Types of "Fantastic" Powers

[PhoenixPhyre]

I fundamentally disagree. The magnitude of power is far more important than the nature of power, in large part because it changes depending on context. There are magical powers that are awesome in a stone age context but fundamentally pointless in a modern world. For example, the ability to have owls carry messages from place to place in Harry Potter. That takes several days depending on distance, has high upkeep costs, and is vulnerable to interception. It is a fundamentally inferior communication method to having a cell phone in almost every way. But you could totally make that power available in an urban fantasy game (and in fact many urban fantasy settings do allow familiars to carry messages) and people will even pay points for it.

What you want, for game purposes, is that powers should present the same level of output for the same amount of investment (in dots, XP, or whatever) regardless of how they work. So investing in 'sword training' should produce roughly the same benefits as investing in 'alchemy training' or 'curses training' or any other form of magic.

You could certainly build a 'magic-user' type character in a game whose powers scale equally with that of 'sword-user' character. In fact your average jRPG does this all the time (in Disgaea, both types can reach level 9999 and do billions of damage per attack). You could even build it such that the growth scale for both types remains entirely within human levels of capability - ie. a fire bolt is functionally an arrow and you become better at throwing bolts of fire the way an archer becomes better at firing arrows. This is actually quite easy to do within the boundaries of a combat system (and pseudo-caster classes like the Warlock kind of manage it). It becomes much harder when you move to the much larger play-space of all non-combat actions.

Games like D&D run into a problem based on differences in magnitude. After all, the Fighter and Wizard are fairly close to balanced for the first few levels, it's only as their powers grow stronger that the differences become a problem, because the design was never for them to scale to the same magnitude. The D&D warrior is intended to scale from 'dumb peasant with sharp stick' to 'Fafhrd' and the rogue from 'orphan cutpurse' to 'Gray Mouser,' but neither of those guys have any magical powers worth talking about. Meanwhile while the wizard is intended to scale from 'academic with parlor trick' to 'Ningauble of the Seven Eyes' who has the power to bend time and space and could extinguish Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with a wave of a hand. The source material - and Nehwon is explicitly source material for D&D to the point of blatant copyright violations - had fundamental inequalities that Gygax and co. preserved during the initial design of D&D and that have never been properly addressed (and probably never will be, too many sacred cows to slay).

I'm not really worried about mechanics in this at all. Those are separate to me. I'm worried about thematics and world-building more than anything. Although a world in which just simply training hard lets you casually disregard natural law would be an interesting world...but that's neither here nor now. D&D's setting is not such a world, at least by construction.

When people try to require that some characters be entirely stuck with nothing but things acceptable to normal people on Earth while others are entirely unbounded yet still keep up where their skill-sets overlap, you've got a problem. Especially when they're all for the PHENOMINAL COSMIC POWER of D&D spell-casters.

And at this point, what inspired GG originally is rather a moot point. The game has taken on a different focus--it looks much more to popular depictions of archetypes than to any specific source material and has become somewhat sui generis. It's not any other specific type of fantasy, it's D&D fantasy. A separate sub-genre. Is that a good thing? No opinion here.

Edit: My entire point with all of this is to say that I hate the Guy at the Gym and the related "wizards can do anything because magic" paradigm. And that paradigm is fueled inherently by assuming that only spell-casters are "magic" (what I've been calling "fantastic"). I think that an under-regarded part of 4e was the full-on acceptance that this isn't true. That everyone of any note is fantastic. It allows for much more internally-consistent worldbuilding and story-telling. It lets people be that big hero who's just that good while not raising huge flags as to why others aren't that good, despite training equally hard. Or lets you deal with people who didn't train that hard but are that good by channeling primal forces, etc.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I hear you when you call it a false dichotomy, but I think the direction is wrong

I'm not applying the false dichotomy; The Player's Handbook is.

If I take 2 level 20 characters and put them side-by-side, I should be looking at two characters that are roughly equal in capacity to affect the story they are in. A Wizard may be above the power curve, but he can only do things out of the norm Occasionally. A wizard with a 9th level spell that allows him to change the color of a dot is able to do something literally fantastic, but isn't surpassing his teammates.

I hate having Monsters in mind for a combat encounter and having to account for the Mundanes who don't have native things like Flight. Why does a wizard get to cast flight when he doesn't intend to be in Melee and need it, but a fighter can't when he will be in melee but he can't cast it natively? Now, I don't want a fighter to pull out a spell book and fly up to a dragon, but I also don't want my dragon to decide against it's better judgement that it will engage with the party indoors only allowing it to fly 10 feet above the ground. Flight is a [i]Basic[i] mechanic that a fighter would have to build around to contribute in a fight, taking up things like Bows and eschewing Boots of Elvenkind for Boots of flight. Wizards and Fighters are not on an equal level here. At 20th level, most of the big monsters that players are facing have some kind of abilities that make them challenging to fight, but Fighters have no native means to over come these common issues (Water breathing, Flame Auras, Necrotic Touch, etc) and have to rely on spell casters to use their abilities on the fighter.

I'm glad that 5e changed the number of concentration spells you have up, that was really nice of them; but it doesn't change the fact that now the Wizard has to choose between giving his meatshield an ability he needs to compete or dropping it in lieu of a more important spell. When a player has to decide whether to let a friend help in the combat or not, the game is suffering. Again, I don't want to be the bad guy, and I don't want to have to give my players abilities that let them stand up to basic issues they are going to face down the line.

I would rather my Fighter be able to "Combat Fly" by "jumping good" and using the impact of his blows to help him stay aloft rather then tell him 'Ah, no... see, you can only jump 15 feet up in the air with this skill so you don't get to fight this time. Don't worry, a bunch of Flail Snails will be joining the fight later for you to take care of like the big boy adventurer you are".

The Fighter feels like he made a bad character, the rogue wishes they had found a bow that cast magic arrows, the Ranger wishes he had water breathing prepared today, etc.

If you look at builds in 5e today, you will notice that a lot of people will gravitate towards classes that have spell casting simply because it lets them work around whatever problem they may face and gives them capacity to get by without a wizards help. From Arcane Tricksters to Eldritch Knights, Sorcadins and others. Why gimp yourself on a fight when you can take care of it yourself?

The two level 20 characters are NOT approximately equal. And this is despite going through the same dungeons, getting the same loot, having the same experience point levels and being called peers on the whole point of a "Level" in the first place. They are not on the same level. A Monk can't even kill himself as cool as a sorcerer can, A monk could find the highest point in a castle and jump to his death (And realize he had slow fall), where a sorcerer can literally planeshift himself into the Nine Hells. There should be some semblance of balance between the two characters though, starting with being competent in most scenarios adventurers would face on in day to day activity.

I've now run lots of 5e adventures, including up to level 20. And this just literally didn't come up. Even with a druid, a warlock, a monk, and a rogue. They all contributed--in fact the druid was one of the less effective characters because the player wasn't that great. The rogue was amazing, and the monk...well...it depended on if she remembered she had stunning strike that day or not.

But again, I'm not really worried about power differences in this set of posts. I'm trying to focus on the threshold question--can "mundanes" (I hate that term) break free of the Guy at the Gym and actually have cool abilities, even if by doing so they're obviously fantastic? I'm not claiming that any particular game system has the right balance of such things. Merely that the solution does not involve chaining certain character builds down to the mundane level while letting others casually violate laws of nature. Either everyone is fantastic or no one is. Splitting things down the middle is only contributing to this problem and preventing a solution.

[Mechalich]

I'm not really worried about mechanics in this at all. Those are separate to me. I'm worried about thematics and world-building more than anything. Although a world in which just simply training hard lets you casually disregard natural law would be an interesting world...but that's neither here nor now. D&D's setting is not such a world, at least by construction.

When people try to require that some characters be entirely stuck with nothing but things acceptable to normal people on Earth while others are entirely unbounded yet still keep up where their skill-sets overlap, you've got a problem. Especially when they're all for the PHENOMINAL COSMIC POWER of D&D spell-casters.

And at this point, what inspired GG originally is rather a moot point. The game has taken on a different focus--it looks much more to popular depictions of archetypes than to any specific source material and has become somewhat sui generis. It's not any other specific type of fantasy, it's D&D fantasy. A separate sub-genre. Is that a good thing? No opinion here.

Except, the fundamental paradox you are describing - that certain character types are limited to the 'non-fantastical' scale of development while others have access to the limitless 'fantastical' scale is drawn directly from the source material. It's an issue that developed from making both the 'heroic' warriors and rogues of Sword & Sorcery playable alongside the 'villainous' wizards even though the original point was that the warriors would triumph over the schemes of the much more powerful wizards through a combination of grit and gumption (roughly the entirety of Conan's career consists of him tricking and murdering wizards who underestimate him).

Stories where 'everyone has powers' already have a genre: superheroes. There are games for that, there are even fantasy settings for that (like Naruto), but the overwhelming majority of high and low fantasy settings, even ones being written today, have some kind of mundane/fantastical divide, and yet still allow the 'mundanes' to contribute in various ways. In the Wheel of Time - on of the more high-powered D&D-like systems out there, the largely mundane Mat Cauthon is a hugely significant and fan-favorite character of vast importance to the plot.

You can have martial superheroes versus magical superheroes all you want (heck, if you play Fate Grand Order Cu Chulain gets to be both), but that's not the play experience D&D purports to offer, and changing the game or the game worlds such that this is true has traditionally not gone down well - case in point 4e.

Edit: My entire point with all of this is to say that I hate the Guy at the Gym and the related "wizards can do anything because magic" paradigm. And that paradigm is fueled inherently by assuming that only spell-casters are "magic" (what I've been calling "fantastic"). I think that an under-regarded part of 4e was the full-on acceptance that this isn't true. That everyone of any note is fantastic. It allows for much more internally-consistent worldbuilding and story-telling. It lets people be that big hero who's just that good while not raising huge flags as to why others aren't that good, despite training equally hard. Or lets you deal with people who didn't train that hard but are that good by channeling primal forces, etc.

The thing is, making a fantasy game where 'everyone of any note is fantastic' does not produce a balanced or internally-consistent game. There's game that does exactly those things, which was produced by a major game studio using a lot of money and heavily supported. That game is Exalted, and any idea of balance or thematic consistency in that game is a dumpster fire of epic proportions.

Additionally, superhero worlds have their own issues. A world in which the only people who are important are those who won the genetic lottery and the masses are helpless has all sorts of problems of its own that have to be wrestled with. Most superhero universes function explicitly using comic book logic that blatantly handwaves away the implications of such powers and adamantly refuses to let the supers change the world in fundamental ways.

But again, I'm not really worried about power differences in this set of posts. I'm trying to focus on the threshold question--can "mundanes" (I hate that term) break free of the Guy at the Gym and actually have cool abilities, even if by doing so they're obviously fantastic?

See, this is an answered question. The answer is yes, of course you can. In fact, almost every game not based in the Sword & Sorcery milieu accepts this explicitly.

If the question is 'can you do this in D&D' the answer is 'no, not really, not without fundamentally changing the nature of the game' because D&D incorporates an inherent inequality about character types at its core and always has. Raistlin Majere can achieve apotheosis, become divine and threaten to destroy the universe. His twin brother Caramon cannot. That's just the way it is.

[Son of A Lich!]

I think we agree ultimately on there being a power discrepancy between classes. I run a lot of games myself but I'm always the DM. I feel like I have to watch out for the Mundanes and I'm always worried when I design encounters so that the players are aware of things they need in the future.

I feel I'm doing a good job if I don't have to babysit the encounter and give them exactly what they need, but I do pay close attention to making sure Boots of Flying or the ilk are available around level 7 or so.

I think that this is the core of the issue being discussed, however. Non-Magickers aren't allowed nice things, because it's not realistic. When push comes to shove, we do let some things slide (Shadow Monk is the first thing that comes to my mind), but the power of the wizard supreme is what makes that so frustratingly insurmountable.

I listen to Critical Role on my spare time, and listening to the first campaign compared to the second is a night and day difference. In the first, they had 1 druid, bard and Cleric for their spell casting needs. In the second Campaign, Everyone is a spell casting class except 2. Monk, Wizard, Warlock, Cleric, Cleric, Arcane Trickster, Zealot Barbarian.

This is the result; If you limit non-magickers to human expectations, everyone will want to be a Magicker instead. If the proverbial ceiling of a Magicker is "I can Cast almost any spell with a 9th level spell slot" and the ceiling for a non-magicker (Natively) is "I can swing a sword 4 times!" then there is no reason to chase 20th level non-magicker.

Same Idea, from the reverse perspective.

Like I said in my opening response

[Arbane]

Conan was absolutely supposed to represent a very high level D&D martial (and in 1e and 2e you could totally build Conan, he just has unusually good stats and a giant pile of non-weapon proficiencies).

You can't hear me snickering at this statement, but I assure you I am.

But it's irrelevant because I don't want to play a character who can cut the tops off mountains with a rainbow sword.

Fine, keep your games below level 10, then. It's not hard.

Fantasy is full of examples of magic swordsmen, sure. But it's also full of examples of non-magical people changing the fate of the world.

Thing is, fantasy, up until the 1960s or so, generally wasn't full of MAGICAL people changing the fate of the world - wizards were usually villains or advisors for the REAL heroes. (I've heard a theory that the rapid advancement of science and tech in the second half of the 20th century made magicians as heroes more acceptable, but I'm not sure I buy it.)

What you want, for game purposes, is that powers should present the same level of output for the same amount of investment (in dots, XP, or whatever) regardless of how they work. So investing in 'sword training' should produce roughly the same benefits as investing in 'alchemy training' or 'curses training' or any other form of magic.

Agreed.

Champions, Mutants and Masterminds, or pretty much any other effects-based RPG can manage that. (They can also manage to produce powers that will break the game right in half if the GM doesn't veto them, but that's the nature of such things.) So can FATE, with a little creativity.

The D&D warrior is intended to scale from 'dumb peasant with sharp stick' to 'Fafhrd' and the rogue from 'orphan cutpurse' to 'Gray Mouser,' but neither of those guys have any magical powers worth talking about. Meanwhile while the wizard is intended to scale from 'academic with parlor trick' to 'Ningauble of the Seven Eyes' who has the power to bend time and space and could extinguish Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with a wave of a hand.

IIRC, Grey Mouser's done a few decent magic tricks - like killing his lover's father while being tortured on the rack, and vaporizing an entire circle of wizards. (Which would've been a lot more impressive if they hadn't been on HIS side.) Sheelba and Ningauble are probably not human, and both of them generally preferred to fast-talk the heroes into cleaning up messes than use any of their power.

[Unavenger]

Fine, keep your games below level 10, then. It's not hard.

Alternatively, I can use homebrew mundanes which keep up at high levels (I find it curious that your position has changed from level 4 to level 10; perhaps I'm convincing you?), but I shouldn't have to turn to homebrew.

[Florian]

But again, I'm not really worried about power differences in this set of posts. I'm trying to focus on the threshold question--can "mundanes" (I hate that term) break free of the Guy at the Gym and actually have cool abilities, even if by doing so they're obviously fantastic? I'm not claiming that any particular game system has the right balance of such things. Merely that the solution does not involve chaining certain character builds down to the mundane level while letting others casually violate laws of nature. Either everyone is fantastic or no one is. Splitting things down the middle is only contributing to this problem and preventing a solution.

I'm somehow getting the feeling that you're using the wrong approach here.

Your threshold question is directly tied to genre, genre conventions and archetypes.that will directly influence the expected aesthetics of something. What is considered appropriate for "Superheroes" might be a deal-breaker for "Sword & Sorcery" or the middle ground for "Swords & Planet" (or vice versa).

"Breaking free", as you call it, therefore is directly connected with what exact kind of genre(s) is intended to be catered to. I generally find that D&D tends to conflate the issue, as a lot of people apparently confuse "character level" with "power level" and understand the overall progression also as a progression along genres, ex. from "S&S" to "Superheroes", with stuff like E6 being used as a "stopping measure" to halt that advancement. All of that is not necessarily true. It rather means that you have to develop a good understanding what fits in and what is a deal-breaker for the intended genre that is going to be used for a given table/campaign. The concept of the "purely mundane Fighter" is nothing to take to a "Superhero" campaign, while a D&D-style Wizard is prolly nothing that fits in a "Sword & Sorcery" campaign. They don't have to, tho, the only "fix" needed is being open that some things work, others don't.

I mean, the whole Exalted RPG system with build around catering to "Superheroes", "Shonen" and such. IIRC, it can´t actually handle anything nearing a more "mundane" level without breaking down, basically the reverse situation to D&D.

[Arbane]

Alternatively, I can use homebrew mundanes which keep up at high levels (I find it curious that your position has changed from level 4 to level 10; perhaps I'm convincing you?), but I shouldn't have to turn to homebrew.

Homebrew away. Xefas homebrewed a fighter-type who could keep up with spellcasters at high levels... by biting heavily off of Exalted.
I'm curious as to how. If the casters are bringing the dead back to life, building pocket-dimension vacation homes, summoning legions of angels, controlling minds, and so on, it's rather tough for the fighty-men to keep up without gaining the ability to put abstract concepts in a headlock and noogie them into submission.

Your threshold question is directly tied to genre, genre conventions and archetypes.that will directly influence the expected aesthetics of something. What is considered appropriate for "Superheroes" might be a deal-breaker for "Sword & Sorcery" or the middle ground for "Swords & Planet" (or vice versa).

Yeah, part of the problem is that D&D tries to pass itself off as emulating ALL fantasy. In my own experience, the only fantasy it emulates even half-well is 'D&D-based novels'.

I mean, the whole Exalted RPG system with build around catering to "Superheroes", "Shonen" and such. IIRC, it can´t actually handle anything nearing a more "mundane" level without breaking down, basically the reverse situation to D&D.

From what I've seen, Exalted CAN do a Puny Heroic Mortals campaign perfectly well... if you can deal with the fact that anything stronger than a angry ghost is a potential TPK.

[Unavenger]

Homebrew away. Xefas homebrewed a fighter-type who could keep up with spellcasters at high levels... by biting heavily off of Exalted.

Ugh, mythos. No, I'll take mundane classes made by people who actually take the mundane archetype seriously any day.

If the casters are bringing the dead back to life

Interestingly, the definition of "Death" had to be changed because people kept doing that.

building pocket-dimension vacation homes

Which I'm sure help contribute to the campaign.

summoning legions of angels

My legions of undead who kill anything that they touch just aren't good enough for you, huh? HUH?

controlling minds

You mean another thing that people in real life do ALL THE GODDAMN TIME?

This is another reason I maintain that the rainbow-swords group are lacking in imagination and unwilling to explore ways to make the genuinely badass normal character work rather than outright dismissing it. And I really don't know how you can kid yourself into believing that manipulating people's desires and opinions to drive your goals isn't a thing that happens in the real world (most of the salient examples are from politics so I'll let you figure that out yourself).

[Florian]

@Arbane:

I think that is specifically a 3.5E problem. AD&D had a lot of quirky stuff in it, that tied the more problematic, or let's say, "transformative" elements to the target genres. Rules like System Shocks Rolls made magic a bit unpredictable and dangerous to the user, so you had to think twice about using that powerful Polymorph spell, stuff like this.

It was already well known that a lot of groups house-ruled that stuff away to fit in more with their own style or intended genre. So with the transition to 3.0E (actually AD&D 3rd), they opted for a different approach, by taking this stuff out of the basic system by default, but including some very detailed advice and examples in the 3.0E DMG on how to get them in again, to fit the discreet rules elements found in the PHB to the individual table.

I think one of the best examples is the old Oriental Adventures: Campaign-specific classes, refit guidelines, as well as ban lists on how to make existing classes fit into Rokugan, Clan-specific PrC.

That pretty much changed with the edition update to 3.5E and the new mentality behind the then-current player base.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, part of the problem is that D&D tries to pass itself off as emulating ALL fantasy. In my own experience, the only fantasy it emulates even half-well is 'D&D-based novels'.

At least for 4e and 5e, I can find no evidence of trying to emulate anything other than D&D. 3e's hubris was trying to be a generic system--even then only the core d20 system was supposed to be generic, not the specifics.

D&D is not a generic fantasy emulator. It doesn't claim to be. Some people think it is, but that's their problem, not the system's problem. Forks don't make good jackhammers, but that doesn't make them bad forks.

[Florian]

At least for 4e and 5e, I can find no evidence of trying to emulate anything other than D&D. 3e's hubris was trying to be a generic system--even then only the core d20 system was supposed to be generic, not the specifics.

D&D is not a generic fantasy emulator. It doesn't claim to be. Some people think it is, but that's their problem, not the system's problem. Forks don't make good jackhammers, but that doesn't make them bad forks.

There's a huge difference between a "generic fantasy emulator" and being able to cover at least a slightly broad range of styles and genres. Mind, I'm not saying that this coverage is particularly good, because the various holy cows that have been dragged around for multiple editions by now are foiling that, but the situation is nowhere as bad as some folks claim. (I mean, you have the chance to create a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser team and have Lankhmar-style adventures and level up all to 20. No-one is forced to create an Übercharger and the GM has always the choices between using a Pit Fiend or a Level 20 "Black Knight" Anti-Paladin as BBEG).

4E is the odd duck in this regard. It´s actually quite a good skirmish level war-game and functions pretty well at that, but it´s so hard at odds with the free-form approach for anything outside of combat.

[PhoenixPhyre]

There's a huge difference between a "generic fantasy emulator" and being able to cover at least a slightly broad range of styles and genres. Mind, I'm not saying that this coverage is particularly good, because the various holy cows that have been dragged around for multiple editions by now are foiling that, but the situation is nowhere as bad as some folks claim. (I mean, you have the chance to create a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser team and have Lankhmar-style adventures and level up all to 20. No-one is forced to create an Übercharger and the GM has always the choices between using a Pit Fiend or a Level 20 "Black Knight" Anti-Paladin as BBEG).

4E is the odd duck in this regard. It´s actually quite a good skirmish level war-game and functions pretty well at that, but it´s so hard at odds with the free-form approach for anything outside of combat.

I was specifically responding to claims that D&D tried to emulate everything but failed. It doesn't even try. 5e can do a range of things, as long as the core is characters actively seeking adventure. I've personally had games where the key events were all negotiations. And ones where they were epic fights.

5e is not Grey Mouser-style Swords and Sorcery. Nor does it intend to be. I'd say 5e tries most to be (based on the marketing) "D&D, the good parts version, remastered." Take the classic parts of D&D past, fit them together in a mechanical framework that makes them play nice and is easy to use, and add some pieces to complete the set.

From AD&D it takes the feeling of play--loose and flexible with lots of DM involvement.

From 3e and 4e it takes some mechanical bits and bobs, but little of the ethos.

From all of them it takes content, especially monster concepts (that are then remixed for the new mechanics).

[Cluedrew]

I think we agree ultimately on there being a power discrepancy between classes.

I don't think anyone would disagree with that*. The disagreement is more what to do about it. There are some who want to cut the casters down, others want to boost the martials up, many with some combination of the two and some are full on "embrace the power discrepancy!"

Right now we seem to be going between the "badass normal" and "fantastic martial" groups. Broadly speaking: The badass normal group wants to push what martials can do towards/to but not past what a human can plausibly do, while the fantastic martial group wants to push things into myths and legends where people did impossible things just by being that awesome, separate from the masters of magic. The first is sometimes accused of Guy at the Gym Fallacy, the second of making everything magic. Different people want different things, which is fine until they start hating on others for wanting something different.

* Actually some people do... a more significant group doesn't care because the "auto-balance" the game themselves.

Alternatively, I can use homebrew mundanes which keep up at high levels ([...]), but I shouldn't have to turn to homebrew.

Do you have such a piece of homebrew? Because honestly I have never seen a "mundane" class that could get even close to the silly levels of D&D casters without becoming silly themselves.

[Florian]

I don't think anyone would disagree with that*. The disagreement is more what to do about it. There are some who want to cut the casters down, others want to boost the martials up, many with some combination of the two and some are full on "embrace the power discrepancy!"

There're usually two things that baffle me in regard to this topic.

We have all seen what happened with 4E. Once you try to settle on a fixed style and mechanical balance point, a lot of folks feel they are not serviced anymore and will turn their back to the game.
Should be, say, settle on rebuilding all classes to fit into the T3 framework, the game will not be interesting anymore for the people in it for a T1 or T5 gaming experience.

Also, if we accept that we're talking about a very broad target audience and the fact that only a small bracket of the tiers can work together based on a mechanical balance point (T1-T2, T2-T3, T3-T4 and so on), it should be at least a bit obvious at we more or less need "duplicate classes" for more or less the same archetypes and roles spread amongst all the tiers and it makes no sense to try to forcefully upgrade some of the classes. I'm totally fine with having Fighter and Warblade in parallel, because they can fulfill the same role in different tier brackets, which broadens my options.

I actually like the approach they did take with the PF2 playtest. You are now either a full caster or a full martial, nothing in-between. Full martial classes have a bit more class feat slots and can use those to "pay" for magic access, in the steps 1-4, 5-6, 7-9th level of spells. So, for example, I can now fully chose between a no spells Paladin, and a Paladin with 9th level Cleric casting.

Edit: AMH/WMH for PF1 did some nice things for martials. Spell-less item crafting is already a thing, but Item Mastery feats allow martials to coax some additional SLAs from their equipment, which cover at least the basics, like movement moved, teleportation and some hard counters. A good "Iron Caster" build is centered around flexibly swapping feats around on the fly, to grab the right Item Mastery feat for the situation at hand.

[Unavenger]

Do you have such a piece of homebrew? Because honestly I have never seen a "mundane" class that could get even close to the silly levels of D&D casters without becoming silly themselves.

Working on it. I've combed through the cleric, druid, psion and wizard lists for anything I can sensibly replicate, and then hoped that, despite the fact that there are some powers that I can't sensibly replicate, I should be fine because some psions and some wizards can't either, and most of these abilities don't even appear on all four lists to start with, and besides I can add some stuff that appears on none of the four lists and anyway most of the very-high-level stuff is just "Low-level stuff, but more so" and doesn't actually seem to represent much that's new.

Just finished DMing a session on no sleep and too much caffeine so might be a bit more coherent later but I think it's largely coming together nicely, and also just looking around there seem to be other mundane homebrews that aren't swordmagic, although ironically some of them are a bit OP (like there's a subsystem that offers you the ability to make all your attacks almost certainly instant kills at level 3). So far the most "Magical" ability is throwing powder at people that maybe blinds and confuses them and I'm pretty sure it can compete.

[Arbane]

My legions of undead who kill anything that they touch just aren't good enough for you, huh? HUH?

Whose class feature is that?

You mean another thing that people in real life do ALL THE GODDAMN TIME?

This is another reason I maintain that the rainbow-swords group are lacking in imagination and unwilling to explore ways to make the genuinely badass normal character work rather than outright dismissing it. And I really don't know how you can kid yourself into believing that manipulating people's desires and opinions to drive your goals isn't a thing that happens in the real world (most of the salient examples are from politics so I'll let you figure that out yourself).

I would argue that you are comparing lighting to a lightning bug, but whatevs.

Dug this up from a previous iteration of the Interminable C/MD Debate on the Paizo forums:

I did, in one of the many threads we've had on this subject, suggest some thought exercise examples that might help demonstrate some of the disparities in problem-solving in a magic "have/have-not" system.

Some things off the top of my head that a party might have to deal with, especially at higher levels:

1.) You won a very difficult battle, are low on HP, and the dungeon starts to collapse. You are not near the entrance, the boss was not fought near an exit, and the debris will DEFINITELY kill you if you're still in the dungeon when it collapses. How do you solve this problem with magic? How do you solve it without magic?

2.) The dark lord's fortress must be infiltrated, and quickly, to gain access to a magic item he will use the following morning to destroy a large area full of innocent bystanders. It is a dark, windy, and rainy night, and the castle has slippery walls and a moat full of dire crocodiles. You do not know what sort of sentries are posted atop those treacherous walls. How do you get in with magic? How do you get in without magic?

3.) The archfiend the party has been hunting has boasted the time of its masterstroke fast approaches, and uses its Greater Teleport to flee the battle to enact it. Every moment he's left free is a chance for him to recover from his injuries and advance his yet-unknown plans. How do you find and pursue the fiend with magic? How do you do so without magic?

4.) A locked-room murder of someone important to the party has occurred, and there are clear signs the crime scene was tampered with before the body was discovered to obscure potential evidence. How do you solve the mystery with magic? How do you solve it without magic?

5.) An army of orcs the likes of which has never been seen before is on the march. Their advance cannot be checked, only delayed, and their numbers are such even the entire party will be overwhelmed in minutes if they try to fight them. The land's only hope is for the orcs' advance to be slowed down as much as possible, and the NPC lords of the land to unite against the threat. The lords, however, do not like or trust each other and are dragging their feet in allying against the common threat since only the PCs have seen the sheer size of the orc army. How do you solve this problem with magic? How do you solve it without magic?

6.) The king is to be assassinated by an unknown third party at a well-guarded masquerade ball* the party is not invited to. The entire kingdom will collapse if the king is slain, but the guards will try to keep the party from entering even if they know of them because the lords gathered there will make their lives hell if anyone gatecrashes. How do you get in, find the assassins, and stop them with magic? How do you do it without magic? Bonus points if you can do so without making a scene.

I'm trying to make these both situations a party is likely to encounter but also not intentionally biased towards magic, although I will point out some of these things just have easier magic solutions baked into the rules.

*This one is admittedly the King's fault. Nothing good EVER happens at a masquerade ball, and the PCs should not attend if invited anyhow.

My main thing is simply that any party, at any level of optimization, will face many different problems, and it is naive in the extreme to assume the only problem that matters is "that enemy has all of its blood inside of its body."

This is the only problem some classes were designed to solve, while other classes were designed to potentially solve every problem, INCLUDING enemies being inconveniently upright and breathing. I've GMed enough to know that adventuring days pretty much invariably end up being structured around the pace set by mages in the party and that any given plotline tends to require a lot more caster-proofing than anything else.

[Florian]

@Arbane:

Do you see what all of the quoted example have in common? They are solely based around a very narrow roadblock design, which means a very specific key to lock ratio in providing solutions against problems.

This is actually like pixelbitching around in a classical 80s text adventure: Let´s throw anything at it until the right thing hits the right pixel to make the problem go away and advance us to our next scene.

[Cluedrew]

[...] it should be at least a bit obvious at we more or less need "duplicate classes" for more or less the same archetypes and roles spread amongst all the tiers and it makes no sense to try to forcefully upgrade some of the classes.

I like that general idea, I'm not sure whole new classes is the way to do it, but a slider that moves the same archetype up and down tiers might work. I know Cosi had an idea about bringing back 4e tiers to make levels of play explicate and give you points where you could decide who you surpass the old limits. I liked that one as well, the only issue I had is the tier updates always boiled down to add magic and no social or technical ways of powering up.

To Unavenger: That sounds promising. Do you think you will put it up in homebrew when you are done?

To Florian (recent post): Do you have any other, better, concrete situations to use as examples in comparing the problem solving abilities of martials and casters?

[EldritchWeaver]

I've already compared Aragorn - who isn't even at the top of the mundane game - to mid-level D&D wizards and decided that I'd rather have him on my side than the wizard until at least mid-to-high levels (no surprise, because one of the antagonists is a wizard of at least 13th level and he still doesn't manage more than convince the fellowship to take a different route), and I'd definitely take him over a high-level swordsage.

Not sure how Gandalf is that 13th level wizard. But if he is, he is one of the worst. 13th level grants access to Greater Teleport, which allows in theory to teleport directly to Mount Doom. If the GM say nope (because of energy interference) or you suspect Teleport Trap being active, then you jump to the base of the mountain. But by no means you trek through the entire country on foot. Phantom Steed, if you have to fly. So your preference for Aragorn is solely, because Gandalf's player is incompetent. Or maybe D&D doesn't emulate LotR. Not sure.

I would rather my Fighter be able to "Combat Fly" by "jumping good" and using the impact of his blows to help him stay aloft rather then tell him 'Ah, no... see, you can only jump 15 feet up in the air with this skill so you don't get to fight this time. Don't worry, a bunch of Flail Snails will be joining the fight later for you to take care of like the big boy adventurer you are".

Spheres of Might has Sparrow's Path, which can be upgraded to true flight.

[Arbane]

@Arbane:

Do you see what all of the quoted example have in common? They are solely based around a very narrow roadblock design, which means a very specific key to lock ratio in providing solutions against problems.

This is actually like pixelbitching around in a classical 80s text adventure: Let´s throw anything at it until the right thing hits the right pixel to make the problem go away and advance us to our next scene.

Nonetheless, I think they're all legitimate situations that adventurers might find themselves in even if the GM ISN'T a railroading bastard, so how would you go about solving all of them with/out magic? The fact that most of them can be utterly trivialized with the right spell is more of a problem with D&D magic than with any of the situations.

Feel free to add more.

* The ship you're on is sinking.
* The airship you're on is falling out of the sky. (To be fair, 'break your fall with the rocky ground below and walk away' is a pretty typical way for a high-level fighter to 'solve' this.)
* You have to find a lost treasure in a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean.
* Solve a murder mystery.
* Save a poisoned friend.
* Break a curse.
* A crop blight is causing a famine.

Not sure how Gandalf is that 13th level wizard. But if he is, he is one of the worst. 13th level grants access to Greater Teleport, which allows in theory to teleport directly to Mount Doom. If the GM say nope (because of energy interference) or you suspect Teleport Trap being active, then you jump to the base of the mountain. But by no means you trek through the entire country on foot. Phantom Steed, if you have to fly. So your preference for Aragorn is solely, because Gandalf's player is incompetent.

There's an old Dork Tower comic (which I can't find, annoyingly) with the gang getting ready to play a Lord of the Rings game, and they're evaluating Gandalf's AMAZING MAGICAL POWER. "Well....I can talk to birds...." (And set pinecones on fire, etc, etc.)

They end up using him as a battering ram.

Or maybe D&D doesn't emulate LotR. Not sure.

That's just crazy talk. It's got orcs, halflings, and magic swords, what more do you need?

[Florian]

To Florian (recent post): Do you have any other, better, concrete situations to use as examples in comparing the problem solving abilities of martials and casters?

This is imho the totally wrong question.

You see, my problem with those examples are that they are a) binary, b) work on a game table time line, so solutions are keyed towards what we can do in a gaming session and c) are also keyed towards the regular combat round.

I rather have a problem with the initial choice, that you can either be a caster or a mundane. I would actually prefer that we "silo" "power" in broad categories that individual classes have easier or harder access to, but we reach an equal sum total in it.

Basically, we could start by introducing the branch of "ritual magic", that everyone (and their dog) can have access to, which will, as the name implies, need a ritual to complete, but this is were we shunt abilities like Planar Binding,Teleport and Wish to, accessible to all.

Second step would be to have a hard look at the fetish to have certain powers intrinsic to a class. The category "item magic" would then include such things as a Circle of Protection, Items that allow to fly and so forth. PF gives a hint here, as it actually is interesting and still somewhat "mundane" to be able to just coax a little bit more power or utility out of items.

Last step would be "enhancement magic". You need to be already good at a thing (hiding, sneaking, hitting things with a hammer) to unlock the ability to take that from (Ex) to (Su), if you so want to.

This is were I partially agree with Cosi. The three tiers of play are basically a good idea, but 4E implemented them horizontally (levels 1-10, 11-20, 21-30), but I rather think they should be implemented vertically (low, mid, high).

@Arbane:

You know, the answer is often as simple as strapping on a parachute, or simply walking away, not caring. It can also be waiting for a while and then starting a counter-assassination offensive and simply trying to get a new ruler in place after a successful public campaign. The thing is, I called certain things out as solutions, not options, because there's a marked difference there.

[Lord Raziere]

Nonetheless, I think they're all legitimate situations that adventurers might find themselves in even if the GM ISN'T a railroading bastard, so how would you go about solving all of them with/out magic? Feel free to add more.

* The ship you're on is sinking.
* The airship you're on is falling out of the sky. (To be fare, 'break the fall with the pavement and walk away' is a pretty typical way for a high-level fighter to 'solve' this.)
* You have to find a lost treasure in a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean.
* Solve a murder mystery.
* Save a poisoned friend.
* Break a curse.
* A crop blight is causing a famine.

1. get on a rowboat and start paddling
2. uuuuuuuh. I'm currently trying to figure out a way for a ROGUE to solve this um....somehow improvise a parachute? or wait, wouldn't airships HAVE parachutes for this just for safety?
3. huh, I guess that does require magic, given that any diving equipment would need more advanced tech? but then again, if I'm in a world with airships that people fly in which THIS world doesn't even have, wouldn't I have tech advanced enough to dive down as well? do the airship and the diving equipment both count as magic?
4. I feel as if this is a "specific campaign" problem, in that solving a murder mystery is more of a campaign for naturally investigative and detail oriented players who watch those sorts of things all the time. there is an entire system out there called GUMSHOE where the entire game is focused on investigation and not on combat and therefore would naturally have all the ways to solve such a thing without magic, while a campaign like DnD only has like a couple skills for that as murder mysteries are not really the focus and players are more interested in combat, so they're more likely to use magic as a shortcut to get around having to look up investigation methods online.
5. given that there are ways to save poisoned friends in real life, this seems to be a matter of "do they have the medical training for this?"
6. now on the surface this is definitely a " only magic can solve this" problem, but fiction is riddled with all sorts of curses is broken by people do things that don't require a spellcaster to get rid of it, so it depends on the specific curse: if its just stuck on you, and no conditions to get rid of it, its a spellcaster required, but say if the curse is "you'll never be able to have money ever again until you apologize to the people you ripped off" or something then its just a matter of the person doing a specific action for the curse to be lifted. there is always those "can be lifted by the person doing a specific action" curses that is part and parcel of fairy tales
7. yeah.....this probably requires magic if you want to solve the crop blight. solving the famine is another matter: it depends on the economics and supplies around, on whether you can figure out a new source of food and so on. a cook could figure out a new recipe that completely changes what food is available to eat something, its all complex stuff that doesn't really REQUIRE magic, just knowledge and the proper connections and skills, magic would help, but its not vital. but the crop blight yes that probably requires magic simply because I have no idea how you'd solve a crop disease without it, I mean someone more knowledgeable might know a way to solve that in the modern day? but I don't.

so a lot of this really comes down to how much your willing to research up the ways people actually solved this sort of stuff and play out solving it without magical conveniences than whether or not magic is actually required. though some of scenarios seem to assume that magic got them into the problem in the first place (airship, curses) that have the potential to have mundane solutions to them as long as you plan them out in advance enough.

[Florian]

Rasiere has a point. Especially in the D&D environment, too much hinges on the fetish that a character must have the internal, guaranteed power to solve something. I tend to call that sort of situation building "roadblock design". And it really is quite a bad habit.

[Cluedrew]

You see, my problem with those examples are that they are a) binary, b) work on a game table time line, so solutions are keyed towards what we can do in a gaming session and c) are also keyed towards the regular combat round.

I think I understand why (a) is a problem. I'm not sure why (b) and (c) are problems, I mean mixing it some longer time scale examples would be nice but actions combine into scenes and scenes combine into the campaign so looking at the building blocks should be useful. Also that doesn't give me any examples

(Also I read your comments on class design: That is fine but I don't think how one becomes a caster or a martial is the issue, rather what you do with those skill sets (and the variations there of).)

Basically, we could start by introducing the branch of "ritual magic", that everyone (and their dog) can have access to, which will, as the name implies, need a ritual to complete, but this is were we shunt abilities like Planar Binding,Teleport and Wish to, accessible to all.

I had an initial kick back against the other two but I thought about it and I see how they could work. But this is... your solution to solving caster/martial is to make everyone a caster? (Outside of combat, which isn't a bit thing in many of the games I enjoy.)

You know, the answer is often as simple as strapping on a parachute, or simply walking away, not caring.

Not caring about a problem does not solve it. See climate change, or your favorite unaddressed issue of today.

1. get on a rowboat and start paddling.

What we are manly fighters, we swim to shore!

More seriously, you seem to be talking more about baseline competence than what a mundane/martial character can do. What can they bring that a caster can't:

1. As above, swim to shore. For bonus points use that impressive strength to tow a bit of hull with some survivors on it as well.
2. Assuming non-magical flight: fix the ship. Engineers are mundane after all. Of a very different sort than the one who breaks their fall with the ground.
3. Hold your breath, swim to the bottom of the lake, pick up the treasure, swim to the surface.
4. Outside of particular investigation skills, social skills. Read people, ask around for who might know what and who might of had a motive.
5. Medical skills of course. On a longer time scale being able to bring in someone else with medical skills or bringing them out to such a person (if that is difficult) may also count.
6. Nothing new for how to break a curse.
7. One addition is that the physical character might be able to go out there and help tear down the sick crops which might help stop the spread. If not a ranger type might be able hunt and gather some, but that might only buy time unless we go mythic. On the other hand there is often more than on character.

Actually as I went over it to write my list I realized you did a better job than I first though, but I had a few things to add still.

More than not being able to think of ways a martial could solve it, my issue is more that rule-sets don't support them. Like I mention some social solutions and well... yes lets just turn to D&D's robust, diverse, satisfying and practically non-existent social mechanics for this. D&D's real issue is that it has two main areas of competence, combat and spell casting. And being good at the latter makes you good at the former as often as not. This is a bit of a simplification but I have seen that systems with broader base mechanics and higher levels of base competence tend to do better with caster/martial.

[lightningcat]

Something that has been lots in newer editions of D&D is the limitations placed on magic.
In 2e it took 10 minutes per spell level to memorize spells. No big deal when you could only cast a few spells. It took 10 minutes to be ready at 1st level. At 5th level it took 2 hours if you where totally out of spells, or completely replacing them. But at 20th level, it took 1760 minutes, which is 28 hours and 40 minutes. Suddenly it becomes a lot less worth it to cast the big spells.
In 3e, 3.5, and Pathfinder require 1 hour of study to regain spells. While in 5e, recovering spells is automatic after a long rest.
The loss of this limitation is only part of the problem, but it does mean magic users don't have one more reason not to use their magic instead of letting a mundane do the task instead.

The faster/easier magic use shows up in other places as well, while mundane effort continues to take the exact same amount of time and effort.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, DnD isn't good for solving anything social or anything that doesn't involve treating it as a combat encounter.

thats why you get 3.5 people coming up with tippyverse wizards so they can bypass the social skills and solve everything with magic. because the kind of political RTS-like game you'd normally play by being some guy with lots of social connections, authority and being good at convincing those people to do what you want for you so you have this army of things to face other armies of things is instead accomplished by dudes reading books.

superheroes in general aren't that good at the power of social connections, because those are often thrown to the side so that individual heroes can take down tons of mooks. for social connections to matter, being outnumbered must matter. ironically, in DnD being outnumbered DOES matter but often because a summoner or necromancer decides "lol having a party/peers is superfluous, look at my DIY army!" yet in dungeons it never does because all the monsters spreads themselves out for no reason so that adventurers can come in and kill them in little chunks.

when the most assured way to make sure they'd win is to just group up into some massive group that they cannot possibly take on all at once. a dozen goblins? probably a winnable PC encounter. 120 goblins? not something they'll win. unless the wizard has already somehow done some incredible feat of hax. it occurs to me that DnD also doesn't do stealth well, because there are too many stories of PCs taking on things with no caution or consideration as to whether they can actually win a fight. when an interesting challenge for them would be to have at least one encounter in a dungeon that they have to avoid no matter what and thus the entire dungeon is set up so that they have to get through without doing so.

but again, thats a "game focus" question, not all people like the stealth game stuff. and lots of people who play DnD like to play combat stuff. at the same time, DnD doesn't do stealth or social stuff well so....the people who like the combat and the magic stay, and the people who want better stealth and social systems soon leave for games that do that better. kind of a self-reinforcing cycle.

thats why some of the biggest games outside of DnD out there is Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: they are all about investigation, social skills and being stealthy, and in CoC you probably have to sneak around a lot to avoid dangers you can't fight, while Vampires have to keep themselves secret so that humanity doesn't gang up on them.

but yeah, its silly to expect that all the power comes in internally. some of the best heroes out are in fact incredibly reliant on external sources of power (Batman's is money, gadgets and knowing people, technically any hero who wields a weapon relies on someone to forge that weapon in the first place, Team work and The Power of Friendship are literally all about how you can't do everything alone, technically a mentor who helps you is an external power because your social connection with them that allows them to teach you, so every hero with a mentor technically got their SKILLS from an external source, even if the power is inherent they would've achieved it without guidance, so...external, being a leader is external power as well....lots of things are external power once you realize that you only get them from the circumstances around you...)

[Ignimortis]

To be honest, if we're talking about D&D specifically, we have martials that don't do anything new ever (like 3.5 Fighters who just don't get any abilities outside of swording things to death 1-20) and casters who get new dazzling tools every 2 levels, and the jump is ever higher (going from Magic Missile to Glitterdust is neat, going from whatever level 8 spell to Wish is hilariously broken). That's a case of bad game design, because a Fighter 20 is still Boromir in terms of how much he's able to contribute to the story (not even Aragorn) and Wizards stopped being Gandalf probably after level 4 (if Gandalf were level 5, he'd Fly from Orthanc instead of summoning a bird buddy, or just Fireballed orcs at some point) and moved somewhere into Eru Iluvatar territory after level 11.

Sure, Fighter 20 would probably be able to outfight two hundred orcs, but without magic gear he's still toast against a thousand. Meanwhile Wizard 20 just drops the One Ring into Orodruin on the next day after learning of its' existence and deciding to stop it (he does have to prepare Teleport x2 and Scrying to find the Ring, of course).

So while I understand not wanting to play people who are ridiculously stronger than Conan or Aragorn, D&D stops being about this type of hero at level 5 or so. D&D doesn't do LotR well, and even 5e, which comes close, should probably ban all full-casters to be LotR-like. At level 10 you're supposed to be well into anime-style shenanigans, and level 20 would probably wreck Exalted or something like that, if we look at spells. If we look at non-casters only, well, yes, they can probably play weaker street-level superheroes in comics at level 20.

D&D has had this gap for a long time, but if you have, on one hand, a guy with a sword who does nothing beyond peak human potential (and not even a polymath, in 3.5 or 5e you don't get enough skills) at any level, and on the other hand is a guy who starts with a few unerring magical darts which can hit anything, per day, and ends up being able to summon greater demons and angels, stop time, bend reality on a massive scale with a snap of his fingers...well, that's just weird, isn't it? So why not fix it in either direction? Bring up the martials or tone down the magicians, either one would be fine with most people, I think.

Spoiler: Fighters aren't even good at fighting, BTW

Show

And the funny thing is, Fighters aren't even that good at actual fighting. For them to be good at fighting, they'd have to be specifically better than any other class is, and most monsters as well, because he would be able to utilize the combat minigame more efficiently - as in, maybe, getting more actions per turn than anyone else, getting access to special tricks unavailable to anyone else, like called shots with scaling effects and feats of physical prowess that kinda look like magic but aren't, etc. You know, like those guys from ToB! Wonder what happened to them...

[Unavenger]

Whose class feature is that?

I'm not looking up every class with diplomacy as a class skill for you.

Dug this up from a previous iteration of the Interminable C/MD Debate on the Paizo forums:

So in the video game version of Return of the King, amusingly, Aragorn has to beat up the King of the Dead before he accepts his offer (which he, Legolas or Gimli [player's choice] does handily) and when whichever of the three does, they find that the Paths of the Dead predictably start collapsing. When they do, you have an extended scene where you have to run out of the Paths of the Dead backwards while beating the living (or undead) hell out of stragglers in the Army of the Dead who presumably haven't realised that the King has kinda given up at this point. This seems almost uncannily apropos.

The dark lord's fortress must be infiltrated quickly, and there are crocodiles and sentries? Cool: my character swims through the water in a crocodile-ish enough manner so as not to alert the crocodiles (or, how big is the moat? I can probably grapple across from this side of the moat in a pinch), climbs up the walls (slippery they may be, but slippery isn't unclimbable), sneaks past or incapacitates any sentries, and commits Grand Theft Artefact.

Immediate action spellsplinter manoeuvre or equivalent; fiend goes nowhere, dies horribly.

Observation to see how the scene was tampered with and any imperfections in the tampering. Make a spy network check to see whether or not any of my lackeys saw what happened*.

D I P L O M A C Y. Alternatively, "Only hope" seems to be a bit fiat-ish. Find out what the orcs want to fight for and remove or redirect it; snipe out their leaders; poison their rations; set fire to their tents (or rations, or personal effects, or all of those and more) in their sleep; incite riots; make a personal army check to see how well my lackeys disrupt their game plan*.

Convince the guards to let us in ("Come on, it's a masquerade. No-one will know we're here...") or just lookit-a-distraction and sneak in. Watch everyone for suspicious behaviour. Steal the assassins' murder weapons and replace them with bladeless ones or equivalent, or just coax them into a back room and ka-POW.

To Unavenger: That sounds promising. Do you think you will put it up in homebrew when you are done?

Yup! Just... motivation and time to make an entire subsystem is... hard to come by.

Gandalf

I feel like you're having problem with the word "Antagonist."

-Snip-

To be clear, I'm not talking about the mundane classes we have; I'm talking about the mundane classes I'd like to see.

*I've chosen largely not to go for the "I have friends" route in my brew class.

[Glorthindel]

Oh good, yet another "people who like playing bad-ass martials are having badwrongfun" thread.

Look. I like playing Fighters. I want my Fighter to be able to run, jump, fight without being forced into being an anime character. I want to play Robin Hood, Sir Galahad, and Gimli. And D&D lets me do that perfectly well.

No, having more than 4 hit points and doing more than D6 damage does not make me "magic" because these things are abstractions. One-shotting a Dragon with a normal sword is perfectly within the realm of a mundane without breaking anyones verisimilitude - it does not require magic to land that perfect blow into a weak point, it just requires speed, timing, and skill to spot the weak point.

High saving throws and abilities that allow you to dodge previously undodgable things does not make me "magic" because guess what - these things are abstractions. Taking no damage in the centre of a fireball is perfectly fine - it does not require super-speed or insta-summoned forcefields, it just requires battlefield awareness, and the speed to duck behind cover at the last minute (so what if no item of cover existed, show a tiny bit a narrative skill, its not particularly difficult).

Using magic items does not require me to be "magic"... its the goddamn item thats magic, not the person. I mean, its kinda in the name.

Look. I get why this discussion comes up. Wizard players get annoyed every time someone suggests nerfing them so that the mundanes to keep up. So get a bit of cathartic revenge by suggesting we shouldn't have our fantasy at all. But currently the game provides for both of us, so how about we drop this stupidity and let us both have the fantasy we want to ply. I promise I wont bitch every time you cast fly, as long as you stop saying I shouldn't be allowed to play the game. I don't care that you can incinerate 50-100 peons in a single blast, that is your job, while my job is to body-check that hulking behemoth that is bearing down on you. Let me play my role, and I will let you play yours.