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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
Since you didn't correct me when I said comics, I'd say it's pretty accurate to assume we're talking comic versions of the characters and not the MCU versions... If you'd said otherwise, I wouldn't be saying any of what comes next, but you didn't, so I'll just go with it.
About ridiculous feats... Scarlet Witch is a mutant, so she she'd probably be a Sorcerer... And even then, her feats include being able to change reality so that mutants are the dominant race on Earth and then wipe out the majority of her own race. I'm sure there's more that I'm not aware of.
Dr. Strange regularly fights off extra-dimensional conquerors, has spells powerful enough to harm Galactus (an of the universe that's the balance between life and death/creation and destruction) with a single spell, and once broke free from restrains made by The Living Tribunal... AKA the being that oversees reality itself, exists simultaneously throughout-out the multiverse and is the right hand of The One Above All (the god of the Marvel Multiverse, which includes every continuity ever in Marvel). Fun Fact: The Living Tribunal was supposedly going to appear in the MCU before getting cut.
But wanting to play super powered warrior characters based on Shonen is illogical... Why?
It seems like you're looking for ways to hold martial characters down while giving casters a free pass because you just don't like it, which is fine with the characters you want to play. But they're just as illogical as Shonen characters in terms of ridiculous feats. Which ties back into the double standard that I was talking about earlier about giving casters more than martials.
But this is assuming you're talking about comic versions, which you should have corrected me on earlier if you meant the movies based on the comics or just the comics themselves.
But really, it seems like you're trying to downplay martials, even non-divine ones like Beowulf by saying he "got his ass kicked by a dragon after beating up some monsters" and that they shouldn't be able to draw on Shonen manga while Casters get a free pass to draw on comics because you say, "It's illogical for these characters to draw from fictional media that has characters like this in it, but completely logical for this other group of characters to draw from similar fictional media that has characters like this in it."
Really I don't think superhero comics OR Shonen anime make for good source materials or examples for a quasi-medievaloid fantasy setting, system, or campaign... neither one really fits the scale, scope, or aesthetics.
I wouldn't use Hulk, Thor, Dr Strange, or Scarlet Witch as standards or goals for characters in a fantasy setting -- unless it was very deliberately supposed to be a "superheros in a fantasy setting" campaign, and even then I'd be far more selective in the "how, what, why" questions relating to superhuman abilities.
And I definitely wouldn't use the sort of Shonen being discussed here. There are some edge cases that get filed under Shonen that have some interesting worldbuilding (see, My Hero Academia) that make for interesting grist for the mill if for the right sorts of settings once you learn to ignore the gob-awful Shonen-angsting and scenery-chewing that the characters all get up to.
If someone wants to run "fantasy superheroes" I have no objection to that at all, but they should be honest with themselves and with the rest of the table about it.
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Originally Posted by
Cluedrew
OK I can work with that. So let me instead say at some level what things you are choosing to justify comes down to "because it's awesome". Or cool, or interesting or makes for better game play or some other not having to do with the internal facts of the setting because this is before they exist yet. Initially at least story-telling is more complicated than that and you can go back and forth.
But then all these facts are piled up on top of the story and that's nice and all. Especially when they communicate expectations, allow you to extrapolate into other parts of the world and all those other things good world building does. On the other hand that doesn't change the fact I know someone set things in their place for a very simple reason: "because it's awesome".
If you ever end up reading anything I wrote, you can be assured that "because it's awesome" was not the core reason anything was included, and that a great deal that would have only qualified as "that's awesome" was left on the cutting room floor.
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Originally Posted by
Keltest
Again, I have to wonder why characters like Goku are even relevant here? They aren't the Guy at the Gym. I guess they could serve as examples of what high level martial characters could look like if we give up the pretense that they aren't extrahuman, but otherwise they aren't really all that meaningful. Yeah, they got more powerful by training... in whatever external power source it is that they use. Goku hasn't beaten anybody with just his muscles in forever.
Not to mention they're teleporting around, throwing fireballs and energy blasts, flying through space, etc. They're just "rule of kewl" superhumans with a genre twist, nothing more, nothing less. Such characters are entirely irrelevant except as examples of a "no holds barred no limits" characters where the only standard is "ADD MORE AWESOME!"
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Originally Posted by
Morty
Yeah, this seems to work well enough for settings with magic scaled back considerably. The challenge posited by this thread is something different.
If I were to try it, I think I'd basically draw a line in the sand and say that this point - say, level 7 out of 20 or something but obviously I'm not a fan of levels - is the limit of how good you can get just by training. But it'd apply to all sorts of skill, magical or mundane. It'd be roughly action-hero level for non-casters or an approximately similar proficiency in spellcasting. Then, past that point, you'd need to expand your character and decide just what it is that lets you break this limit. Some way to overcome the limitations of one's physical body for martial/mundane skill or some discovery of magic deeper than most can accomplish. For a start, at least. I'm kind of being inspired by sorcerous initiations from Exalted 3E.
That's pretty much where I have the rough idea in my head of how one would TRY to kludge that second setting with 5e... most of the world, and a standard campaign, would be E6 with added limits on full Caster classes, and "racial" Feats available for some of the Peoples. The "secret world" stuff would instead be in the upper levels, (there just aren't enough of them to dominate or take over the world). Mainly this is a thought exercise for trying to grasp 5e's quirks, and help with my search for a system that actually fits these settings I'm working on.
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Originally Posted by
Cynthaer
I actually agree that D&D's design is extremely messy, although I think it's staggeringly popular in part BECAUSE of this, rather than in spite of it.
The books and games map poorly to each other, and the settings don't account for PC power levels. Lots of things are handwaved and the rarity of high-level characters is conspicuously ambiguous.
But at the same time...eh. It turns out most people don't really need a highly coherent setting in order to play and enjoy stories set within them, and are perfectly happy to handwave questions like "how could anyone survive that" in order to get on with the parts of the story they actually care about.
Also, to be clear, I'm not saying impossibly powerful mundanes are good game design because they're in D&D. I'm saying they're in D&D because people want to play them, and they like it when those characters can keep up with the rest of the party.
As this general issue (martial-caster divide, GATGF, etc) has been discussed, I've repeatedly included "coherent setting" as one of the things that can be given up on my list of "but you have to give up something" options... but quite often, at least one poster has responded to this very angrily and tell me that caring about coherent setting is a horrible thing -- not just that it's what they've chosen to give up and we're all cool with that choice, but that if I don't also make that choice, then I'm "delusional", or "grossly unfair", or otherwise suffering from some deep personal failing. If giving up "coherent setting" is such an easy choice for them, if they really don't care at all, I have to wonder why it tends to get so venomously personal when I've brought it up.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
But wanting to play super powered warrior characters based on Shonen is illogical... Why?
I don't think anybody is saying that.
I think some people are saying "I don't want to play in a setting with super powered shonen warriors." Which is not the same thing.
Playing with super powered shonen warriors is cool. Playing without super powered shonen warriors is cool. Neither is illogical.
They're just incompatible, so it makes sense to get on the same page with the rest of table about this, rather than trying to "prove" that one view is correct and the other incorrect. And if you can't, find a group that is on the same page, or make some kind of compromise.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
kyoryu
I don't think anybody is saying that.
I think some people are saying "I don't want to play in a setting with super powered shonen warriors." Which is not the same thing.
Playing with super powered shonen warriors is cool. Playing without super powered shonen warriors is cool. Neither is illogical.
They're just incompatible, so it makes sense to get on the same page with the rest of table about this, rather than trying to "prove" that one view is correct and the other incorrect. And if you can't, find a group that is on the same page, or make some kind of compromise.
IMO, it's "logical" or "illogical" depending on the context.
Does the character fit the setting details and aesthetics, the campaign, the power level, etc?
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
But wanting to play super powered warrior characters based on Shonen is illogical... Why?
I'll clarify; wanting roleplaying games based on shonen tropes is not illogical, what you want is your preference. But expecting WotC to cater D&D specifically to that want, after even something as relatively benign as Tome of Battle was criticized for being "too anime" - that is what I consider to be illogical. D&D has many influences, but shonen anime are either not among them at all or only to a very limited extent.
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
It seems like you're looking for ways to hold martial characters down while giving casters a free pass because you just don't like it, which is fine with the characters you want to play. But they're just as illogical as Shonen characters in terms of ridiculous feats. Which ties back into the double standard that I was talking about earlier about giving casters more than martials.
Sure, it's absolutely a double-standard that magic should have a higher problem-solving potential than not-magic. But I believe it's one that's been supported by the majority. When you're dealing with two mutually exclusive paradigms, you have to pick one, and they picked the one that works best for the type of game they want to make; they can't please both the folks who want fighters changing reality by flexing at it, and the ones like me who find that ridiculous. It would be foolish of them to try.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
Sure, it's absolutely a double-standard that magic should have a higher problem-solving potential than not-magic. But I believe it's one that's been supported by the majority. When you're dealing with two mutually exclusive paradigms, you have to pick one, and they picked the one that works best for the type of game they want to make; they can't please both the folks who want fighters changing reality by flexing at it, and the ones like me who find that ridiculous. It would be foolish of them to try.
And that only becomes a problem when someone says "I want my character in this game where there's a specific way to greatly exceed normal limits to exceed normal limits while steadfastly and absolutely and utterly avoiding any of that specific way of exceeding limits".
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Personally, ive never actually seen anybody insist that their greek-demigod-powered fighter is anything other than superhuman when they hit high levels. They may not want to call it magic, specifically, but they don't try and insist that he's actually just a normal guy at that point, even if he started out that way.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
I don't think there's anything particularly incoherent with just saying that human limits are higher in the setting, but that they require an exponentially higher amount of effort to reach.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Cluedrew
OK on of the "I don't understand why people want to play non-wizard characters" ones.
The thing about D&D's wizards, bards, druids, and sorcerers, is that there's very little to establish them as unreliable or make their results non-reproducible (you can occasionally blow yourself up if you don't know what you're doing and that's almost it). Which means that these people are essentially doing science, working with fairly well-understood natural phenomena. So if you break out the "there's no magic involved here, the laws of this reality are just different in a way that allows this" line, you're actually describing most D&D spell casters -- exactly the thing you're trying to distinguish yourself from.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
I'll clarify; wanting roleplaying games based on shonen tropes is not illogical, what you want is your preference. But expecting WotC to cater D&D specifically to that want, after even something as relatively benign as Tome of Battle was
criticized for being "too anime" -
that is what I consider to be illogical. D&D has many influences, but shonen anime are either not among them at all or only to a very limited extent.
I never said I expected WotC to cater to my type of game, we were talking about you saying it was illogical to use Shonen manga as inspiration while also using comics as inspiration, not WotC.
And about being too anime, I think it's already gone too far for them to say that, considering even in 5E... Monks in the game are pulling off things pretty similar to what I'd see in anime. Such as Arms of the Astral Self being something I'd expect to see in Naruto. Or Awakening of the Astral Self allowing one to deflect energy... Also, Complete Astral Self being able to allow you to summon spiritual armor... or if we want to get a closer approximation to it's description... When Monks are pulling off such feats, that I expect to see in anime, in the edition of the game after they bashed something for being TOO anime... There's some real confusion going on here.
Along with the Smash from Air feat in Pathfinder, which isn't WotC. It's also why I've been saying 3.5E to show I'm not just talking about WotC.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Monks have never belonged in the game at all.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Pex
I can't agree. I accept this is important to you, but yes, "just being that awesome" is all the justification I need if justification is needed. Why can't NPC #2 be like my character? For the same reason BBEG #4 can do things my character could never do for all characters I ever will play. It just is. If an explanation is needed that's flavor text for the campaign. I can certainly agree a D&D Fighter is superhuman if you want to compare him to a normal real world human or in game NPC #2, but he doesn't need a source for it. It's personal prowess, not magic
I agree with this 100%.
As an illustration of the “because it’s awesome” phenomenon, a lot of people favourably quote Bruce Banner’s line from the Avengers:
“Now would be a great time to get angry!”
“That’s my secret. I’m always angry.”
That is an awesome line. It is also a line that retcons a lot of the Hulk’s character.
Sometimes, “because it’s awesome” makes for a better movie and a better game. DMs already allow it to happen all the time for casters: pretty much every PC caster I have seen has used one of their spells in a manner that exceeds what is strictly written in the spell description, and IME, that is not a problem.
DMs should allow the same leeway to non-magical characters, and the fighter who stick his sword in the cliff face to slow his fall is s great and flavourful example.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
That's pretty much where I have the rough idea in my head of how one would TRY to kludge that second setting with 5e... most of the world, and a standard campaign, would be E6 with added limits on full Caster classes, and "racial" Feats available for some of the Peoples. The "secret world" stuff would instead be in the upper levels, (there just aren't enough of them to dominate or take over the world). Mainly this is a thought exercise for trying to grasp 5e's quirks, and help with my search for a system that actually fits these settings I'm working on.
Yes, I think here the important part is to keep it modular. The "origin stories" should probably be fairly simple, to let people homebrew them. And for people who want to play a truly mundane (well... by the standards of fantasy and action stories) on high levels... just don't take an "origin story".
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Mechalich
I suspect that both Ed Greenwood and RA Salvatore would deny this to the death. It's very rare for any published author to admit to writing in an incoherent setting outside of surrealist circles. Even freaking RIFTS doesn't public admit to its abject ridiculousness.
I mean...
Ok so theres a bit in the Cleric Quintet where the heroes fight a dragon. The cleric shoots magic at it, the Giant and the dwarf hack at the dragon, but the monk doesn't attack it. Because Salvatore knew that it was kinda silly for a 5 foot nothing ordinary human to be able to punch through dragon scales thicker than plate mail. The monk taunts and dodges. Which in game mechanics is nonsense. Her ability to dodge dragon breath is passive, not requiring an action, and at that level her fists would probably do more damage than the dwarf's axe.
Then in Servant of the Shard the same monk, who is obviously very high level, gets into a brief skirmish with 2 drow gets stabbed once and nearly dies. Obviously not exactly hewing close to the rules there, one d8+magic and Str doesn't take out a high level monk.
Regis the halfling never hits anything above man-sized with his little mace because he couldn't hurt it, and stays out of fights with ogres. But in the rules, his little d4 damage would still help.
Not to mention the internal inconsistency. Fireballs that incinerate massive orcs just slightly burn dwarf fighters. Artemis Entreri a fighter/thief has a better will save against Crenshinibon than Jarlaxle, who is at least a little bit a wizard, and a drow, and better than Raiguy, who is a cleric/wizard and a drow, but drow resistance to magic is explicitly called out.
Its not a big deal, but its clearly inconsistent.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
The big take-away I've had in thinking about this problem is that D&D, at least D&D that's allowed to reach high levels, needs to be treated as a xianxia, or likely more accurately, xuanhuan (xuanhuan basically just being xianxia that isn't specifically Daoist) game. Unfortunately, D&D is the only ruleset out there that really demands a xuanhuan-esque mindset (in the Tippyverse 'rules imply setting' sense), and it fails horribly in numerous ways: it never presents xuanhuan as a valid setting type in any of its materials, it's not balanced around a xuanhuan growth curve (the core of this thread's discussion), and it gives really bad advice for running anything other than a low level game despite being one of the most powerful rulesets around.
What I've come to realize is that despite the touchstone RPG for the entire hobby basically being a xuanhuan game... there is basically no RPG that's actually designed to do xuanhuan or xianxia at all. The only example I've even heard of was a fan-made Dragon Ball Z game so poorly designed a Pun-Pun level loop was found within weeks.
What the industry needs to do is make a xianxia game or three, and make it good. Show WotC and Paizo how to do their specific kind of fantasy better and hopefully in a couple of editions they'll move to copy it.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
I never said I expected WotC to cater to my type of game, we were talking about you saying it was illogical to use Shonen manga as inspiration while also using comics as inspiration, not WotC.
Okay, take comics out then - I cited plenty of sources from novels showing magic superiority, like Gandalf, Milamber, Raistlin and Dumbledore. None of those are manga or comics, right?
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
First off, I'm fine with all of the abilities you listed, because none of them come close to matching what a high-level spellcaster can do, even in 5th edition. So at 17th level, that monk can... attack a few more times per round, get some bonus AC, and whisper to someone 30ft. away. Big whoop, want to know what a wizard can do at that level?
Second, even if that stuff were truly remarkable, Monks are inherently magical anyway, they always have been. The stuff they can do being more fantastical than the things a Fighter can do is to be expected. It doesn't violate that suspension of disbelief design principle when a monk heals other people's wounds, runs across a body of water or teleports through a solid obstacle.
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Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
And that only becomes a problem when someone says "I want my character in this game where there's a specific way to greatly exceed normal limits to exceed normal limits while steadfastly and absolutely and utterly avoiding any of that specific way of exceeding limits".
Right, this too. You can have magical martials just fine (see Eldritch Knight in 5e or Eldritch Scoundrel in PF for example), but acknowledge that they're using magic, don't pretend that they're purely mundane and "just that good" with no interaction with the magic system whatsoever.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
First off, I'm fine with all of the abilities you listed, because none of them come close to matching what a high-level spellcaster can do, even in 5th edition.
People don't have an issue with the monk is because the idea of "spiritual monk that channels ki" is baked into the concept. Ki abilities, even if strong, don't break that.
The concept for Fighter is "dude that's really good with a sword", at least for a number of people. So giving said fighter super-human abilities breaks the concept.
A concept/class called "Eldritch Warrior" wouldn't have the same pushback.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
Right, this too. You can have magical martials just fine (see Eldritch Knight in 5e or Eldritch Scoundrel in PF for example), but acknowledge that they're using magic, don't pretend that they're purely mundane and "just that good" with no interaction with the magic system whatsoever.
And the magic doesn't even have to be spells, at all.
Monk and most of its subclasses don't even rely on spells, but no could reasonable say "that character's not doing anything magical".
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
And the magic doesn't even have to be spells, at all.
Monk and most of its subclasses don't even rely on spells, but no could reasonable say "that character's not doing anything magical".
Of course, monks have always been the odd class out and an exception to the assumption that magic = casting spells.
Besides, monks, or eldritch knights or whatever else, use magic/cast spells from the beginning. A hypothetical balanced and honest high-level fighter would start out with mundane skills and acquire "extranormal" ones on higher levels, when keeping up with just mundane skill isn't feasible. That's a difference.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
Okay, take comics out then - I cited plenty of sources from novels showing magic superiority, like Gandalf, Milamber, Raistlin and Dumbledore. None of those are manga or comics, right?
Well, Gandalf is essentially an angel, and Dumbledore had to be born to be able to use his magic... So a completely mortal Wizard that just studies until they can use magic wouldn't work as inspiration. And both of them are still less powerful than a Level 20 Wizard from what I'm aware.
Don't know anything about Milamber or Raistlin, so can't comment.
... Anyway, why can't I use Shonen martials as inspiration for my own characters?
Quote:
First off, I'm fine with all of the abilities you listed, because none of them come close to matching what a high-level spellcaster can do, even in 5th edition. So at 17th level, that monk can... attack a few more times per round, get some bonus AC, and whisper to someone 30ft. away. Big whoop, want to know what a wizard can do at that level?
Second, even if that stuff were truly remarkable, Monks are inherently magical anyway, they always have been. The stuff they can do being more fantastical than the things a Fighter can do is to be expected. It doesn't violate that suspension of disbelief design principle when a monk heals other people's wounds, runs across a body of water or teleports through a solid obstacle.
... We were talking about Shonen anime, which you said D&D doesn't really take inspiration from/can be compared to in terms of abilities. You tried to use WotC as a reason for why, and I provided an explanation for how that's not true from a class in the game. Don't say, "This game is X" or "This game is not X" and then back away or change the subject when it doesn't go your way.
And about Fighters... I remembered Akame from Akame ga Kill doesn't use ki, she just has an enchanted sword. Even without that sword (which doesn't boost her strength in any way, it only kills anyone who it cuts), she's able to cleave through stone, move faster than bullets, leap incredibly high distances into the air, etc. She's a normal human being in the context of her setting, just a highly trained assassin. I'm sure there are plenty of other characters that I'm not aware of, as I haven't seen every anime in existence. Even Kenshiro technically isn't a Monk, as he doesn't use any ki in his strikes as far as I'm aware.
And about Fighters again, we can use Cloud Strife as an example of a Fighter. Or Dante. Or Kenshiro. Or Rock Lee. Or Might Gai. Or Kratos. Or Guts. Or Wolverine. (To be fair, the last three are probably some mixture between Barbarian and Fighter) Or any martial character, whether they're fully human, only shaped like a human, a half-human hybrid, descendant from human, a mutant human, an Elven warrior, a half-fiend, or something else entirely. Why should a martial character have to hold themselves to your standard as to what is and isn't considered a viable source of inspiration?
Why should they when you've made it clear you don't believe in fairness, said it Shonen it wasn't logical because Shonen manga has "ridiculous feats" while you earlier gave comic characters a pass, then changed it when I pointed out the flaws in that argument, then changed your argument yet again by saying, "WotC said it isn't like this", then changed it yet again to, "I'm fine with this sort of thing." When you keep changing your stance, I can't take it seriously because you'll just move the goalposts again, and I'm not in the mood to be playing catch up with a moving-stationary target.
Let Martials be superhuman is something I'm in support of. Let them be as awesome as casters at the same level. I believe in fairness. I don't think we can see eye to eye on that though.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Raistlin at least is literally a D&D character created for a module that had a book written about it, so using him as an inspiration for D&D wizardly design is... well, something. I don't know what exactly, but something.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
Well, Gandalf is essentially an angel, and Dumbledore had to be born to be able to use his magic... So a completely mortal Wizard that just studies until they can use magic wouldn't work as inspiration. And both of them are still less powerful than a Level 20 Wizard from what I'm aware.
Don't know anything about Milamber or Raistlin, so can't comment.
... Anyway, why can't I use Shonen martials as inspiration?
For starters, most of them are from incompatible settings that have different or non-existent underlying premises and facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
... We were talking about Shonen anime, which you said D&D doesn't really take inspiration from/can be compared to in terms of abilities. You tried to use WotC as a reason for why, and I provided an explanation for how that's not true from a class in the game. Don't say, "This game is X" or "This game is not X" and then back away or change the subject when it doesn't go your way.
And about Fighters... I remembered Akame from Akame ga Kill doesn't use ki, she just has an enchanted sword. Even without that sword (which doesn't boost her strength in any way, it only kills anyone who it cuts), she's able to cleave through stone, move faster than bullets, leap incredibly high distances into the air, etc. She's a normal human being in the context of her setting, just a highly trained assassin.
Let Martials be superhuman is something I'm in support of. I believe in fairness. I don't think we can see eye to eye on that.
I'm also in favor of letting martials be superhuman, if it fits the setting and campaign. I'm not in favor of fastidiously non-superhuman characters doing blatantly superhuman things.
I'm also in favor of fairness. A character who doesn't fit the setting and campaign, distorts the setting, and/or hinders immersion and suspension of disbelief, just by being in the game, is unfair to the rest of the table.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
Well, Gandalf is essentially an angel, and Dumbledore had to be born to be able to use his magic... So a completely mortal Wizard that just studies until they can use magic wouldn't work as inspiration. And both of them are still less powerful than a Level 20 Wizard from what I'm aware.
Don't know anything about Milamber or Raistlin, so can't comment.
Raistlin is an archmage (briefly deity) from Dragonlance, which uses D&D rules, so he's going to be pretty close to a 1:1 match to the power level D&D 3e was going for. Milamber is also known as Pug, and is the main protagonist from Raymond Feist's Magician series. Both are explicit inspirations for D&D 3e.
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Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
... Anyway, why can't I use Shonen martials as inspiration?
You can use whatever you want for whatever purposes you want. D&D's authors are not, and have basically stated that Tome of Battle was already pushing the envelope, so asking for anything more shonen than that is likely to be a non-starter. This also applies to your Akame ga Kill example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
... We were talking about Shonen anime, which you said D&D doesn't really take inspiration from/can be compared to in terms of abilities. You tried to use WotC as a reason for why, and I provided an explanation for how that's not true from a class in the game. Don't say, "This game is X" or "This game is not X" and then back away or change the subject when it doesn't go your way.
Me: I'm fine with martial classes that have some extranormal abilities. However, I don't think they should be equal to spellcasters, and I don't think shonen tropes that have martials functionally doing magic on par with a spellcaster have any place in D&D.
You: But check out these 5e monk abilities, at high levels they can manifest an avatar to punch a lot, block attacks, and whisper to somebody at range.
Me: ...Okay? That's still not equal to what a high-level spellcaster can do, so I don't have a problem with that, and Monks are more inherently magical than Fighters anyway.
You: Stop backing away and changing the subject!!1!1
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
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Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
For starters, most of them are from incompatible settings that have different or non-existent underlying premises and facts.
I'm also in favor of letting martials be superhuman, if it fits the setting and campaign. I'm not in favor of fastidiously non-superhuman characters doing blatantly superhuman things.
I'm also favor fairness. A character who doesn't fit the setting and campaign, distorts the setting, and/or hinders immersion and suspension of disbelief, just by being in the game, is unfair to the rest of the table.
While I don't agree it's necessarily a world building issue... I could understand the frustration of having the immersion break when Dr. Strange appears in a sci-fi universe. He's a high level character concept, but he probably wouldn't fit in too well in, say, Halo or Mass Effect. Or the inverse of having a character with shield technology like Master Chief pop up in Lord of the Rings...
It might be why the Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting appeals to me. Anything is possible, but if you want a more focused genre... Yeah, something like the concepts I mentioned would be rather hard to swallow. Might be a powerful character, but they'd feel greatly out of place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Me: I'm fine with martial classes that have some extranormal abilities. However, I don't think they should be equal to spellcasters, and I don't think shonen tropes that have martials functionally doing magic on par with a spellcaster have any place in D&D.
You: But check out these 5e monk abilities, at high levels they can manifest an avatar to punch a lot, block attacks, and whisper to somebody at range.
Me: ...Okay? That's still not equal to what a high-level spellcaster can do, so I don't have a problem with that, and Monks are more inherently magical than Fighters anyway.
You: Stop backing away and changing the subject!!1!1
Yep.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
Yep.
Glad we agree - so can you articulate specifically what it is you want 3.5 to do that Tome of Battle doesn't already do? And Path of War if you want to include PF. Because from where I sit, we're aligned around "martials can do more stuff, but they shouldn't be spellcasters."
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Koo Rehtorb
Monks have never belonged in the game at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Morty
Of course, monks have always been the odd class out and an exception to the assumption that magic = casting spells.
This has me wondering actually, why would the game include Monks into D&D and then not run with it? They don't fit with a traditional fantasy setting (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding something). So does anyone have any idea why that is?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Glad we agree
Whatever you say my friend.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Me: I'm fine with martial classes that have some extranormal abilities. However, I don't think they should be equal to spellcasters, and I don't think shonen tropes that have martials functionally doing magic on par with a spellcaster have any place in D&D.
This is where I confuse people as to "which side I'm on", but...
Why shouldn't martial characters be equal to spellcasters?
(I'm taking "equal" here to mean balanced, just as engaging and effective within the game, etc, and not "identical to".)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AntiAuthority
This has me wondering actually, why would the game include Monks into D&D and then not run with it? They don't fit with a traditional fantasy setting (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding something). So does anyone have any idea why that is?
"Because martial arts are cool."
And no, I don't mean that enthusiastically or sarcastically, only as a factual statement of the reason.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lvl45DM!
I mean...
Ok so theres a bit in the Cleric Quintet where the heroes fight a dragon. The cleric shoots magic at it, the Giant and the dwarf hack at the dragon, but the monk doesn't attack it. Because Salvatore knew that it was kinda silly for a 5 foot nothing ordinary human to be able to punch through dragon scales thicker than plate mail. The monk taunts and dodges. Which in game mechanics is nonsense. Her ability to dodge dragon breath is passive, not requiring an action, and at that level her fists would probably do more damage than the dwarf's axe.
Then in Servant of the Shard the same monk, who is obviously very high level, gets into a brief skirmish with 2 drow gets stabbed once and nearly dies. Obviously not exactly hewing close to the rules there, one d8+magic and Str doesn't take out a high level monk.
Regis the halfling never hits anything above man-sized with his little mace because he couldn't hurt it, and stays out of fights with ogres. But in the rules, his little d4 damage would still help.
Not to mention the internal inconsistency. Fireballs that incinerate massive orcs just slightly burn dwarf fighters. Artemis Entreri a fighter/thief has a better will save against Crenshinibon than Jarlaxle, who is at least a little bit a wizard, and a drow, and better than Raiguy, who is a cleric/wizard and a drow, but drow resistance to magic is explicitly called out.
Its not a big deal, but its clearly inconsistent.
I was not saying that there isn't inconsistency in those novels - there's tons of it - only that if you actually met with the authors and confronted them about the major failures of the settings to hold together they would spew thousands of words of BS at you in an attempt to desperately obscure the issue rather than acknowledging the truth. I don't blame them for this, it's a perfectly human impulse to defend one's own work, but it's just a way of pointing out that even when a setting has completely lost control of itself (speaking of shounen anime, this happens in those almost universally because the ever-accelerating power treadmill gradually tears the world apart) the creators refuse to admit that to be the case.
It is extremely rare to have a fictional setting or game openly embrace the surrealist approach that all of the actual events are in and of themselves meaningless and it's only how they trigger emotional resonance that matters. Planescape comes perhaps the closest of any that I'm familiar with, since it managed to admit that the planes were too large and the power that be too entrenched for even characters of deity level power to change anything, but even that didn't quite get there (Planescape is still the best setting for high-level play by an immense margin as a result).
Quote:
Originally Posted by AntiAuthority
This has me wondering actually, why would the game include Monks into D&D and then not run with it? They don't fit with a traditional fantasy setting (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding something). So does anyone have any idea why that is?
Money. Money, and Baldur's Gate. D&D is by far the most mass market of Tabletop RPGs. In fact it may be the only tabletop RPG big enough to respond properly to market forces (White Wolf, the next biggest company, was sufficient stubborn to engage in a gratuitous act of self-destruction known as the nWoD rather than appease its fanbase). The Monk was a thing in 1e AD&D, briefly, because 1e had a bunch of weird ideas and was extremely experimental (and had Oriental Adventures). It was removed in 2e AD&D for various reasons, and the entire Oriental Adventures bit was downplayed, but for some reason the Monk class got included as an option in BGII, and a monk antagonist made it into BGII Throne of Bhaal. It became clear from response to those games that there was a market for kung-fu-fightin' in D&D, and WotC shamelessly threw the Monk into 3e because that was the case.
It's important to recognize that 3e for all that it had trap options and a bunch of other stupidity built into the game design, from a corporate perspective it was designed as a massively simplified game compared to 2e - the core mechanics were all much less complex (and, ultimately, mathematically much better, for all the problems 3.X D&D has the core d20 system is flatly superior to 2e and there's no debate on that score). TSR did not want you children to play D&D, believing that kids of Stranger Things age weren't ready for the game. WotC, which specializes in addicting players in exactly that age group to its incredibly expensive card game hobby, absolutely did. The inclusion of the monk can be seen as something that appealed to the 10-14 age bracket, and the long term consequences of introducing a class that did not properly fit the extant framework of the game was largely ignored.
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Glad we agree - so can you articulate specifically what it is you want 3.5 to do that Tome of Battle doesn't already do? And Path of War if you want to include PF. Because from where I sit, we're aligned around "martials can do more stuff, but they shouldn't be spellcasters."
I like ToB and PoW. The problem for me is they're just not enough in terms of options and power, compared to full casters.
For me there are two real options here, either nerf full casters so that martials don't look like chumps next to them, or power the martials up significantly. Though I feel like the second option would require people to slaughter the D&D sacred cow that is "20 level cap", because in my opinion 20 levels just isn't enough of a spread/gap between the 1st level rookie and 20th level "demigod", at least when it comes to martials/non-casters. In my own games/setting high level martials are of course special, just not super rare, 1 in a million special. I treat them more like highly trained professionals rather than living legends, because that's what the mechanics of the classes suggest to me.
Now, what I would want see (or do) is for D&D to actually cap at 30th or even 40th level, have 9th level spells be spread over all 30/40 levels, then homebrew progressions for non-casters and partial casters up to the new cap and feats that are more in line with what high level full casters can do. That way I would have my preference for epic heroes while still having the option to play "regular" heroes (cap your game at 15-20th level) and "guys at the gym" (E6 or something like that).
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
This is where I confuse people as to "which side I'm on", but...
Why shouldn't martial characters be equal to spellcasters?
(I'm taking "equal" here to mean balanced, just as engaging and effective within the game, etc, and not "identical to".)
Actually, so far you've been pretty transparent you're fine with superhuman martial characters that can equal reality warpers... As long as they fit within the narrative.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Max_Killjoy
"Because martial arts are cool."
And no, I don't mean that enthusiastically or sarcastically, only as a factual statement of the reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mechalich
Money. Money, and Baldur's Gate. D&D is by far the most mass market of Tabletop RPGs. In fact it may be the only tabletop RPG big enough to respond properly to market forces (White Wolf, the next biggest company, was sufficient stubborn to engage in a gratuitous act of self-destruction known as the nWoD rather than appease its fanbase). The Monk was a thing in 1e AD&D, briefly, because 1e had a bunch of weird ideas and was extremely experimental (and had Oriental Adventures). It was removed in 2e AD&D for various reasons, and the entire Oriental Adventures bit was downplayed, but for some reason the Monk class got included as an option in BGII, and a monk antagonist made it into BGII Throne of Bhaal. It became clear from response to those games that there was a market for kung-fu-fightin' in D&D, and WotC shamelessly threw the Monk into 3e because that was the case.
It's important to recognize that 3e for all that it had trap options and a bunch of other stupidity built into the game design, from a corporate perspective it was designed as a massively simplified game compared to 2e - the core mechanics were all much less complex (and, ultimately, mathematically much better, for all the problems 3.X D&D has the core d20 system is flatly superior to 2e and there's no debate on that score). TSR did not want you children to play D&D, believing that kids of Stranger Things age weren't ready for the game. WotC, which specializes in addicting players in exactly that age group to its incredibly expensive card game hobby, absolutely did. The inclusion of the monk can be seen as something that appealed to the 10-14 age bracket, and the long term consequences of introducing a class that did not properly fit the extant framework of the game was largely ignored.
I'm perfectly ok with being cool as an answer. And money too lol.
But this has me wondering, in the D&D lore, how are Monks handled? Are they able to punch out large beasts with their bare hands or are they just presented as guys that like to meditate?
As an aside... I can only presume Psionics and Gunslingers were thrown in for the same reasons? (Minus Baldur's Gate)
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Re: Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy
I would like to state the opinion that superhero/shonen type characters are considered not fitting in a D&D setting simply because people who played and created D&D when it was rising in popularity didn't really know anything else. Their preferences were molded by what was normal at the times, which were more "guy at the gym" heroes like Conan or Aragorn or Jon Snow. Imagine if D&D was invented today in Japan, how different the discussions would be.