Sword Beats Spell: Defending the God-Martial

[Cluedrew]

Some back-ground: Some time ago I created a thread called Sword Beats Spell: Creating the God-Martial. It was supposed to be about what does a god-martial character look like, but it got mixed up with another conversation. Can a god-martial character even exist? This thread is about that.

So what is a God-Martial? Short answer: a martial god-wizard. A god-wizard (or slightly more generically, god-caster) is one who has enough magical power to have practically infinite power, with few to no limits. So a wizard with the power of a god, shouldn't be too much off a surprise. So a god-martial is then any character who has enough martial power and mastery to have effectively unlimited power.

So can such a character exist? I think so and my reason as to why basically boils down to Dragon Ball. Last time I saw anything of Dragon Ball I saw someone tap a table and destroy half a planet. Now, the reason I remembered that bit is because I was wondering how the table withstood that much force, so it doesn't make perfect sense. But then neither does magic.

For some reason people seem to be more willing to accept magic not making sense than the martial case. I guess it is because magic never makes sense at some level. But still, when D&D magic is help up as an example... sure it is internally consistent, because the internal logic is "it works". I think "the tap was actually a couple dozen taps gone in under 1/20th of a second, which caused the table (made of a single material) to resonate back up and down in perfect unison and transfer all the force to the floor" is a more reasonable explanation in terms of the suspension of disbelief. Still that is one point of debate.

Another is what point does it stop being martial power? I have seen martial defined as "one who hits things" and "anything that is not a caster". Sometimes seemingly in conjunction, which I think is a rather narrow view. As for what is martial, if they don't do it by magic (caster), delegation (leader) or sufficiently advanced technology (caster scientist) I think it should work. Common tech is allowed, because then it becomes about mastery and that seems to fit back into martial mastery. So want to start a fire by snapping your fingers, fine by me. Cause a lightning strike by throwing a metal spear so hard it supercharges itself along the way, pass.

And with these things I think you could create a god-martial character. But that is just my opinion. What do you think?

[Inevitability]

It's definitely possible to create an, as you call it, god-martial.

As you already pointed out, many people (DMs, forum-goers, 3.5 designers) had this idea that a martial could do nothing more impressive than a well-trained athlete, which harms the fun and balance of the game and equates the strongest warriors in D&D with the strongest people in real life.

I suggest looking at the various Mythic homebrews floating around on these forums. Some of them are pretty obviously supernatural, but there's also stuff like the Teramach, which gets to mundanely smash through Walls of Force and throw mountains.

[gkathellar]

I think the issue is that a martial god and a wizard God are going to be more-or-less indistinguishable in a lot of ways. "Can do anything" really sorta all blends together past a certain point, and many players conceptualize martial characters primarily through their limits, so ... things like this run into visualization issues.

That said, for examples of godlike martial artists alongside other godlike characters, I'd point you to the manga Battle Angel Alita. The sequel series in particular has a lunatic cyborg karate master who literally knife-hands miracles into people. There's another martial artist who's an immortal, regenerating orphanage head who reads so many moves ahead that she's effectively precognitive, and can only be defeated if your dharma is more powerful than hers. At one point a wizard-y side-character shows up with psychic powers, and the resident yoga master/computer hacker/kalaripayattu fighter shatters his illusions and snaps his neck, saying, "You may not alter reality without my consent."

It's that kind of story.

[Cluedrew]

As you already pointed out [...] had this idea that a martial could do nothing more impressive than a well-trained athlete,

This has always struck me as odd. You took reality, turned it upside down and shook it. And you want nothing to change because of this? It is a little bit different when there is just one exception, but when magic and or pseudo-science is allowing people to do crazy things all over the place, why not martial power as well? To me is feel out of place that it doesn't amplify like everything else in reality.

On Teramech: I think that qualifies. Is there a calmer variant? That would be slightly more my style.

On Doing Anything: Now, all-powerful characters are hard to use in stories. But if you are going to have one, it could very well be a martial. "A sufficiently skilled fighter is indistinguishable from a wizard", but the wizard just seems to be hand-waved while the fighter must be explained. Not sure why.

On Battle Angel Alita: Sounds interesting, how is in tone (on a scale from comedy to tragedy) and length (on a scale from one shot to one piece) of the story?

[WbtE]

There's some evidence in 1e that levels are a function of supernatural favour, rather than just skill. (Alignment penalties are probably the strongest evidence.) If just being a high-level character is supernatural, defining some high-level characters as mundane and others as magical is arbitrary at best.

[Inevitability]

This has always struck me as odd. You took reality, turned it upside down and shook it. And you want nothing to change because of this? It is a little bit different when there is just one exception, but when magic and or pseudo-science is allowing people to do crazy things all over the place, why not martial power as well? To me is feel out of place that it doesn't amplify like everything else in reality.

On Teramech: I think that qualifies. Is there a calmer variant? That would be slightly more my style.

There's plenty of other mythos classes. The Bellator, for example, emulates a less bloodthirsty archetype (though being bloodthirsty is still an option): it may be more to your liking.

[jitzul]

This is my 2 cents/unintelligible ramblings.

I think reason people have a aversion to god Martial's is the same reason people don't like monks and the sort. "They didn't exist in tolken and tolken inspired story's so they have no place in my generic medieval fantasy land." When a large amount of people in the ttrpg community think of a martial character lifting a building and throwing it or a swordsman slicing a tower in half they think of the phrase "anime bullspite". People don't bat a eye at magic and pseudo science because they have been ingrained into the concussion of western culture. Batman is the closest thing we have a god martial in western culture. Meanwhile in more anime then you can count a character that trains hard enough can well lift a building a throw it. See also Charles atlas superpower.

Not really sure where I was going with this at first. But I think it all comes down to god-martials not melding well with a lot of peoples ideal fantasy settings.

[Quertus]

I saw someone tap a table and destroy half a planet. Now, the reason I remembered that bit is because I was wondering how the table withstood that much force, so it doesn't make perfect sense. But then neither does magic.

For some reason people seem to be more willing to accept magic not making sense than the martial case.

What do you think?

People don't bat a eye at magic and pseudo science because they have been ingrained into the concussion of western culture. Batman is the closest thing we have a god martial in western culture. Meanwhile in more anime then you can count a character that trains hard enough can well lift a building a throw it.

So, here's my random thoughts.

In theory, we've all had years / decades to observe how physical reality works, through near-constant interaction. Even though we're probably wrong about a lot of things, we all doubtless have opinions in how the world works.

"Magic", in the other hand, differs from system to system, setting to setting. Few of us can claim compertable experience with even a single system of magic. For most of us, our knowledge of magic is something along the lines of, "fireball can do X, which I can compare to the abstraction of a sword, or stepping into a campfire, and this is easier / harder for a mage to accomplish than Y or Z.". Unless there is something that just feels wrong, like traveling through time or summoning gods being easier than throwing said fireball, it's hard to do more than say, "ok, that's part of how magic works in this system".

But, try and say that a perfectly mundane table can reliably survive being at ground zero of the destruction of a planet, and we have enough experience to feel that this is wrong.

On the other hand, move it outside our experience, with Star Trek technology, or Kryptonian DNA, and the audience can be fine with the "mundane" behaving godlike.

-----

Oh, and, personally, I'm really grouchy about the idea that magic doesn't have to make sense. Of course it does! It just doesn't have to fit a muggle's preconceived notions of how the world works. That would be at least as silly as assuming that Klingon has to follow English's grammar rules.

[SethoMarkus]

This is my 2 cents/unintelligible ramblings.

I think reason people have a aversion to god Martial's is the same reason people don't like monks and the sort. "They didn't exist in tolken and tolken inspired story's so they have no place in my generic medieval fantasy land." When a large amount of people in the ttrpg community think of a martial character lifting a building and throwing it or a swordsman slicing a tower in half they think of the phrase "anime bullspite". People don't bat a eye at magic and pseudo science because they have been ingrained into the concussion of western culture. Batman is the closest thing we have a god martial in western culture. Meanwhile in more anime then you can count a character that trains hard enough can well lift a building a throw it. See also Charles atlas superpower.

Not really sure where I was going with this at first. But I think it all comes down to god-martials not melding well with a lot of peoples ideal fantasy settings.

I need to slightly disagree with this, because Western culture does have examples of extraordinary "mundane" characters. Beowulf, Fionn MacCumhaill (or more aptly, Cú Chulainn), Hercules, Sanson the Strongman, etc.

There are examples of extraordinarily or supernaturally strong/powerful martial combatants in Western myth, but they are often explained as having some sort of divine, supernatural, or magical source for their strength. I don't think that should disqualify them, but many people feel differently.

Eastern myth should have the same issue, in my opinion, though. Often these martial characters that have trained to the point of super human ability are breaking the same rules as their Western counterparts in terms of thr limits of mundane ability. Goku not only is an alien like Superman, he uses the mystical Ki/Qi energy to fuel his powers. Gon uses Nen. Luffy uses Haki, another spiritual energy, in addition to a superpower granted by a magical fruit! (No, not that kind.)

How is it that anime gets an eyeroll or an automatic pass while a beard favored by the gods or a magic sword is scoffed as "but that's magic!"?

[Frozen_Feet]

The problem with "God-Martial" is that wizard god isn't just a "God-Wizard"... he's "just" God.

That is: a "God-Wizard" already does everything martial. For example, in D&D 3.x., a 10th-level Wizard, with the investment of one spell (heroics), can have all the same powers as 5th level Fighter. A 5th-level fighter may sound underwhelming, but think of it from the in-universe perspective: with knowledge of a single spell, the Wizard is now on par with a trained warrior!

So, in order for a "God-Martial" to make sense as a comparison or contrast point, the "God-Wizard" must be brought down by some pegs so they can't do all things martial just as well.

---

This said: I think actually building a "God-Martial" is conceptually easy. You can start by just taking the d20 system reference document, taking all feats, skills, epic feats and epic skill uses a Fighter gets, and putting them in a single character. You now have a leader of armies and nations who can kill scores of people with a single sword swing, who can leap over mountains, swim to the bottom of the ocean, climb on walls, tame wild beasts of gargantuan size and ride then to battle, can see half across the world and shoot anything he can see perfectly, can bend or break steel with his bare hands etc.

Add in abilities from Fighter sub-classes and prestige classes such as Barbarian, Ranger, Monk, Dreadnought etc. and now you can also walk on water or clouds, see the unseen, hear the unheard, make foes flee before your rage, lift whole hills and fortresses, break through walls of force, be immune to disease, poison, old age and targeted magic, can fire blast of Ki across stellar distances and break the Moon in half with them... so on and so forth.

The problem with martials, even in D&D 3.x., is not that they don't get godly feats... it's just that they get them hopelessly late compared to casters. Do away with redundant feats, make others available easier & earlier, make martials able to benefit from epic skills etc. and you're already on track to make them good.

[Lalliman]

many people (DMs, forum-goers, 3.5 designers) had this idea that a martial could do nothing more impressive than a well-trained athlete

If you consider the way the human body (and biology in general) works, this idea can be subverted to a certain extent even without saying "screw logic". In reality, the highest level of strength a human can achieve, is the ability to just barely lift a thousand pounds. The reason you can't get any higher is not because it's physically impossible for a set of muscles to put out any more power, but because mankind didn't evolve to be that strong. There exist animals that are much stronger than our strongmen, even relative to their size. Gorillas weigh about as much as our heaviest weightlifters, but are estimated to be considerably stronger. The structure of their musculature is simply more effective. Thus, it would be theoretically possible for a human to have superhuman strength if the biological make-up of their muscles was different. And the only reason that our muscles aren't more powerful, is because in our evolutionary history, there wasn't any need to be significantly stronger.

But why would that be the same way in a fantasy setting? We could easily argue that the limits of human ability are simply higher in this world, especially since fantasy settings tend to lean towards creationism over evolution. If some god created humankind, he could've just programmed their DNA to allow them to reach arbitrary levels of strength with enough training. Of course, you will eventually reach a level of power that is truly impossible, but superhuman feats of strength such as, say, chucking a 2000 lbs boulder, are not as impossible as they seem.

TL;DR: The limits of the human body could be much higher if evolution called for them to be. It's not that far-fetched to set the limits of the human body much higher in a fantasy setting than in real life.

Of course, you still wouldn't reach god-martial levels, so maybe this wasn't relevant to the topic. >_> <_<

For something more relevant, I once created a villain who could be described as a god-martial. He was actually a celestial, which might disqualify the non-magical part, but his form and abilities were totally physical. He basically had the abilities of an epic level monk (except this wasn't in D&D), so strong and fast and cunning that almost no amount of attackers could harm him. He controlled most of the civilised world from the shadows simply by strong-arming all the people in power. If you disobey him, he will come for you, and there's nothing you can do to stop him.

It's not as flashy as a god-wizard who can destroy a whole city by snapping his fingers, but maybe god-martials don't need to be. Normal martials are less flashy than normal casters, after all.

(Hope the people who posted while I was writing didn't already invalidate my post.)

[Frozen_Feet]

The limits of human body versus limits of laws of physics is worth of discussing also because the God-Martial doesn't have to be a human, or even a biological entity. You could have a creature with bones of steel, muscles of polyaramids and skin of graphene.

[Cluedrew]

I am going to try to address this by topic, instead of doing a multi-quote.

On Mundane: Fun fact, the reason I use the term martial is not to so much to exclude other non-casters (although I find the martial sub-group to be the most interesting) but because to be mundane means boring before it means non-caster and those are conations I would rather avoid. Mind you I have never actually seen an argument where people have said a mundane character is supposed to be boring, but I have seen some arguments get alarmingly close.

On Setting Expectations: This is definitely part of it, but I don't think it is the whole story. After all the average god-wizard is notable stronger (or at least more direct) than any Tolkien caster. Actually in The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings most of the casters are not significant because they are casters, the magic is only part of the picture.

On Magic Logic: I also feel magic should follow an internal logic. In fact I think holding it to that is a great way to address the other side of martial-caster disparity by putting some limits that fall out from that logic on casters. Although this thread is more about bring martials up so might not be as relevant, not from that perspective at least.

On D&D 3.5: OK, I knew this was going to come up, in fact one of the things I had planned for the original post but then cut was a variant of this point: This thread includes D&D 3.5 (I would have to be stupid or vastly uninformed to think I could get away not including it) but it is also about a lot of other things. I guess it is mostly about the underlying ideas that lead to the D&D case and others. So they are great to bring up, I just don't want the conversation to stop there either.

On God-Anything: No matter what path you take to ultimate power once you arrive their the differences will be technicalities more often then not. The big question is, can you arrive there by non-magical means? In real life obviously not (well, barring technology which would have to be sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic anyways) but in fantasyland, why not?

On Human=Superhuman: That is probably part of the picture. Abilities beyond human obviously exist in many settings, even in humans. But how far does that go? 3 times as strong is pretty significant but that is still not a god-martial, although definitely a step in the right direction. That alone will not allow you to smash a boulder, but what about a non-magic (by not real either) technique that allows one to smash a boulder with your hands? How does that work. How about a !magic technique to climb a wall using only your toes to grip? And so on.

To Lalliman: If you are worried about new posts coming up hit the Preview Post button and scroll down to the Topic Review section, posts made since you stated writing will appear their.

[Quertus]

On Magic Logic: I also feel magic should follow an internal logic. In fact I think holding it to that is a great way to address the other side of martial-caster disparity by putting some limits that fall out from that logic on casters. Although this thread is more about bring martials up so might not be as relevant, not from that perspective at least.

Not from that perspective. But, understanding that perspective can help understand how the martial needs to work. They need to be able to do "anything", but not actually anything, because what they do needs to "make sense", in universe.

Superman can reverse time... by spinning the planet backwards... by flying around it really fast. Does that qualify as a god martial?

[Newtonsolo313]

Not from that perspective. But, understanding that perspective can help understand how the martial needs to work. They need to be able to do "anything", but not actually anything, because what they do needs to "make sense", in universe.

Superman can reverse time... by spinning the planet backwards... by flying around it really fast. Does that qualify as a god martial?

That was Faster than light time travel or so I have heard
But yeah super man is pretty close to what a god martial would look like just without a magic weakness

[Dragonexx]

Superman can reverse time... by spinning the planet backwards... by flying around it really fast. Does that qualify as a god martial?

It's about how broad your concept and what you can do with it. The problem is that "Martial" as a concept has little narrative versatility compared to "Magic" or "Divine" or whatever. Attempting to make it able to do the same things as other concepts tends to break suspension of disbelief hard. It's the reason why Fighters Can't Have Nice Things^TM. It's a problem that many RPG's run into in trying to justify how martial characters contribute at high levels or can even participate. There are several terms that might explain this better.

QWQW (Quadratic Warriors, Quadratic Wizards)

A method of advancement in which the Linear Warriors are designed in such a way as to gain powers at the same rate as the Quadratic Wizards.
Most aspiring game designers view QWQW as a foolproof way to thwart LWQW, but they come with their own problems that need to be taken care of. Typical issues with Quadratic Warriors, Quadratic Wizards include:

The Captain Hobo Problem: What happens when you allow characters to build their own fluff on top of generic game mechanics.
The Elothar's Gear Problem: What happens when a method of keeping quadratic warriors quadratic by giving them unrelated superpowers, typically granted through magic items and setting rewards, ends up clobbering their previous fluff.
The Magician Superhero Problem: What happens when you have several sources of power that have unequal narrative utility.
Weeaboo Fightan Magic: A derogatory term aimed at fighters who do things deemed as too fantastical or 'anime'.

Elothar's Gear Problem

Named after the model character of the Elothar, Warrior of Bladereach Prestige Class, this is a method of enforcing Quadratic Warriors that ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Elothar's original flavor was that of a tricksy and elegant mortal swordsman that fought with two weapons; in an actual campaign, however, this signature ability of his becomes less and less important compared to his non-swordsman class feature. By the time he completes the class, his usefuless wouldn't be particularly affected even if had both of his hands chopped off; as long as he is able to use abilities such as Der'renya the Ruby Sorceress and I've Got That! he's still a fully-functioning party member. Similarly, if he traded in all of his non-sword abilities for a boost to attack and damage, he'd be consigned back to the pit of uselessness. In the end, his swordsmanship matters as much to his adventures as the party wizard's 14 ranks in Profession: Cooking.
What this amounts to is that after a certain point of ability acquisition, the Elothar's Gear Problem ends up being a backhanded way to tell the fighter and rogue and similar classes that their character concept truly can't reach the top power levels of the game the way the wizard and cleric are; their original concept must be retired for the game to go on, but the game will distract them from this endgame.
Be sure to check out Captain Hobo Problem to see what can happen when you insist that Elothar's swordsmanship should stay relevant at all levels of play without ensuring that the fluff can actually support this thematic expansion.

Captain Hobo Problem

A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc.
The problem with Captain Hobo is that merely by existing he makes everyone else's character less cool. Your badass magical martial artist with mastery over the four elements is only as effective at superheroics as a drunken smelly guy. A less extreme but no less illuminating example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman expy.

Also:

Champions/HERO system is effect-based. That means that the strength of a power is determined by what you paid for it, and you can add whatever flavor you want to that. So Kid Saturn can have 12d6 gamma eye beams, and Battle Machine can have a 12d6 artillery barrage, and everyone's happy.

However, then there's Captain Hobo. He buys similar stats to everyone else, and then gives them extremely weak flavor. His attack is hitting people with a bent golf club, and his armor is cardboard boxes wrapped in duct tape. His reason for moving at SPD 5 is "too many energy drinks and vodka". Captain Hobo makes everyone's character lamer just by existing. Now it turns out your gamma eye beams do the same damage as a drunk guy with a golf club. Not very impressive.

Ok, it's rare anyone would actually play Captain Hobo, and if they did so in a non-joke campaign it would probably be vetoed. But the effect does happen to a lesser degree, just from differences in what people think is cool. Adam makes a non-super secret agent that's just that badass, and now Bob's beam of pure destruction has the same effect as a handgun. Not an insurmountable problem, but it does require getting on the same page from the start.

Stop by Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and Magician Superhero Problem to see what can happen if you naively attempt to avert the Captain Hobo problem.

Magician Superhero Problem

Imagine you're playing a superhero game where three players build three different characters with different points: one character has power over ice, the other over sound, the other is simply a magician. For typical superhero challenges such as stopping a bus from crashing or thwarting bank robbers or rescuing a building full of hostages, the characters perform equally. Unfortunately, balance problems start to crop up when the heroes are faced with unusual situations. For example, imagine an adventure in which the heroes were attacked by ghosts and they had to travel to the dream world to stop them. The Magician superhero can participate in the adventure very easily (I cast a spell at the ghosts; I cast a spell that lets me transport to the dream world); the sound hero has an easy but not trivial answer to the ghosts (I modulate the frequency of my sound waves) and has to think a little harder about how to go to the dream world (I adjust my binaural beats using my sound powers until I slip into a supernaturally lucid dream state). The ice hero will probably be unable to think of a way to use their powers at all and will have to sit the adventure out entirely. It doesn't matter how good his ice powers are, if he can't think of a way that the situation applies then his score might as well be zero as far as this adventure is concerned.
The Problem is thus this: The Magician Superhero can operate at full theoretical effectiveness no matter what the situation because the player can always go 'it's magic; I don't have to explain it' when asked how their power will apply to their situation. On the far end, less open-ended power sources such as the sound and ice hero will often have to employ more creativity than the magician and if they can't rise to the challenge, face not being able to use their power at all.
The Magician Superhero Problem is somewhat related to Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards except that an especially creative player of a 'weak' power source can still outclass a less imaginative player of an open-ended power source. For LWQW, no amount of creativity in playing your 18th level barbarian will close the gap in utility between you and a properly played wizard.
Unfortunately, naively averting the Magician Superhero Problem by letting people with less open-ended power sources achieve the same effects (the reason I can transport to the dream world with my power over squirrels? Just because, okay?) as those with more open-ended ones has its own set of problems. See Captain Hobo for more information.

VAH (Vanilla Action Hero)

A character common to action movies who has no reliable access to or unilateral control of phlebotinum and has to rely on plot armor and mundane (if preternatural) human abilities to accomplish things. VAHs are allowed to use their plot armor to bend probability--such as being shot at by twenty bad guys and having them all miss--but can't use it to do something that's impossible to a layman's WSoD--such as surviving a harpoon to the heart. Has a lot of overlap with Dumb Melee Fighter, but note that not all VAHs are DMFs; James Bond is a Vanilla Action Hero but not a DMF. Similarly, The Thing is a Dumb Melee Fighter but not a VAH.

From this page: https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Canon:RPG_Terminology

[Max_Killjoy]

One thing:

Champions/HERO system is effect-based. That means that the strength of a power is determined by what you paid for it, and you can add whatever flavor you want to that. So Kid Saturn can have 12d6 gamma eye beams, and Battle Machine can have a 12d6 artillery barrage, and everyone's happy.

However, then there's Captain Hobo. He buys similar stats to everyone else, and then gives them extremely weak flavor. His attack is hitting people with a bent golf club, and his armor is cardboard boxes wrapped in duct tape. His reason for moving at SPD 5 is "too many energy drinks and vodka". Captain Hobo makes everyone's character lamer just by existing. Now it turns out your gamma eye beams do the same damage as a drunk guy with a golf club. Not very impressive.

Ok, it's rare anyone would actually play Captain Hobo, and if they did so in a non-joke campaign it would probably be vetoed. But the effect does happen to a lesser degree, just from differences in what people think is cool. Adam makes a non-super secret agent that's just that badass, and now Bob's beam of pure destruction has the same effect as a handgun. Not an insurmountable problem, but it does require getting on the same page from the start.

In HERO (4th and 5th), there is a baseline scale of normal armor, weapons, environmental damage, etc. "Just a gulf club" as an effect is already comparable to what's on that scale, and won't do as much damage as something that can blast a whole in tank armor, and "just cardboard and duct tape" won't stop an bullets, let alone anti-tank weapons or superpowers that are equivalent to anti-tank weapons.

If someone is claiming that special effects in HERO are entirely open-ended by default, they're ignoring the published material in favor of their own interpretation.

[Morphic tide]

Personally, I find the idea of a God Martial stupid. No matter how powerful a Martial is, they always have almost no ability outside of combat. That's why they are called martials. A God-mundane, however, is doable because you are not talking about only fighting, so other competencies are assumed. Let's look at Exalted for inspiration and go with Pathfinder's Path of War third party substystem.

Exalted has a few mystical martial arts that are actually highly structured debating styles focused on the social combat system of Exalted, which has about as much core rulebook material explaining the base system of it as the normal shove-sword-through-person combat.

Path of War is much like Tome of Battle, but it has two additions to the recognizable framework: Groups of manoeuvres have skills they scale off of and weapon groups they use for their manoeuvres, which enables much more varied ones that focus on non-combat things.

Now, Path of War doesn't actually have any non-combat Disciplines, although it does have one or two ranged ones, but it's rule set has the support we are looking for.

Have a few example outlines of disciplines that could be made into foundations for a God Mundane:

Dirges of the Inspiriting Muse:
Character archetype: buffer, debuffer, enchanter
Key Skill: Perform (Wind)
Discipline Weapon(s): Improvised Weapon (Wind instruments)
Fluff Outline: Akin to a Bard, but excluding their touch of magic, practitioners of this discipline inspire courage and skill, or draw others to their cause. The darker or more desperate of it's practitioners use it's skills to draw their foes to their way of thinking against their own interests, gathering a seemingly possessed band of cultists, or driving their enemies to flee in terror. When cornered in personal combat, they prove to be startlingly effecting at using their instruments of song as bludgeons, sometimes going so far as to alter their instruments into weapons.
Actual Abilities: Buffs, Fear effects, Diplomacy checks, Charm-like effects at higher levels. All Area of Effect abilities, letting them screw armies and gatherings of influential people like nothing else. As for actual personal combat, they don't have much available to them. Mostly just "I bludgeon you with my instrument in a shockingly effective way" with a side of dirty fighting, inflicting stuff like Dazed, Blind, Nauseated, Prone and generally using their instrument to inflict many nasty conditions that act like Save or Sucks.

Procedures of the Knowing Assassin:
Character Archetype: burst damage, information gatherer, skillmonkey, "coverup expert"
Key Skill: Gather Information
Discipline Weapon(s): Thrown weapon group
Fluff Outline: Those who know this Discipline can be expected to know many more things beyond fighting. They bring secrets out of mouths, pages, footprints, locks and bodies, learning answers to question almost no others dare ask from evidence few others notice. Those who think to hide from them are found with contemptuous ease, those they seek to end are found dead from an impossibly precise blow. Those who seek to find them face tests of their own skills, because their understanding of what to look for makes them know how to leave no traces.
Actual Abilities: Out of combat, you can get Sherlock Holms level impossible evidence connection and the ability to no-sell it. You also get the ability to make people talk about whatever you feel is needed, given enough time to make checks and pile up Sense Motive DCs. Also, lots and lots of skill bonuses of various sorts, from Heal to Craft to Knowledge, all with minor added effects. In combat, you snipe, you hit with unbelievable power as Precision damage, you can instantly inflict conditions like Helpless, Dying and Dead at various levels without dealing with HP.

Understandings of the Master Craftsman:
Character Archetype: WBL violator, crafter, crippler, DMG abuser
Key Skill: Craft(Armor)
Discipline Weapon(s): Hammer weapon group
Fluff outline: The rare few that decide to follow the path of the Master Craftsman face weeks of work before any new adventures begin, lest they be faced with insufficient equipment. For their dedication to the craft, they gain skills that allow them to create impossibly effective arms and armor without a touch of magic, create lethal poisons and sunder the work of lesser craftsmen, with the life of the Gods-made world being shattered like the weapons and armor of well-equipped foes.
Actual Abilities: The WBL violator and DMG abuser parts refer to using stuff like the Custom Magic Item rules for Clockpunk power armor and weapons, with effects gated behind manoeuvres, as well as using the weapon creation guidelines from Weapon Master's Handbook while making normal items at ludicrous speeds and low costs. Personal combat is Sundering, precision damage, a few creature-type specific Death effects and some ability score damage that needs magical healing to fix, acting as varying levels and types of save-or-suck.


Yes, they are almost mundane in name only. That's what you need to deal with God-Wizards. Thing is, they are closer to mundane than most because they are based on stuff existing mundane classes can do, just wanked to so many levels of hell it's utter nonsense.

Dirges of the Inspiriting Muse is mundane because the existing rules for Perform include Diplomacy synergy and Bardic Music, an only slightly magical thing well within PoW/ToB range, can inflict conditions like Fascinate and give morale bonuses. In this case, there's manoeuvres for Moral and Competence bonuses and penalties and Diplomancy, with a side of save-or-suck in melee by way of beating people down with your instrument. The balance here is largely nonexistent because it's having to compete directly with some of the worst abusers of plotlines in the game, rather than deal with a niche that doesn't have absolute caster supremacy over game balance. I mean, the numbers on the bonuses and penalties wouldn't be entirely absurd, but it's having to compete with Enchantment magic and save-or-suck, it can't skimp on either if you are using it for a God-mundane.

Procedures of the Knowing Assassin is mundane because it's a mix of iconic "bad@ss normals" like Batman and Sherlock Holmes as detectives, the logical extension of such people using their skills of what to look for to know how to cover up evidence and extreme weakness understanding and projectile arc understanding, as well as generic "implausible skill" feats like healing crippling injuries in a matter of minutes or even seconds, making a well-crafted, though ultimately fragile, item from random junk laying around, knowing things you could not have possibly found out about and so on. The balance is in duration and low-relevancy. The healing will keep a guy alive for now, but it's a rush job that leaves them bleeding out, the item will only get a few uses or have only a chance of working, you might only remember the obscure thing or connection for a little while, it's all a case of "it might only be for a minute or two." And how often do you need to find a guy to obliterate the plot?

Understandings of the Master Craftsman is mundane as it concerns only physical crafting. The power armor cannot have effects that require blatantly magical stuff to work, like teleportation and unlimited use fire and acid. Flight may or may not work out, Gliding is a certainty. The WBL violation is basically implausibly good rushing and bizarrely effective crafting, which also is part of the magic item effects on weapons. The WMH weapon crafting is for getting silly things like a Clarinet that is also a Light shield and a Throwing hammer that deals 2d4 Piercing or Bludgeoning damage. With a +2 bonus to slight-of-hand checks to conceal it. And why not throw in a Cybertech improvement or two? Balance is in time needed to make things, needing to use Manoeuvres to use many of the effects, the cost of getting going and the likelihood of the DMG being thrown at you.

If all goes well, the three have large synergy between them that allows for utter nonsense to happen. Like MacGuyvering up a highly customized weapon with properties you desperately need right now from near-worthless scraps you keep with you for just such an occasion that also counts as a Masterwork Bagpipe so you can mind control people with your awesome solo dirge. Or getting a large Craft check bonus to make your awesome Bagpipe/Spiked Shield/Blunderbuss/Axe with 2d6 damage on both Blunderbuss and Axe. Naturally, the Bagpipe is the most dangerous component of this and you craft it in five minutes.

[Potato_Priest]

Thor is a good example of a God-Martial.

[Jormengand]

I suggest looking at the various Mythic homebrews floating around on these forums. Some of them are pretty obviously supernatural, but there's also stuff like the Teramach, which gets to mundanely smash through Walls of Force and throw mountains.

Mundanely throw mountains. Okay.

See, I prefer my characters to solve the same kind of problems as could be solved with earth-shattering magic (or earth shattering not-magic-I-promise, a la ToB and Mythos), only in a less unbelievable way. You throw a mountain at a city, sure, that's fine. I start an insurgency and watch the city's inhabitants kill each other and burn down the city. The city's just as destroyed, but one of those attacks was within the realms of human possibility.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

Well we know what a martial only god would look like. Use pure physical power to do anything up to and including break the laws of physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDSt8OHkx0

[Morphic tide]

Mundanely throw mountains. Okay.

See, I prefer my characters to solve the same kind of problems as could be solved with earth-shattering magic (or earth shattering not-magic-I-promise, a la ToB and Mythos), only in a less unbelievable way. You throw a mountain at a city, sure, that's fine. I start an insurgency and watch the city's inhabitants kill each other and burn down the city. The city's just as destroyed, but one of those attacks was within the realms of human possibility.

Human possibility goes out the window at about level 5, when Clerics can pull a good Jesus impression and Wizards can fly. At every two or three levels, ignore more limits. At level one, take the limits of the average human for the standard of mundane. At level three, take the limits of the average professional in a field as your standard for mundane. At level five, go for the known fundamental limits of the human body for your standard of the mundane. At level seven, start throwing out actual reality and dive into low fantasy and minor myths. And on and on until, at level 19, you are able to fist fight the highest Wizards and can be mistaken for something high power from Exalted.

There cannot be denial of "wuxia" and "unrealism" and "anime." You cannot have a mundane keep up with those limits. For example, the Diplomancy Discipline outline I typed up is blatantly unrealistic once you get past level three. But it's based on the already unrealistic Bard and keeps going from there with music instead of magic. It keeps up with main caster Diplomancy by focusing on scale over density. The proper caster Diplomancy can mind control Gods with little issue at high enough levels, while at those levels the Bard-alike Discipline is puppeting cities with their music.

[Efrate]

I don't think Thor works as a god martial, though I appreciate the joke.

He is magic partially by birth, and has a ton of magic gears and power, and his source is cited as being magic almost unilaterally.

Though god mundane does make more sense than god martial for reasons quoted above. I think it largely comes down to source of power to make the concept work. God wizards are tapping an infinite power supply of magic, the universe, what have you. Martials and mundane are tapping a finite source. The finite amount might be immense but it still can be used up. Magic doesn't have that limitation. All the god mundane need X amount of resources, or time, or whatever, to do some of what magic does. Martials are worse.

Superman's power while immense is still finite. Functionally he is nearly limitless, but given an infinite timeline the Sun dies he has no more power, and so on. He is about the closest to god martial you can find since none of his powers are overtly magical, including shooting mini supermen out of his hands. Not sure how Kryptonian DNA makes that work but whatever. However he is weak to magic still.

I think fluff wise it is entirely possible to have a martial or mundane capable of extraordinarily powerful effects and abilities, but not have infinite power. Or the ability to do everything. Throwing a mountain accross the world to hit a microscopic killer robot and destroying it, ok I can see that. Running fast enough to walk on water, ok no problem. Cutting the fabric of space time to access another dimension with a single swipe of your hand? Ok I guess I can see it. Being able to with the same training be able to do all of that successively? That becomes an issue for me. That is hard to justify fluff wise.

Magic is the one stop shop for all of it, and generally, it never has to be explained, it is never used up, and that is the issue. Its also drastically easier to have the ability to do everything in one convenient way than by rigorous specialized training. It autofluffs as "cause magic." and thats the end of that.

[Morphic tide]

I don't think Thor works as a god martial, though I appreciate the joke.

He is magic partially by birth, and has a ton of magic gears and power, and his source is cited as being magic almost unilaterally.

Though god mundane does make more sense than god martial for reasons quoted above. I think it largely comes down to source of power to make the concept work. God wizards are tapping an infinite power supply of magic, the universe, what have you. Martials and mundane are tapping a finite source. The finite amount might be immense but it still can be used up. Magic doesn't have that limitation. All the god mundane need X amount of resources, or time, or whatever, to do some of what magic does. Martials are worse.

Superman's power while immense is still finite. Functionally he is nearly limitless, but given an infinite timeline the Sun dies he has no more power, and so on. He is about the closest to god martial you can find since none of his powers are overtly magical, including shooting mini supermen out of his hands. Not sure how Kryptonian DNA makes that work but whatever. However he is weak to magic still.

I think fluff wise it is entirely possible to have a martial or mundane capable of extraordinarily powerful effects and abilities, but not have infinite power. Or the ability to do everything. Throwing a mountain accross the world to hit a microscopic killer robot and destroying it, ok I can see that. Running fast enough to walk on water, ok no problem. Cutting the fabric of space time to access another dimension with a single swipe of your hand? Ok I guess I can see it. Being able to with the same training be able to do all of that successively? That becomes an issue for me. That is hard to justify fluff wise.

Magic is the one stop shop for all of it, and generally, it never has to be explained, it is never used up, and that is the issue. Its also drastically easier to have the ability to do everything in one convenient way than by rigorous specialized training. It autofluffs as "cause magic." and thats the end of that.

Hence why I went for PoW based Discipline ideas that focus on particularly versatile and setting-warping things magic normally does. Diplomancy can get you people able to do almost anything you could need, Crafting lets you make items that expand your versatility considerably, the skillmonkey setup gives you partial competency in so many thing that would otherwise take magic that it's worth it. Then you have save-or-suck/die/lose and various types of damage.

[Inevitability]

Mundanely throw mountains. Okay.

See, I prefer my characters to solve the same kind of problems as could be solved with earth-shattering magic (or earth shattering not-magic-I-promise, a la ToB and Mythos), only in a less unbelievable way. You throw a mountain at a city, sure, that's fine. I start an insurgency and watch the city's inhabitants kill each other and burn down the city. The city's just as destroyed, but one of those attacks was within the realms of human possibility.

I'll be first to admit that Mythos, and all its creations, are unrealistic. The problem is: D&D is unrealistic by default. Not in the way of the 'there are dragons, so we should take nothing serious' fallacy, but the default game already allows martials to do ridiculous stuff.

A 20th-level martial in D&D can fall ten miles, smash his head on solid rock, and walk away with most of his HP remaining (depending on your definition of HP, he may not even be physically hurt). Said martial can also smash through a meter-thick iron wall with an axe, survive being on fire for most of an hour, or swing an oversized greataxe a few dozen times in six seconds (with Great Cleave).

None of these things are 'realistic' in the sense that no human could ever replicate them, let alone replicate them consistently. The only reason we accept these unrealistic things, and not others (such as Mythos) is the fact that we're used to them, nothing more.

Your example avoids what we're talking about. 'Destroying a city' is not hard for a high-level character. Not for a default martial, not for a buffed martial, and definitely not for a caster. However, there's plenty of problems that the first can't solve, which is an issue that needs to be addressed.

If, say, a plot-required artifact were at the bottom of an ocean, a caster could teleport down there, change in a giant squid, or summon something to get it for him. A god-martial would be able to hold is breath long enough to swim down, grab the artifact, and bring it up. A 'proper martial', as you sketch one, would probably have to find a dragon turtle or other intelligent marine creature (note that many lack the skills to find one), convince it to bring you the item (note that many lack the skills to convince one), and then wait for it boredly.

And how about having to bring down some great flying beast? A normal martial has a bow, maybe. And who knows, perhaps the monster is within range so he can use this severely-gimped fighting style. The god-martial flings a boulder or precisely shoots an arrow in a way that cripples the beast's flying ability, allowing him to face it on the ground.

It is clear that martials as they are now are useless in many situations, and need patching up. Denying that with a very specific example does not work.


My point: trying to keep any kind of 'realism' or 'believability' in D&D is both counterproductive and inconsistent. The best solution is to throw out all semblances of realism and have fun doing it.

[Max_Killjoy]

Mundane is mundane.

If you're going to say that fighters are doing things that would "break mundane" in our world, then you have two choices:

1) the limits of what people can do "mundanely" are different in the world your game is set in, than they are in ours.
2) fighters are magic, it's just a different sort of magic than wizards or clerics or whoever.

You CANNOT have a world in which the limits of the mundane are the same as ours, AND fighters can "throw mountains" without magic.

If you choose option 1, you have some serious worldbuilding to do in order to both explain it, and fully integrate the implications into the world.

[Cluedrew]

Again, lots of little comments. ... I'm not sure the multiquote actually makes it any easier to follow.

Not from that perspective. But, understanding that perspective can help understand how the martial needs to work. They need to be able to do "anything", but not actually anything, because what they do needs to "make sense", in universe.

True enough, but the thing is martial power (or most mundane sources of power) is often held to the restriction that it must also make sense in our universe. And I don't understand why. Why can't the martial artist master a technique that gives him on-touch disintegrate while the wizard is allowed to do it with a laser pointer?

I don't actually want a martial that can do anything (it would be as uninteresting as a caster that can do anything), but I would like to prove that a martial could reach those levels of power so I have the full scale to work with. ... Or maybe you can't prove that. Maybe if you bind any power source to reasonable internal logic it will come up short. I don't know.

It's about how broad your concept and what you can do with it. The problem is that "Martial" as a concept has little narrative versatility compared to "Magic" or "Divine" or whatever. Attempting to make it able to do the same things as other concepts tends to break suspension of disbelief hard. It's the reason why Fighters Can't Have Nice Things^TM. It's a problem that many RPG's run into in trying to justify how martial characters contribute at high levels or can even participate. There are several terms that might explain this better.

I read the problems, and yes those are not great ways to do it. I think martial (or all-non-magic) is pretty broad to. It may not make sense for a golf-club to deal 12d6 damage, but why not let Might Fist's punches do 1d6 damage each, and then combo attack with twelve of them so that they are effectively one strike? Or reach the dream world through meditation? Not to say every martial would be good at both, but I think the god-martial would be.

Personally, I find the idea of a God Martial stupid. No matter how powerful a Martial is, they always have almost no ability outside of combat. That's why they are called martials. A God-mundane, however, is doable because you are not talking about only fighting, so other competencies are assumed.

First a bit of clarity, I use the term martial more in the sense of "of the body" not "of war". So to me a martial art is a physical art, not a combat art. And I the mundane meaning boring thing put me off that term. You may use either term but I am using martial in a slightly broader sense than just the fighter who fights.

Yes, they are almost mundane in name only. That's what you need to deal with God-Wizards. Thing is, they are closer to mundane than most because they are based on stuff existing mundane classes can do, just wanked to so many levels of hell it's utter nonsense.

And I think that is OK. Because for me there is two types of magic. The first is magic as an exception, or how a story world differs from our own. The second is magic as the occult practice to cause miraculous effects (which really looks like whatever you want it to). The means of a martial/mundane who reaches this level will of course fall into the first group, but must not fall into the second.

The issue is sometimes the two groups are equated, but I don't think they are the same at all. For instance the technology in Star Trek is not magic, despite the fact it operates on hand-wave.

See, I prefer my characters to solve the same kind of problems as could be solved with earth-shattering magic (or earth shattering not-magic-I-promise, a la ToB and Mythos), only in a less unbelievable way.

I think you are referring to power level, not martial/caster. And in this conversation we are cranking the power level up pretty high.

I don't think Thor works as a god martial, though I appreciate the joke.

He is magic partially by birth, and has a ton of magic gears and power, and his source is cited as being magic almost unilaterally.

He is also a literal god of thunder who fights with martial strength and his hammer, which I think was the point. May have been a joke. Still mulling about the rest of your post.

My point: trying to keep any kind of 'realism' or 'believability' in D&D is both counterproductive and inconsistent. The best solution is to throw out all semblances of realism and have fun doing it.

I like that, but why stop at D&D? There are plenty of stories that benefit from being realistic (for example, those set in reality) I think there is also a great number that would benefit from just admitting they are not realistic and running with it.

Swordsaged by Max_Killjoy

[Morty]

Those threads might involve a little less talking in circles if people specified if they're just talking about D&D, or something else. Then again, this is a pretty D&D-specific problem. No other system has its power curve, even if they allow for a similar range of power levels. Nor do they try to have its cake and eat it too, by claiming all character classes are balanced, but then propping some of them up - intentionally or otherwise. And refusing to give the "mundane" classes the kind of abilities even a competent real-world specialist should have. And... well, you get the idea.

Really, though, you can justify pretty much anything if you want to. The question then becomes, do you want to? Again, the reason those threads involve people talking around each other so much is that there's little to no concrete arguments or examples, just nebulous ideas. "Casters", "mundanes" or "martials" all mean very little in a vacuum.

As for whether a character who can parry crossbow bolts, climb an ice wall or sell sand to a mummy counts as "magic", I question if it really matters. To us, it might, but does it for the people living in the universe? Or is it just something some people can do? It of course depends on whether our characters are among the few who can do such things, or if heroes like that are relatively common. After a certain point in a fantasy world's magic saturation, "magic" kind of becomes a useless term. And it becomes a question, again, of what we want to make possible without all the trappings of magic - spells, arcane energies, gods, blood sacrifice, whatever. At which point we can have a real discussion, instead of throwing vague points around.

I'd also argue that if the only way to match up to high-level wizards is to create a functional superhero who shrugs off any danger below a dragon's breath to the face, we're solving the wrong problem. This, to be fair, isn't really a D&D-specific things. Many other high-powered systems have a rocket tag problem, where you either no-sell powerful attacks and hazards, or they splatter you. But I can't really think of a system where anyone could match up to a high-level 3e D&D wizard or cleric. Maybe Exalted, but even high-essence Charms and Solar Circle Sorcery have some limitation. And, again, a D&D-specific problem is trying to be everything and ending up being nothing.

Finally, I'm going to notice that those debates always seem to centre around combat abilities, with other physical abilities being mentioned in connection to those. But no one seems to pay much attention to the more cerebral and social skills and heroic archetypes.

[SethoMarkus]

He is magic partially by birth, and has a ton of magic gears and power, and his source is cited as being magic almost unilaterally.

~ snip ~

Magic is the one stop shop for all of it, and generally, it never has to be explained, it is never used up, and that is the issue. Its also drastically easier to have the ability to do everything in one convenient way than by rigorous specialized training. It autofluffs as "cause magic." and thats the end of that.

And why can't "magic" be the source of the god-martial's abilities?

A wizard's source of power is not magic, a wizard's source of power is their spells. Those spells are fueled by magic.

So why can't a martial type character, a non-spellcaster, punch something hard and fast enough to vaporize their target, or run fast enough to escape the constraints of time and space, with the explanation of "magic"?

Why does that disqualify them from being a god-martial? They aren't using spells for it. They are just deity-level in that aspect.

What about the X-Men? Are they "mundane/martial" or "caster/wizard"? They use supernatural abilities, but these abilities are explicitly the result of genetics, not magic. I could possibly see the argument that Jean Grey or Magneto are "wizards", but what about Juggernaut or Quicksilver?

[Jormengand]

, say, a plot-required artifact were at the bottom of an ocean

What can I say, I'm a really good fisherman. Like, really good.