — according to a Times analysis of data from Downdetector.com, which tracks website reliability. In March, the site was down for almost two days, just as stock prices were gyrating because of the coronavirus pandemic. Robinhood’s customers were unable to make trades to blunt the damage to their accounts.
Four Robinhood employees, who declined to be identified, said the outage was rooted in issues with the company’s phone app and servers. They said the start-up had underinvested in technology and moved too quickly rather than carefully.
Mr. Tenev said he could not talk about the outage beyond a company blog post that said it was “not acceptable.” Robinhood had recently made new technology investments, he said.
Plaintiffs who have sued over the outage said Robinhood had done little to respond to their losses. Unlike other brokers, the company has no phone number for customers to call.
Mr. Dobatse suffered his biggest losses in the March outage — $860,000, his records show. Robinhood did not respond to his emails, he said, adding that he planned to take his case to financial regulators for arbitration.
“They make it so easy for people that don’t know anything about stocks,” he said. “Then you go there and you start to lose money.”

1. Patient is referred to fertility center for evaluation for Assisted Reproductive Technology (“ART”) procedures, including in-vitro fertilization (“IVF “) and intrauterine insemination (“IUI”). Both can be aided by pharmaceuticals that stimulate egg production in the female patient. IVF involves the fertilization of the egg and sperm in the lab, while IUI is direct injection of the sperm sample into the uterus. Often, IUI is done first as it is less expensive. As success rates of IVF have increased, IUI utilization will likely fall.
   
2. Sperm washing is the separation of the sperm from the semen sample for embryo creation, and it enhances the freezing capacity of the sperm. Typically, a wash solution is added to the sample and then a centrifuge is used to undergo separation. This is done in both IUI and IVF.
   
3. Some OB/GYN platforms are pursuing vertical integration and offering fertility services directly. The OB would need to be credentialed at the lab / procedure center.
   
4. Specialty pharmacy arranges delivery of temperature sensitive Rx. Drug regimens include ovarian stimulation to increase the number of eggs or hormone manipulation to better time fertility cycles, among others.
   
5. Oocyte retrieval / aspiration is done under deep-sedation anesthesia in a procedure room, typically in the attached IVF lab. Transfer cycle implantation is done using ultrasound guidance without anesthesia. (Anecdotally, we have been told that only REIs can perform an egg retrieval. We have not been able to validate this).
   
6. Many clinics house frozen embryos on-site, while some clinics contract with 3rd parties to manage the process. During an IVF cycle, embryos are created from all available eggs. Single-embryo transfer (“SET”) is becoming the norm, which means that multiple embryos are then cryopreserved to use in the future. A fertility preservation cycle ends here with a female storing eggs for long-term usage (e.g. a woman in her young 20s deciding to freeze her eggs for starting a family later).
   
7. Common nomenclature refers to an IVF cycle or an IVF cycle with Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (“ICSI”). From a technical perspective, ICSI and IVF are different forms of embryo fertilization within an ART cycle.
   
8. ART clinics are frequently offering ancillary services such as embryo / egg adoption or surrogacy services. More frequently, there are independent companies that help with the adoption process and finding surrogates.
   
9. ART procedures are broken into two different types of cycles: a banking cycle is the process by which eggs are gathered, embryos are created and then transferred to cryopreservation. A transfer cycle is typically the transfer of a thawed embryo to the female for potential pregnancy. If a pregnancy does not occur, another transfer cycle ensues. Many REIs are moving towards a banking cycle, freezing all embryos, then transfer cycles until embryos are exhausted or a birth occurs. If a birth occurs with the first embryo, patients can keep their embryos for future pregnancy attempts, donate the embryos to a donation center, or request the destruction of the embryos.
   

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fertility-treatments-are-now-company-business-11597579200
   
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/parenting/fertility/fertility-startups-kindbody.html
   
3. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-covid-19-will-make-the-global-baby-bust-even-worse-but-canada-stands/
   
4. https://www.wbal.com/article/469564/114/post-pandemic-baby-boom-and-fertility-consults-via-zoom-how-covid-19-is-affecting-pregnancy-plans
   

The Background

Past Growth

Management, Margins and Balance Sheet

Future Growth and Price

Pre Market Brief for Friday July 31st 2020

• PERSONAL NOTE: I WILL BE ON A BUSINESS TRIP FOR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF AUGUST (1-16). I WILL LIKELY NOT HAVE THE TIME TO PUBLISH THE PRE-MARKET BRIEFS DURING THIS PERIOD.

• Pre-Market Trading
• Asian stocks falter as global growth fears temper tech boost

• Pre Market Brief for 07/30/2020
• Big Tech Earnings Surge During Pandemic While the Economy Slumps

• 08:30 AM Personal Spending MoM JUN
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• 32 Stocks Moving In Thursday's After-Hours Session
• Nokia ($4.45) posts surprise second-quarter profit jump ahead of CEO change. Nokia EPS beats by €0.03 on strong margin expansion. Misses on revenue. (Breaking Overnight)
• LKCO ($0.83) Announces a New Round of Financing (Odd because they priced it at $3.00 per share). (Breaking Overnight)
• ASX ($5.12) ASE Technology EPS beats by $0.03 (Breaking Overnight)
• TLSA ($12.25) Tiziana Announces Submission of Patent Application on Use of Foralumab, the Only Fully Human Anti-CD3 Monoclonal Antibody, to Enhance Success of CAR-T Therapy (Breaking Ovenight)
• TENB Tenable Announces Pricing of Public Offering of Common Stock by Selling Stockholders (Breaking Overnight)
• VSTA Vasta Platform Limited Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering (Breaking Overnight)
• CVX Argentine Supreme Court Rejects Fraudulent Ecuadorian Judgment Against Chevron (Breaking Overnight)
• BTI ($35.08) British American Tobacco EPS beats by $0.01, beats on revenue (Breaking Overnight)
• AAPL Apple Expects A Delay In iPhone 12 Series Launch
• AAPL Apple delivers blowout earnings amid COVID-19, market shrugs off iPhone delays
• BNTX BioNTech Announces Strategic Collaboration with Regeneron to Advance FixVac and Libtayo® (cemiplimab) Combination in Melanoma
• VITL CORRECTION – Vital Farms Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering
• MBY Taisho Said Lead Bidder for Takeda $3 Billion Consumer Unit
• FB Facebook Is Set to Finally Get the Rights to Show Music Videos
• FB Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news in world first
• BAC Buffett's Berkshire boosts its stake in Bank of America to 11.8%
• MRNA Moderna board member resigns to avoid conflict of interest during coronavirus vaccine trial
• Impossible Foods' Plant-Based Burger To Debut At 2,100 Walmart Stores Across US
• AMZN Amazon vows to invest $10B in Kuiper satellites after getting FCC’s go-ahead
• GOOGL Google ad rebound offsets Alphabet's first-ever sales drop
• WWE WWE Profit Tops Estimates as Lower Costs Offset Sluggish Sales
• SHAK Burger chain Shake Shack posts bigger-than-expected loss, shares fall
• GFF Griffon EPS beats by $0.46, beats on revenue
• ULU Universal Logistics Profits, Revenue Drop During Second Quarter
• KODK Kodak Stock’s Unusual Surge Raises Eyebrows on Wall Street
• COP ConocoPhillips to reverse most output cuts by end of third quarter
• SALM Amanda Carroll Joins Salem Music Network
• HTH Hilltop EPS beats by $0.65
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• HUGE ($4.03) FSD Pharma To Liquidate Cannabis Assets, Continues With Covid Treatments
• RVSB ($5.02) Riverview Bancorp EPS misses by $0.09, misses on revenue
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• EPD Enterprise Prices $1.25 Billion Aggregate Principal Amount of Senior Notes
• LYFT Lyft Partners with SIXT to Expand Friction-Free Car Rentals Nationwide
• Chinese-backed hackers targeted COVID-19 vaccine firm Moderna (MRNA, GILD, NVAX)

• Earnings Calendar
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• Economic Indicator Forecasts
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• Previous company pivots failed to position the company to succeed in the cloud era
• Near-term, HPE remains subject to enterprise hardware demand pressures due to COVID-19
• Past execution issues, inconsistent earnings, and multiple restructuring efforts are overshadowing momentum developing under HPE-as-a-Service strategy
• Once enterprise hardware spend rebounds, HPE likely to show material improvements in financial performance and execution
• HPE 3.0 is poised to expand margins, provide greater revenue stability, and grow earnings power on the back of major trends in networking, computing, and work
• Assigning HPE a three-year price target of $35

For a long time now, I have been playing almost exclusively martial characters, very rarely if ever playing full spellcaster classes. Some people would say that this is boring, that I should expand my horizons, do other things, but part of the reason I play so many martials is that the ultimate warrior is my ideal power fantasy. I don't care for the wizard who can bend space and time or the druid who can turn themselves into a dragon or the cleric who has learned to become the very avatar of their god on this mortal plane. These things do not interest me, they are not the representation of the kind of character I would want to become at the height of their power in a fantasy setting. No, my power fantasy is the man who can take on the world through martial prowess alone. To be a character who has become so skilled with his blade, so mighty with the wielding of weapons, that he is considered an army unto himself. A terror that carves its way through the battlefield, bolstering the morale of his allies and crushing the enemies that stand before him with unstoppable force.
But, therein lies the problem. This is not possible for martial characters in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.
Now, let's back up a bit and get some context first. Please bear with me, this is probably going to be a long post.
A conversation that I regularly participate in the comments of this subreddit one where I feel martial characters are underpowered in comparison to spellcasting classes. Many would disagree by saying something along the lines of this:
"Spellcasters are versatile with low hit points while martial characters are tanky with good single target damage. That's the trade off."
The idea is that it is fair that a wizard can cast Fireball to hit multiple targets at once because eventually the Fighter can learn to make 4 attacks in one turn and use all of them to absolutely wail on one guy. AoE damage vs. Single Target damage. And for a while, I agreed with this notion. It's only recently that I've come to realize that even if this is true, it's still unfair.
There are situations that can represent a challenge without access to magic that simultaneously can be handwaved with magic. Stealth can be trivialized through Pass Without a Trace or higher level castings of Invisibility. Uncross-able divides can be crossed with Dimension Door or Arcane Gate or even just a simple Misty Step. A person can be convinced to do something with a casting of Suggestion or forced to do something with Dominate Person. These are the things that magic is capable of accomplishing. And this capacity to be useful in a myriad of circumstances is one of the great draws of being able to cast magic.
However, it's considered to be a fair trade that martial characters are not good/completely incapable of accomplishing such things simply because they are good at being able to hit things. Not even things, but a singular thing. Single target damage. Only Fighters get more than two attacks per Action, so getting mobbed by a large number of enemies at once is very bad for any martial character that is not a Fighter, and only marginally less bad if you are a Fighter. The problem of course is simply that they aren't capable of hitting them all at once. The martial's current role in a party is that they are supposed to be the ones who deal a large amount of damage to the boss enemy on their turn. The Barbarian uses their Reckless attack to roll 4d20 and try to get a Brutal Critical on the Demogorgon, the Fighter uses their Action Surge to try and hit the Adult Red Dragon 8 times, the Paladin uses all of their highest level spell slots to Divine Smite Acererak for 7d8 Radiant Damage. Lots of damage, but only on the single enemy. I find this to be unfair as a trade off for two primary reasons:
It feels bad to be only good at fighting single enemies. All of these martial examples are not likely to be good at skill checks. Good at what they're good at, sure, but most characters will only end up with between 4 and 6 proficiencies unless they're a Rogue or take the Skilled Feat. And in all of these cases, the optimal stat distribution causes them to not be naturally good at other things as well. Barbarians are very multi-ability-dependent, needing high Strength and Constitution but then also needing Dexterity to bump up their AC, each being prioritized in that order. That means the other three mental stats will become worse. Fighters also tend to prioritize Strength and Constitution (if you're playing the classic archetype) and most Paladins do the same with Charisma being a tertiary stat since it is their spellcasting. So with all of them prioritizing Strength and Constitution, there is only a single skill (Athletics) between those two abilities. Even if you play a Dexterity Fighter, you're only getting good at 3 skills. As opposed to a Wizard or a Druid or a Cleric who put their points into their main stat and become decent at 5 skills as a result. Whether martial or spellcaster, all of these classes get 2 proficiencies to start. But by nature spellcasters will be skilled at more things than the martials will be because their main stats are better for more things. So it feels like being a martial makes you only good at fighting single enemies while spellcasters get to be good at fighting multiple enemies, getting over impassable obstacles, and many different kinds of skill checks. Which brings me to my second reason.
Spellcasters are actually just as good or better at single target damage than martial characters. The average damage for a failed save on Meteor Swarm is about 50% more than the average damage for 8 successful hits with a greatsword as a Fighter using Action Surge.
Meteor Swarm: 20d6(rolls of 3)+20d6(rolls of 4) = 140
8 Greatsword Attacks with 20 Strength: 16d6(rolls of 3 and 4) + 40 = 96
"But that's a 9th level spell vs Action Surge. Of course the 9th level spell is more powerful."
Let's compare instead a mid level Wizard vs a mid level Barbarian using the Comprehensive Damage Per Round Calculator.
Wizard lvl 12
First round animate object as a 6th lvl spell vs. ac 17
- dmg output 48.3
Second and third round animate object + 2 castings of Cone of Cold
- dmg output 78.3*2
Total damage for a lvl 12 wizard in 3 rounds: 204.9
Barbarian lvl 12
Human barbarian, 20 str, PaM, GWM, a +1 glaive vs. ac 17
+5 to hit (10-5 from GWM)
First round bonus action rage and 2 reckless attacks
1d10+1(Glaive)+5(str)+3(rage)+10(GWM)
- dmg output 36.3
Second and third round
glaive attack and bonus action attack with the end.
- dmg output 52.1*2
Total damage for a lvl 12 barbarian in 3 rounds: 140.5
As you can see, the Wizard handily outstrips the Barbarian. And we even gave the Barbarian a magic item and feats that time. Spellcasting classes are capable of outputting just as much or more single target damage as a martial class. The argument that is often made after this is that a martial class can continue to output this throughout the course of a day whereas a spellcaster has to use many resources that they can only get back later, but I contest this by saying most people don't have that many encounters per day and that while a martial can sustain this damage over the course of several rounds, most encounters will not last long that long anyways. All the enemies will be dead before a martial can stack up enough hits to match what the spellcaster has already done. Even if we do assume multiple rests and encounters over a day, the Wizard can use Arcane Recovery to get back the 6th level spell slot they just used. So they're still probably just fine for the next encounter.
So for those two reasons, I present the case that martials truly are left in the dust by spellcasters in almost every regard. That's the context for this. But this isn't just me crying because I'm a power gamer who wants to be OP. More than just the mathematics of it, I feel that there is a power fantasy is left almost entirely unfulfilled for martial characters.
What is it that makes warrior characters in movies and stories stand out, look cool, and feel powerful?
What does Captain America do? https://youtu.be/oRwFd1G6_U4?t=42
What does The Punisher do? https://youtu.be/01SYT5MPsHw?t=28
What does The Bride in Kill Bill do? https://youtu.be/a3aFv8IQb4s?t=319
Neo and Trinity do? https://youtu.be/NgAmX8GRwDw?t=57
Aragorn? (the most classic of all fantasy warrior archetypes) https://youtu.be/wSgeEH-Zwbk?t=3
Thor? (yes, even though he uses magic I still argue he's a martial character because of the way that he primarily engages in physical combat) https://youtu.be/-mHaq88BAV4?t=131
Ip Man? https://youtu.be/Kv9ygN2B8WU?t=97
John Wick? https://youtu.be/SamAItb8L58?t=86
Or John Wick? https://youtu.be/0L9SzBANF0w?t=264
Or what about John Wick? https://youtu.be/ElZ9y6l9KhI
A common theme with all of these characters is that they can fight many opponents at once and still win. Whether outnumbered by a handful or outnumbered by a hundred, they make a real contest out of something that would and should make instant losers out of anybody else. When they do it by themselves, they're badass. When they do it in the middle of a battlefield, their martial prowess inspires the common soldiers around them. This is all part of the fantasy of being a powerful non-magic fighting character. I put in John Wick three times because the whole draw of his character is that he's so hyper-competent at killing that he can take down entire organizations of enemies by himself. Even in a world of assassins and professional killers, they consider him their Boogeyman. And this character was so popular it spawned a franchise that thusfar has made more than $500 million dollars at the box office. But the part where he has a 1v1 with the bad guy is not what makes us like him. It's arguably the most underwhelming part of the first John Wick movie. Being able to fight many enemies is often cooler than fighting a single skilled enemy.
https://youtu.be/WAwl1mprHZI?t=153
Take this clip from the movie Hero as a prime example that shows both ends of the spectrum. In the first half of the scene, two people are fighting their way through a literal army on their own and winning. In the second half of the scene, there is a duel between two swordmasters. And while the duel exhibits great skill, it is not the more impressive half of the scene. To put it another way, the thing that makes you think Broken Sword is skilled is not that he duels the Emperor. Rather, it's the other way around. You believe that the Emperor is skilled because he is capable of fighting Broken Sword, a man who just cut his way through an entire army with the help of only one other person.
https://youtu.be/fLxSRdnGucA
The pinnacle of a martial character's "cool factor" is not the ability to be able to participate in skilled single combat against someone of equal skill, but to be outnumbered so dramatically that there should be no chance of winning, and yet they can and do anyways. The odds and logic of the situation tell you that it is impossible. But they accomplish the impossible with nothing but the swiftness of their sword.
Now, don't get me wrong, one on one fights definitely are cool. But what can take an entire scene to establish that competence can be established in seconds using a battle in which the hero is heavily outnumbered. They are cool in different ways, one being naturally more drawn out than the other, but it's important to have both. If you're only limited to one or the other but not both, that kind of sucks.
https://youtu.be/xT66YPk0Q5w?t=190
https://youtu.be/jx9Phl04VSQ?t=905
Back to D&D, it is not possible to be this kind of character as a martial. Firstly, due to the mathematics and action economy of the system, it is always more efficient to put all of your damage onto a single target because it's hard to spread out. Secondly because you are limited in the number of attacks you can make, that puts a hard limit on the number of enemies you can kill per turn. 20th level Fighter with 4 attacks? Barring specific subclass abilities or feats, it's literally impossible to exceed killing that number of enemies. Even with feats, you only max out at 5 attacks (using the bonus action attack from Great Weapon Master) on your turn without using Action Surge. If you are outnumbered 100 to 1, how long do you think a 20th level martial character could last? Say you're a 20th level Fighter against 100 Goblins, no Great Weapon Master feat. Assuming you hit with 100% accuracy and kill every one of them in one shot and use both of your Action Surges, it will take you 23 turns to kill them all. And for each one of your turns, they can also make their turn, surrounding you on all sides and attacking you 8 times a turn in response. For ease of calculation, if you had 18 AC wearing non-magical plate armor, Mob Combat rules (found on DMG page 250) assume you are statistically likely to take 12 damage per turn. 252 damage (using average damage) over 21 turns of keeping you surrounded. If you have enemies that aren't CR 1/4 against a 20th level character, say 100 CR 1/2 Thugs, they could make two attacks each, that turns into 16 times per turn and that turns into 30 damage per turn. 630 damage over 21 turns. If the Fighter had 20 Constitution and maximum health rolls (10 on a d10) at every level, they would have 300 hit points. They would barely survive against the goblins. They would not survive against the thugs. That's not even including the possibility of being attacked from range with shortbows and crossbows and such. Eventually, you will lose. And it won't even really be close.
We think these characters should be capable of surviving situations like these, after all at 20th level any Fighter should be a legendary character based on their prowess and skill. But the way the game works, they just aren't capable of surviving.
What is the power fantasy of a spellcaster? To be so powerful that they can bend reality to their will? To cast magics that affect the very fabric of existence? Could a 20th level spellcaster survive a 1 v 100? Quite handily I think actually. How about a 1 v 1000? Well, given that Meteor Swarm allows you to make explosions of 40d6 damage in a 40 foot radius in 4 different locations, you could actually hit 900 creatures at once if they were all bunched up enough (each meteor can hit 225 creatures at peak efficiency). Turn that down to a 1 v 100 real quick. Mathematically, it's entirely possible simply because they can deal enough damage at a fast enough rate combined with the myriad of spells they can use for damage mitigation (Shield, Blade Ward, Blink, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Blur, etc.)
Many might argue that this is fair, as it is unrealistic for a single person to be able to fight 100 people at once without magic and win. That could never happen in real life. But then I would counter with this:
Aren't we playing Dungeons and Dragons?
Is it realistic for someone to be able to pull meteors out of orbit with their mind? Or open up gates to other dimensions because they figured out how to tear holes in reality? Or to have discovered a word that is so powerful, so forbidden, that simply speaking it can cause another person to drop dead on the spot? Or to raise an undead army of skeletons? Why does realism become the limit for a Fighter when the Wizard's entire existence is predicated on breaking the rules of our reality?
Almost any spellcaster's power fantasy can come true. If you want to be someone who causes explosions on the battlefield, you can do that. If you want to be someone who turns illusions into reality, you can do that. If you want to be a seer who prophesies the future, you can do that. If you want to take over the world with thousands of full powered spellcasting clones of yourself, you can even do that. You are more limited by your own imagination and creativity than the actual rules of the game. But the simple fantasy of "I want to be able to fight a bunch of guys at once" is out of reach of the martial character, despite the fact that it's supposed to be the primary thing they're good at.
To summarize and conclude, I am of the opinion that the most common image of a skilled fantasy warrior is exemplified in their ability to fight a large number of enemies at once or in quick succession, not their ability to handily defeat a single opponent. The biggest design flaw and biggest disappointment for martial characters is their inability to fulfill this fantasy. Their single target damage is mechanically what they are known for, but I think what martial players like me really want more than anything is to be able to fight many enemies at once. I believe one of the ultimate power fantasies for a martial character is to be able to fearlessly charge forward into any number of enemies with full confidence of victory until a suitable challenger approaches. If Dungeons and Dragons is a game of wish fulfillment, the wishes of martial players like me cannot be fulfilled as it is currently designed.
https://youtu.be/qLJMDDxt408?t=25
I've been looking at old playtest packets for 5th edition and I found out some interesting things. The 11th level Hunter Ranger feature, Multiattack used to be something that any martial character had a choice to take at some point. Whirlwind Attack was available to be learned by Fighters and Monks, and Volley was on the list of Fighter maneuvers that could be learned. It seems to me that the reason that martial characters are so subpar in comparison now is that they were watered down across the board, mechanics that used to be able to be used by many are currently sequestered into individual subclasses.
Now, to be clear, I'm not really looking for a "solution" to this problem. At least not as far as 5th edition is concerned. The issues are too fundamental, too rooted in the core of the system to solve without an egregious amount of homebrewing. But I did want to put this out there as a topic of discussion to see if others in the community find validity in my idea. Is the problem of "linear fighters vs quadratic wizards" just an issue of efficiency, versatility, and mathematics? Or is the true problem that martial characters lack the ability to fulfill what is probably one of the core wishes of people who want to be warriors in fantasy settings?
edits: many typos I spotted after the fact -_-
Edit 2:
There's a lot of common responses I keep seeing pop up here that I want to address here in the main post.
"This is a game of resource management, you should just have more encounters per day to balance it out!"
First of all, this isn't something that a player can do themselves. This is entirely dependent on a DM and it's much more work for them to do so and be accommodating. They have to balance every encounter. It isn't as simple as just "having more encounters." Someone has to do that work.
Second of all, I mentioned this, but at a certain point it just becomes a slog when you're being constantly worn down every day just to give enough time for turtle martials to catch up to rabbit spellcasters. I don't know about you, but even as a martial, I wouldn't have fun doing this all the time.
Third of all, it completely ignores the point of my post. I don't care about being able to mathematically catch up to the wizard over the course of a day, I want to feel badass in my own right and I want to be able to do it whenever I want. It doesn't matter that a Wizard can cast Meteor Swarm once per day and I can use Action Surge once/twice per short rest. The point is that I use it and I'm done. And until I get that next short rest, I'm just as weak as a Wizard. Fighters can "recover" more quickly than spellcasters, but in the actual encounter? In the actual fight? They have less resources that they can burn through more quickly than spellcasters. This is the crux of the problem here. Without rests, there is nothing that makes a Fighter better than a Wizard. Anything I can do, he can do better, 🎶 he can do anything better than me. 🎶
It's basically the same thing as saying a Wizard can finish a marathon with their spells but then they'll be really tired when they're done. You can finish the marathon too if you take a few hour long rests along the way. Why can't I just finish the marathon with my own strength? Am I at least faster at sprinting the hundred meter dash? No, the Wizard is faster at that too, but you'll be able to do another hundred meter dash in an hour or so. He still can too, he'll just be marginally slower than you.
Do you see the problem with this argument yet?
"Martial characters should be getting magic items to make them better and then they'll be as good as spellcasters."
But spellcasters don't need magic items. This only supports the argument that martial classes are handicapped in comparison to spellcasters. It's essentially saying that spellcasters can stand on their own but martial classes need a magic item wheelchair to be able to keep up. Do you see the problem here?
Why is it too much to ask that martial classes can stand at the same level as spellcasters through just their own class features?
"Cleave is a really good tool."
And I agree. But last time I asked my DM, he said no. Maybe I'll get to ask him again, but I respect his rulings because he's my friend and I respect him.
"It sounds like the 5th edition system is not for you. You should try something else, like Pathfinder 2e!"
I would if I could but my group seems happy playing 5th edition. As much as this post is a huge complaint rant, not everything is about me. And I won't DM a Pathfinder game because frankly, I'm not good at DMing. I think other people have less fun when I'm behind the screen and I think I have less fun when I'm behind the screen. I wish it weren't the case, but it seems to be the one I'm stuck with. I just don't have a mind made for DMing.