The Man Keeping the Martial Down

[Talakeal]

That's largely the same issue I've been trying to articulate since the first thread on this subject I posted in not that long after joining these forums.

They want a game in which their Fighting Man^TM is at heart a normal person, nothing about him supernatural/fantastic/magical, is at the end of the day still a Normal Person (if at the far fictional edge of multiple capabilities); where that Normal Person can fight the highest of high magic and win, and where the Normal Person looks like and seems like and has the range of abilities of a Normal Person as we in our world would recognize, such that the setting is recognizable to them as "the real world as it could have been" rather than an utterly fantastic setting.

SOMETHING has to give in that list.

Are we talking fluff or crunch?

Also, are we talking about combat or out of combat?

[Quertus]

That's my focus for magic in the RPG setting I'm working on -- most spells should be enhancements, not replacements or negations.

So a spell that creates "phantom tools" to let a thief pick a lock without tools, or a spell that temporarily gives a boost to the skill (such that the unskilled become competent and the competent become masters), is fine... but a spell that just negates locks (and thus the character investment in dealing with locks; along with implying the setting dissonance of why anyone uses mundane locks) immediately hits the trash bin.

My ability "kick down the door" has, IRL, negated many a lock. As have my abilities "remove the hinges", "look for another way in", "look for another key", and "guy on the inside". I suppose I should add various bluff- and chance-based super powers to that list, too.

Heck, one time, I was trying to go to an interview, and got lost. I stopped at what looked like an information desk to ask directions, and was met with bafflement. I was told that, apparently, I came in the wrong door (which was supposed to be locked in a "secure military facility" kind of "supposed to"). The "guy at the desk" told me that he was honestly surprised that I managed to get from that door to him without being gunned down, and that security (who were terrifyingly well-armed) would be escorting me to my interview.

Given the sheer number of perfectly mundane ways I have personally managed to avoid picking a lock, why shouldn't magic have nice things, too?

[Telok]

But the limits of the versatility of being a muggle are much greater than those of "swordsmanship". Surely game designers could have done a much better job creating muggles who could affect the plot much more effectively than someone like the 3e Fighter or Cyclops does.

How about the fighter gets to be a noble, have real allies, command an army, and gets the social status to use them all.

A game where the people who get personal and direct 'shape the narrative/plot' powers are considered untrustworthy, are outsiders, or have limiting rules placed on them. While who don't get those direct powers are given the 'soft power' to do so through social actions.

Isn't that what AD&D originally did? And at about 10th level where the spells start becoming really problematic? So the setting and the tropes of the game were inherently part of trying to balance things.

So what happens to that game when you take away all the fighter goodies but keep the caster's spells?

[Max_Killjoy]

My ability "kick down the door" has, IRL, negated many a lock. As have my abilities "remove the hinges", "look for another way in", "look for another key", and "guy on the inside". I suppose I should add various bluff- and chance-based super powers to that list, too.

...

Given the sheer number of perfectly mundane ways I have personally managed to avoid picking a lock, why shouldn't magic have nice things, too?

So you don't see how those things you list would be a different experience within playing an RPG than just casting Knock and bypassing the situation entirely -- and all represent "character overcoming an obstacle through various means" elements similar to picking the lock... while the Knock spell just negates the obstacle entirely?

[PhoenixPhyre]

So, these seem the most important bits.

"Invisibility on the Rogue" is (and should remain) the optimal play. Agreed. If you want max stealth, start with the best chassis.

However.

Your group is, as a group, only as stealthy as the least-stealthy member. Invisibility is, at times, handy to throw on the tin can - or, yes, even on the Wizard himself - to keep the Rogue from saving his own neck / letting you all die rather than dieing with you, and going back to the tavern to find a more acceptable party (or, if what killed you didn't care about loot, just retiring after selling your stuff).

-----

Whether "Knock" should exist is an interesting design decision. Personally, I like abilities which communicate "we're too big for this baby stuff", much like SAO Kirito just letting bandits hit him, or Teleport largely negating travel, or teeth negating the need for food to be pre-mushed, or eyes largely negating the need to feel about blindly. I like games that have clearly delineated mechanical growth, as it provides impetus for the game as a whole to grow. But that's a matter of taste.

Invisibility acting as total stealth doesn't fit the name, much less the fiction. An invisible person in a tin can makes just as much noise as a visible one--more, in fact if they're not dextrous and not being careful. There can be other spells that aid in stealth. 5e has pass without trace which gives a group of people a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks for an hour but doesn't grant invisibility (so you still need cover to hide and can't walk out in the open). With the drastically reduced DCs, that's usually enough unless someone dumped DEX hard and is wearing the heaviest of armors. Not much use in combat, which is fine.

I don't like hard counters. To anything. If you don't want to deal with locks, have a rogue who's just that good that he's not going to fail. In 5e, the standard lock is DC 15. A level 11 rogue can't fail that (minimum roll is 10 due to reliable talent, automatic proficiency gives +4, a rogue has at least a +1 DEX mod), and can't even fail a DC 19 check, assuming a maxed ability score. So for a high-level party with a rogue, I'm not even going to make anyone roll for a door that's not arcanely locked (DC 25). And unless there are roaming patrols or traps (or time is a critical issue), I'm not going to make anyone explicitly roll for unlocking a door or chest. Because that's boring when they can repeat things.

That said, I have yet to see a caster actually learn, much less prepare knock.

I strongly dislike the idea of having "must be this tall to ride" signs on challenges--minimum "gear requirements" or "must have immunities" for encounters. I hate gear treadmills or "mandatory" gear requirements. I want most of a person's power to come from their innate abilities (class features, racial traits, spells known), and find things like "bonus feats, the class" (3e fighters), "skill list, the class" (some peoples' idea of rogues), or "big spell list, the class" (3e wizards) to be bad design. Give the classes actual features, and don't let spells (or other abilities) duplicate them without substantial cost (opportunity cost at a minimum, actual cost preferred). When comparing spells (or feats for that matter) to class features, the spell/feat should be an inferior substitute, not a replacement. It's something you get because you don't have a Rogue/Barbarian/Bard/etc, at a meaningful cost. Versatility at the cost of power.

The common perception is that "magic" (ie spell-casters) get versatility and power. Their spells can do anything that "makes sense" and always work or can do things that are impossible. On the flip side, "martials" are held to a worse-than-real-life standard. That double standard needs to die. Either everyone is fantastic and can do larger-than-life things (with appropriate limits) or no one is (or can). Will that mean cutting down the power of spell-casters? Sure. And that's a good thing IMO for the game. Make opportunity costs real. A wizard should have to choose what they can do, just like anyone else. No more "just give me a day and I can do anything!" standards.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are we talking fluff or crunch?

We're talking about both. If they're disconnected, such that the "fighting man" is supposed to be utterly non-magical at the "fiction layer", but he clearly has fantastic/superhuman/magical abilities in the "mechanical" layer, then the problems being discussed here still exist.

Also, are we talking about combat or out of combat?

Both.

[Gallowglass]

The issue (in 3.5/P D&D) then is all the minigames and how the caster interacts with them vs how the mundane interacts with them.

Here's a non-authoritative, non-exhaustive list of some of them:

combat minigame
battlefield control minigame
stealth minigame
disabling/creating traps minigame.
social minigame
crafting items minigames
making money minigames
researching minigame
investigating minigame
tracking minigame
animal handling minigame


Fighters are only good at combat. All their abilities are tied around it. They have no abilities for the other minigames at all.

Then you have other mundanes that are SUPPOSED to be good at their minigames.

Rogues are supposed to be good at the stealth and traps minigames. Ideally, their class abilities and options give them an advantage over other classes on those minigames.

However, with minimal resource investment, any full caster can trivialize or so skew those minigames they can easily out-rogue the rogue who dedicates massive resources to those minigames.

You can cut and paste ANY of the minigames in for "stealth" and you end up with the same outcome.

In an ideal system, the specialist will be better at their minigames than the generalist (at those cost of being worse at the other minigames than the generalist)

In this system, the generalist easily outstrips the specialists.

I don't know what the answer is. Lets say you decide "okay, we want specialists rogues to be better at stealth than any wizard. So we either amp up the rogue's abilities to outstrip the wizards magic or we descale the wizard's magic to, at the best, be less than what an average rogue can accomplish.

The problem was less pronounced before spell-bloat factored in. When the edition first came out and the wizards possible spell list was, like, 20 spells of each level. Now its hundreds. That same bloat problem happened in 2e too. And probably will happen in 5e if it hasn't already. Less pronounced, but it was still there. The base spell list contained spells that trivialized most minigames already.

Published spells have already set the magic bar so very high, that if you scale up the rogue, you end up creating a scale where you now have to set perception of enemies so very high to keep things interesting that is becomes impossible for any nonspecialist to ever succeed. But if you scale down the wizard instead you piss off people because "it doesn't feel like magic anymore." If you have invisibility only give a +3 bonus instead of a +20 bonus to stealth, basically saying "your spell is now the equivalent of the skill focus: stealth that the rogue would arguably be likely to take" then it doesn't feel worthwhile anymore. Or believable. I mean, "i'm invisible, how is that only a +3?"

And if you remove the spells that target the minigames, you end up with a very small spell list that's all blasting spell focused and isn't' very interesting.

Assuming you aren't willing to just move to a completely different magic system, I'd like to see the spell list gone over and spells modified to put them on scale with what the average specialist can accomplish. But I don't know how to do that without destroying the flavor of magic.

I imagine it would end up looking like this:

Detect Magic

Casting Time: 1 standard action
Component: V, S

EFFECT

Range: 60 ft
Area: Cone-shaped emanation
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 round/level
Saving Throw: none, Spell Resistance: No

This spell gives you an escalating bonus to both active and passive perception checks to detect magical auras.

On passive checks, it gives you a base +3 bonus to perception checks to detect magical auras.

On active checks, it gives you a +3 bonus on one round of searching, a +5 bonus on a second round of searching an a +7 bonus on subsequent rounds of searching.

In addition, use of the spell gives you a +3 bonuses to Knowledge(arcana) and/or spellcraft rolls to identify magical items or spells being cast.

DEFAULT: Any character has the ability to make perception checks to detect magical auras. DCs vary based on strengths of magical auras

With this change, every character can now potentially "detect magic" but the wizard who invests in detect magic and uses the spell will have a bonus on scale with a character who invests effort and resources into being a specialist in the perception minigame.

[Bohandas]

And if you remove the spells that target the minigames, you end up with a very small spell list that's all blasting spell focused and isn't' very interesting.

No, you'd have to remove those too. "combat minigame". These are the spells that trivialize the fighter because the fighter has to attack one person at a time like a chump.

[Talakeal]

We're talking about both. If they're disconnected, such that the "fighting man" is supposed to be utterly non-magical at the "fiction layer", but he clearly has fantastic/superhuman/magical abilities in the "mechanical" layer, then the problems being discussed here still exist.




Both.

I ask because this problem is pretty much unique to D&D 3.X which runs on a very abstract combat engine and also assumes that figters do nothing but fight. These assumptions are not always true.

Everytime the MvC debate comes up people act like it is some impossible to square circle, but almost every RPG and fantasy fiction can manage to do it.

[Max_Killjoy]

I ask because this problem is pretty much unique to D&D 3.X which runs on a very abstract combat engine and also assumes that figters do nothing but fight. These assumptions are not always true.

Everytime the MvC debate comes up people act like it is some impossible to square circle, but almost every RPG and fantasy fiction can manage to do it.

It's not impossible to solve, it's just that some players hate the actual solutions, as detailed upthread*.

Some manage to solve it via one of the options laid out previously. Some don't actually manage to solve it, they just fig-leaf it by pretending that fiction/mechanics dissonance isn't a problem, or that the fiction layer doesn't matter at all.


* As follows:

Spoiler

Show

> Dial magic, usually/specifically spellcasting, down, such that it doesn't overwhelm or negate everything else
> Dial non-spellcasting up, and allow it to be explicitly fantastic, don't try to pretend that Fighters and Rogues are just "peak normals"
> Dial non-spellcasting up, assert that it's "peak normal", adjust "normal" in accordance, and then follow through with changes to the setting to reflect that
> Embrace the disparity and make it an aspect of the setting and system and campaigns (see old White Wolf's Mage)


What you can't do is have it all -- a "like real life but" setting, and high magic spell-casters, and no-magic-no-fantastic-no-superhuman-nope "fighting men^TM" who can somehow keep up with high-magic spellcasters. But that's exactly what some settings pretend they're doing, and what some gamers demand.

[Talakeal]

> Embrace the disparity and make it an aspect of the setting and system and campaigns (see old White Wolf's Mage)

Its funny, I was actually going to use Mage as an example of a game which doesn't suffer from this problem.

So, out of curiosity, what would you consider AD&D or 5E to be? Toned down magic? Explicitly supernatural martials? Both?

[Willie the Duck]

How about the fighter gets to be a noble, have real allies, command an army, and gets the social status to use them all.

A game where the people who get personal and direct 'shape the narrative/plot' powers are considered untrustworthy, are outsiders, or have limiting rules placed on them. While who don't get those direct powers are given the 'soft power' to do so through social actions.

Isn't that what AD&D originally did? And at about 10th level where the spells start becoming really problematic? So the setting and the tropes of the game were inherently part of trying to balance things.

So what happens to that game when you take away all the fighter goodies but keep the caster's spells?

The issue (in 3.5/P D&D) then is all the minigames and how the caster interacts with them vs how the mundane interacts with them.

Here's a non-authoritative, non-exhaustive list of some of them:

combat minigame
battlefield control minigame
stealth minigame
disabling/creating traps minigame.
social minigame
crafting items minigames
making money minigames
researching minigame
investigating minigame
tracking minigame
animal handling minigame

Fighters are only good at combat. All their abilities are tied around it. They have no abilities for the other minigames at all.

Fundamentally, Telok, you are right. The system(s) where many-to-most people cut their teeth on what a TTRPG looks like, and set their expectations up that martials and spellcasters would be roughly equally enjoyable play experiences*, was when the martials had a lot more going for them than they did by 3e. Mind you, the spellcaster also had more constraints (in as much as their constraints actually had some teeth to them, and getting them to the level where they actually felt powerful almost felt like it required DM collusion), but mostly it was because the fighter (and thief) classes had more versatility. They had hands in all Gallowglass's minigames (and when you consider their name-level ability to be leaders of armies, oftentimes were the straight-out best at much of it). Even just by the more prevalent expectation that the pre-name-level adventuring actually would take place in a dungeon meant that a high bend-bars/lift-gates chance was valuable in a way that a wizard needed a mid-to-high level spell to replicate. Moreover, it was not considered being 'un-mundane' for a fighter to get the magic loot (of which most was meant for the fighter), which often gave them X/day spells. Somehow when 3e came out, it brought out new conceptions of what balance meant, but then also did its' level best to constrain the mundane classes to the sleekest interpretation of what they should be.
*Note different term from 'balanced,' as, even when that term was used for TSR-era A/D&D, it didn't have the same connotation.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So, out of curiosity, what would you consider AD&D or 5E to be? Toned down magic? Explicitly supernatural martials? Both?

I don't know AD&D, but 5e I'd say is both. Not only do most martials have some kind of explicitly spell-based abilities [1], but they're very comfortable saying that martials are going well beyond the "norm" for the population and even become superheroic (their words) at high levels. But (compared to earlier editions) magic has also been toned down substantially. Concentration means you can't buff yourself up the wazoo; spells now do explicitly (and only) what they say they'll do. Invisibility doesn't let you auto-hide (or even give a bonus to stealth), it just lets you try to hide without cover (and gives advantage when attacking + stops LoS). Knock only opens one lock per casting, and it's explicitly very loud. Many fewer spell slots and no easy ways of boosting DCs. Many spells are outright weaker.

And I think that's the only way to go, at least if you want D&D-style adventures and settings. 3e-style T1 casters (and martials that would match them), when played full out, make settings go sideways and require a completely different style of gameplay. Which isn't bad, but it's definitely not what I'm looking for from D&D. If you stick to purely "mundane" martials and cut casters to match, you can't get all the fantastic stuff I want out of a D&D setting or adventure. So the best plan is to meet in the middle somewhere. Tone down the too-powerful casters and unleash the oppressed and held back martials.

[Max_Killjoy]

Its funny, I was actually going to use Mage as an example of a game which doesn't suffer from this problem.

Mage doesn't suffer from the problem because it embraces the disparity and says "if you have no magic, you're unlikely to be a threat".

But even then, there are players who will insist this isn't true "because vampires and werewolves"... as if the abilities of vampires and werewolves "aren't magic". Which is sort of a parallel with the insistence from some players that in D&D the fantastic abilities of high-level non-casters "aren't magic". There aren't enough eye-roll emotes to express me reaction to this parsing on the part of those players.

So, out of curiosity, what would you consider AD&D or 5E to be? Toned down magic? Explicitly supernatural martials? Both?

I don't remember AD&D not having the problem.

5e is a bit of toned-down spellcasting, and a bit of explicitly fantastic/magical ability on the part of non-casters, but still has the problem to a degree.

[Talakeal]

Mage doesn't suffer from the problem because it embraces the disparity and says "if you have no magic, you're unlikely to be a threat".

Which is just nonsense. If my Mage party was jumped by a group of muggles who had spent as much XP on combat abilities as we had on magic, we would have been up the creek without a paddle.

Likewise, I don't think we would have even noticed if someone without any real magic had joined the party as the vast majority of our problems couldn't be solved with magic.

[Frozen_Feet]

Having grown up in an environment which had Wuxia (or to be exact, Xianxia and up) as the "default" fantasy mindscape, I always found this Guy at the Gym Fallacy too silly for belief.

As a Guy at the Gym, I find the fallacy too silly to believe, because apparently a lot of people go to really boring gyms. (Causing them to lowball even what ordinary humans are capable of.)

Using real athletes as reference has its place even in fantasy, but not as the maximum characters should be able to do. It should be used as a ground level, the treshold for a truly fantastic character to pass.

Ironically, AD&D actually worked like this. The values for carrying and lifting capacity for Strength scores from 3 to 18/100 were calibrated according to then-current weightlifting records. But then you got yourself Gauntlets of Giant Strength (etc.) and started flinging boulders around. There's a series of magic items that are clearly Thor's belt, gloves and hammer and they give you suitably epic abilities to go with them.

[Man_Over_Game]

This seems to be built directly on the biases of DnD systems, but it's not true across the board.

In Rifts, for example, a mage can open a portal to another world, shoot lightning from his finger tips and fly, but a Juicer (Steroid Junkie) can take a tank shell to the shoulder and easily turn that mage into swiss cheese with a good assault rifle. Mages in Rifts are easily killed, but have options to actually cripple targets before they can kill you, which nobody else can really do. Mages have to resort to controlling the battlefield while their Juicer friends handle the heavy lifting. Of course, the game is poorly balanced, but making each side have their niche results in neither party feeling left out.

Now, DnD has mages deal a lot of damage in comparison to Rifts, so it doesn't quite work out the same way. In the end, out of 100 random scenarios, you want the Fighter to be able to solve just as many as the Wizard can, and...that's not exactly how it's going to work when the Wizard can fly, turn invisible, detect thoughts, etc.

Or, put in another way, a Wizard's ability to solve problems must also be equal to a Fighter's ability to solve problems, and there's often a disparity if the Fighter can't solve non-combat problems.

	Wizard	Fighter
Utility	UW	0
Combat	CW	CF

For Fighter to be equal to Wizard, the Fighter's Utility + Combat must be the same as the Wizard's Utility + Combat. However, a Fighter does not provide anything for utility. The solution is to either provide some means for the Fighter to provide some utility benefit, or to nerf Wizards (Casters) until they're combined effectiveness is equal to the Fighter's combined effectiveness.

This doesn't work if Fighters and Wizards are equal in combat effectiveness, and Wizards also provide utility effectiveness, which is how 5e DnD runs it. Bit of a shame, really.

[Max_Killjoy]

Which is just nonsense. If my Mage party was jumped by a group of muggles who had spent as much XP on combat abilities as we had on magic, we would have been up the creek without a paddle.

Likewise, I don't think we would have even noticed if someone without any real magic had joined the party as the vast majority of our problems couldn't be solved with magic.

Perhaps I had the misfortune of hearing nothing but Mage Supremacists talk about the game and how Mages compare to vampires, werewolves, mortals, etc.

(And I'm not joking, the Mage players I knew were consistently adamant that nothing stood a chance against Mages, because Mages controlled reality, and that everyone else was playing by their rules... it's just that the Technocracy Mages were winning that battle for to make the rules.)

[Max_Killjoy]

This seems to be built directly on the biases of DnD systems. In Rifts, for example, a mage can open a portal to another world, shoot lightning from his finger tips and fly, but a Juicer (Steroid Junkie) can take a tank shell to the shoulder and easily turn that mage into swiss cheese. Mages in Rifts are easily killed, but have options to actually cripple targets before they can kill you, which nobody else can really do. Mages have to resort to controlling the battlefield while their Juicer friends handle the heavy lifting. Of course, the game is poorly balanced, but making each side have their niche results in both parties being excellent.

The Juicer is explicitly fantastic, just using "technology" instead of "magic", IIRC.

[Jama7301]

Which is sort of a parallel with the insistence from some players that in D&D the fantastic abilities of high-level non-casters "aren't magic". There aren't enough eye-roll emotes to express me reaction to this parsing on the part of those players.

Is that because you're viewing the abilities through the lens of "what a mundane can do on Earth" rather than "What an highly trained an exceptional mundane can do in world x"?

Would we call people like Usain Bolt or Simone Biles magic, because they outclass people in their field here on Earth? We don't. Why does the assumption feel like it seems into wild off fantasy worlds of D&D? That fighters who do crazy things like create tremors with blows and jump to the point of having limited flight HAVE to be seen as magic? The physics of these fantasy worlds can be anything! A sufficiently skilled person should be able to do things, without it being magic, that we could never conceive of doing here.

It feels really weird to me that any high level ability has to be chalked up as "Magic" instead of "The physics of this world working as intended".

[Willie the Duck]

Which is just nonsense. If my Mage party was jumped by a group of muggles who had spent as much XP on combat abilities as we had on magic, we would have been up the creek without a paddle.

Likewise, I don't think we would have even noticed if someone without any real magic had joined the party as the vast majority of our problems couldn't be solved with magic.

Well, someone already brought up somewhere that modern weaponry makes it a lot harder to make a magic system which does stuff that no one else can. Regardless, Mage is an interesting part of the WoD in that in theory it has some of the most epic stuff and 'a mage can turn a vampire into a deck chair' or whatever the quote was, but actual starting powers are usually pretty darn tame and the specifics of the magic system (especially paradox) highly incentivize Mages to come up with non-magickal solutions. For all the griping that the Forge Theory advocates did about the WoD ruleset, it did set up a specific playstyle that did incentivize thinking outside of your basic powerset.

That said, all the WoD games are built such that 'muggles' (Vampires ghouls, Werewolf kin, hedge mages, etc.) are simply put 'worse in every way' compared to full born Mages/Werewolves/Vampires/etc. you don't get some amazing amount of attribute/skill/background points in exchange for playing a 'normie.'

[Max_Killjoy]

Is that because you're viewing the abilities through the lens of "what a mundane can do on Earth" rather than "What an highly trained an exceptional mundane can do in world x"?

Would we call people like Usain Bolt or Simone Biles magic, because they outclass people in their field here on Earth? We don't. Why does the assumption feel like it seems into wild off fantasy worlds of D&D? That fighters who do crazy things like create tremors with blows and jump to the point of having limited flight HAVE to be seen as magic? The physics of these fantasy worlds can be anything! A sufficiently skilled person should be able to do things, without it being magic, that we could never conceive of doing here.

It feels really weird to me that any high level ability has to be chalked up as "Magic" instead of "The physics of this world working as intended".

Already addressed, multiple times.

Either those tremor-inducing blows and flight-like jumping are fantastic within the context of the setting (that is, supernatural, superhuman, magical, deeply extraordinary, whatever) and you can have a setting that looks a lot like "the real world, appropriate time period, but with magic"... or they're something that's within the "normal range" of capabilities, and the setting changes drastically to account for those differing human capabilities.

There's no problem with saying "you can train intensely to reach fantastic abilities" -- that's effectively what a wizard is doing. "You can punch the ground and create an earthquake" is explicitly orders of magnitude into the fantastic, if you want your setting to look anything like any time or place that ever actually existed on planet Earth.

The problem arises when "you can train intensively to reach abilities which match those of high-level spellcasters, and there's nothing fantastic about it in the context of this setting" -- that's effectively the same as making 9th-level spells "just a matter of training, but perfectly mundane" within your setting. And once you do that, you either have to follow through, or get a setting that falls apart at the slightest examination.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, someone already brought up somewhere that modern weaponry makes it a lot harder to make a magic system which does stuff that no one else can. Regardless, Mage is an interesting part of the WoD in that in theory it has some of the most epic stuff and 'a mage can turn a vampire into a deck chair' or whatever the quote was, but actual starting powers are usually pretty darn tame and the specifics of the magic system (especially paradox) highly incentivize Mages to come up with non-magickal solutions. For all the griping that the Forge Theory advocates did about the WoD ruleset, it did set up a specific playstyle that did incentivize thinking outside of your basic powerset.

That said, all the WoD games are built such that 'muggles' (Vampires ghouls, Werewolf kin, hedge mages, etc.) are simply put 'worse in every way' compared to full born Mages/Werewolves/Vampires/etc. you don't get some amazing amount of attribute/skill/background points in exchange for playing a 'normie.'

There's that too -- "normies" in WOD just do not get the same "build resources" that the supernaturals do, at least per any of the published rules.

[Talakeal]

Perhaps I had the misfortune of hearing nothing but Mage Supremacists talk about the game and how Mages compare to vampires, werewolves, mortals, etc.

(And I'm not joking, the Mage players I knew were consistently adamant that nothing stood a chance against Mages, because Mages controlled reality, and that everyone else was playing by their rules... it's just that the Technocracy Mages were winning that battle for to make the rules.)

Mages can "do more" than any of the other supernaturals, but this doesn't actually amount to a whole lot in daily life from either a crunch or fluff perspective.

Mages are more of the chess-master type, they can potentially beat the other splats, but only if they prepare for everything before hand, and it would take an extremely paranoid player and a very liberal GM for a Mage to actually come out ahead if they are fighhting on the enemy's terms, for example a werewolf jumping them from the spirit world or even a swat team kicking down their door.

[Arbane]

There's no problem with saying "you can train intensely to reach fantastic abilities" -- that's effectively what a wizard is doing. "You can punch the ground and create an earthquake" is explicitly orders of magnitude into the fantastic, if you want your setting to look anything like any time or place that ever actually existed on planet Earth.

Nothing says they have to be easy.

The problem arises when "you can train intensively to reach abilities which match those of high-level spellcasters, and there's nothing fantastic about it in the context of this setting" -- that's effectively the same as making 9th-level spells "just a matter of training, but perfectly mundane" within your setting. And once you do that, you either have to follow through, or get a setting that falls apart at the slightest examination.

Very few D&D settings actually don't fall apart - Generic Fantasy Land is kinda-medieval despite all the things in the setting that SHOULD have completely upended the social order, Because Tolkien.
Dark Sun doesn't fall apart now, because it DID fall apart long ago, as all the Big Magic and such completely ruined the world.

[Willie the Duck]

Perhaps I had the misfortune of hearing nothing but Mage Supremacists talk about the game and how Mages compare to vampires, werewolves, mortals, etc.

(And I'm not joking, the Mage players I knew were consistently adamant that nothing stood a chance against Mages, because Mages controlled reality, and that everyone else was playing by their rules... it's just that the Technocracy Mages were winning that battle for to make the rules.)

Have you ever heard anyone debate 'who would win in a fight (Superman/Batman/Hulk/Etc.)?' It's the same thing. With D&D, you always know the person really upset about the martial-spellcaster divide, because they always explain how the spellcaster would totally be prepared for whatever scenario the counter-arguer might dream up (in the same way that batman would totally get the drop on Supes and have a kryptonite whatnot available and blahdittiblah). With Mage vs. rest of WoD it is usually more Hulk vs. whomever (including Batman or Superman). The tired refrain will be something along the lines of, 'what, didn't you knowwww? The Hulk's strength is proportionate to his range and there's no upward boundary! His strength can be literally in-fi-nite! How can your measly Kryptonian or perfectly-planning mortal compare to infinite? I declare myself this debate's winner, I shall now put my fingers in my ears and shout lalala over your protestations!' By the same token, a Mage can do anything. An-y-thing.

Now I deliberately amped up the poindexterism of those examples to highlight how frustrating they are. Technically speaking, a Mage can do anything. Which is to say, there are no explicit out of bounds effects, gated by Storyteller buy in and some general guidelines mapping die-successes to overall power level. Mind you, a starting mage will usually have 1-3 dice to do their magic, whereas starting Werewolves and Vampires can often start with 5-8 dice to do their effects (in that they are usually determined with an attribute plus your magical discipline-like abilities pips added together, whereas a Mage just rolls their Arete, which will be 1-3 at start).

The Mage book does declare that Vampires are treated by Mage Magick as objects, and not people, indicating that they have little resistance to it (and the line about lawn chairs), so that's a little like AD&D 1e/Gamma World, where it said you could mix and match games, and that Gamma World characters brought into AD&D games would automatically fail all saving throws, since they didn't come from a world with magic). However, just like that situation, the game rules* weren't actually designed to work together, no matter how many fans wanted to play mixed groups. Thus it really came down to 'how powerful are mages compared to ____?' 'depends on how the Storyteller rules.' But that's not as fun a story as Mages running rough shod over everyone else.
*at least for the ones that existed when this fan narrative was made, in the case of WoD

EDIT: If you want to throw another spanner in that debate, at the time that this narrative was solidifying, Mummies were immortal... Im-mor-tal!

[Jama7301]

Already addressed, multiple times.

Either those tremor-inducing blows and flight-like jumping are fantastic within the context of the setting (that is, supernatural, superhuman, magical, deeply extraordinary, whatever) and you can have a setting that looks a lot like "the real world, appropriate time period, but with magic"... or they're something that's within the "normal range" of capabilities, and the setting changes drastically to account for those differing human capabilities.

There's no problem with saying "you can train intensely to reach fantastic abilities" -- that's effectively what a wizard is doing. "You can punch the ground and create an earthquake" is explicitly orders of magnitude into the fantastic, if you want your setting to look anything like any time or place that ever actually existed on planet Earth.

The problem arises when "you can train intensively to reach abilities which match those of high-level spellcasters, and there's nothing fantastic about it in the context of this setting" -- that's effectively the same as making 9th-level spells "just a matter of training, but perfectly mundane" within your setting. And once you do that, you either have to follow through, or get a setting that falls apart at the slightest examination.

Thank you, and sorry for making you clarify again. These threads run together sometimes, and I have a hard time parsing what's been said, and how and so on. My apologies.

[Max_Killjoy]

Thank you, and sorry for making you clarify again. These threads run together sometimes, and I have a hard time parsing what's been said, and how and so on. My apologies.

Sorry if I came across as angrier than I meant to be.

[Jama7301]

Sorry if I came across as angrier than I meant to be.

Nah, you're good. I just latched on to that paragraph and well, *gestures*. It's all good.

[Max_Killjoy]

Have you ever heard anyone debate 'who would win in a fight (Superman/Batman/Hulk/Etc.)?' It's the same thing. With D&D, you always know the person really upset about the martial-spellcaster divide, because they always explain how the spellcaster would totally be prepared for whatever scenario the counter-arguer might dream up (in the same way that batman would totally get the drop on Supes and have a kryptonite whatnot available and blahdittiblah). With Mage vs. rest of WoD it is usually more Hulk vs. whomever (including Batman or Superman). The tired refrain will be something along the lines of, 'what, didn't you knowwww? The Hulk's strength is proportionate to his range and there's no upward boundary! His strength can be literally in-fi-nite! How can your measly Kryptonian or perfectly-planning mortal compare to infinite? I declare myself this debate's winner, I shall now put my fingers in my ears and shout lalala over your protestations!' By the same token, a Mage can do anything. An-y-thing.

Now I deliberately amped up the poindexterism of those examples to highlight how frustrating they are. Technically speaking, a Mage can do anything. Which is to say, there are no explicit out of bounds effects, gated by Storyteller buy in and some general guidelines mapping die-successes to overall power level. Mind you, a starting mage will usually have 1-3 dice to do their magic, whereas starting Werewolves and Vampires can often start with 5-8 dice to do their effects (in that they are usually determined with an attribute plus your magical discipline-like abilities pips added together, whereas a Mage just rolls their Arete, which will be 1-3 at start).

The Mage book does declare that Vampires are treated by Mage Magick as objects, and not people, indicating that they have little resistance to it (and the line about lawn chairs), so that's a little like AD&D 1e/Gamma World, where it said you could mix and match games, and that Gamma World characters brought into AD&D games would automatically fail all saving throws, since they didn't come from a world with magic). However, just like that situation, the game rules* weren't actually designed to work together, no matter how many fans wanted to play mixed groups. Thus it really came down to 'how powerful are mages compared to ____?' 'depends on how the Storyteller rules.' But that's not as fun a story as Mages running rough shod over everyone else.
*at least for the ones that existed when this fan narrative was made, in the case of WoD

EDIT: If you want to throw another spanner in that debate, at the time that this narrative was solidifying, Mummies were immortal... Im-mor-tal!

I remember the whole Mummy thing.

To be fair, I read the Mage rules once, saw a system tailor-made to generate Storyteller-player arguments, and the stuff about how they interact with other "supernaturals", and never picked the game up again.