How would you do *actual* high-powered fantasy play with D&D?

[tokek]

I mean, I've been in and run D&D campaigns that had that sort of power level and hijinks. The specific example I picked a little bit for the absurdism and to kind of crack the shell of common sense that you have to get past to really get into the genre that is high end power fantasies, but its not so dissimilar to something I've had happen in a game.

I've played epic D&D. Very very high end - but nothing as absurdist as your example.

The reason I made that comment was that if you want that sort of out-of-left-field thing like breaking time with a punch to be in the game then you might do better with a more narrative game that worries less about specific rulings or crunch of abilities. Because I had literally no clue what that example ability was supposed to do in-game.

It seems to me you either play a game with a lot of room for creativity and the scaffolding to handle that - or you play a game with rules in place for all the stuff you want. But as the examples seem to come from a whole genre of stuff that D&D does not focus on D&D will not have specific rules for things like breaking time because you punch it so hard. Another game designed for that genre might. Or a more narrative style of game would let you handle it flexibly

Putting rules for all such possible uses of absurd strength feels like it would be a huge extension to D&D and I'm not sure you would end up with the game experience you want.

[Mastikator]

Immortals Handbook for 3.5e, as laughably bad as it is sometimes, has rules for handling infinities and 'infinity + 1 beats your infinity!' and other ways to counter infinities and so on. Yeah its largely silly, but often so is shonen anime.

So that's what it would take then. Whenever you roll anything it's now "infinity + ". The DC to jump is infinity + 15, and your athletics skill is infinity +6 and rolled a 11, that's infinity +17 which beats infinity +15. So epic and awesome. The bigger the numbers the epicer the game is.

[NichG]

I've played epic D&D. Very very high end - but nothing as absurdist as your example.

The reason I made that comment was that if you want that sort of out-of-left-field thing like breaking time with a punch to be in the game then you might do better with a more narrative game that worries less about specific rulings or crunch of abilities. Because I had literally no clue what that example ability was supposed to do in-game.

It seems to me you either play a game with a lot of room for creativity and the scaffolding to handle that - or you play a game with rules in place for all the stuff you want. But as the examples seem to come from a whole genre of stuff that D&D does not focus on D&D will not have specific rules for things like breaking time because you punch it so hard. Another game designed for that genre might. Or a more narrative style of game would let you handle it flexibly

Putting rules for all such possible uses of absurd strength feels like it would be a huge extension to D&D and I'm not sure you would end up with the game experience you want.

Generally you layer things bit by bit until expectations match what you're going for. You can give players time-cracking powers at campaign start (and I've done this) but they won't get used.

A large part of what genre is is building frameworks for different kinds of sense-making. Rules can scaffold this, communication fills in the gaps, but ultimately you get there by maintaining it as an environment of play.

After a few months, people clue into the sort of magical thinking appropriate to your genre. The rules then sort of transactionally ground that.

For example, campaign I was a player in had a D&D base but some homebrew you could use to get stats like Team Solars high op 3.5. High stats in of themselves are meaningless, except that Strength in particular tells you how much you can lift and it's an exponential scale. So the rules give a prompt - hey, it looks like this implies my character could build to be able to lift a small moon, is that going to fly or do we ignore that implication? GM said 'yeah, that's where I was going with this stuff, go ahead. Also quietly added another homebrew thing to let you maintain the structural integrity of things you're holding...

So starting from D&D and not going full narrative, we bridged the gap to things like catching falling aircraft, fighting spaceships in space on 'foot', ultimately in combo with other stuff moving planets in their orbits and so on. D&D doesn't natively tell you 'what does it mean to move the moon to a higher orbit?' but there's scaffolding that you can use to figure out what it would take to get there. And to attach bits and bobs that get you there more simply.

3.5e again, different campaign, a little bit of homebrew on top of stuff that already existed (Energy Transformation Field) and we had an exponentially growing summon-based spell engine that we could use to cast any spell without expensive components at any scale we wanted. A scientific notation number of castings of Polymorph Any Object later and we unsealed a volcano on the Plane of Fire the size of Jupiter - all in service of making a deal with an elemental lord.

You could do this without rules to climb, but the rules help the players come up with things that could be possible. In a narrative system you can do this too of course. But it doesn't need to be a narrative system. It can work fine in D&D.

As someone who GMs this sort of thing too, the big hill to get over is learning never be afraid. If you're always accepting one step more crazy than your players' boundaries of 'isn't this getting away with too much?' then stuff bends rather than breaks. If you're like, build full monster blocks in detail at exactly party CR and optimize them to make a challenge then you'll have trouble.

As far as infinity goes, it's a great notation for two things: one is, anything unopposed is just 'yes'. The other is separating opposed interactions to 'other people with infinities' vs 'they just lose'.

Infinite strength and you want to jump? Okay, tell me where you end up and when you get there. Infinite strength and you arm wrestle Hercules? You win, don't roll. Want to climb out of a black hole? That's infinite vs infinite, so you break relativity but that burns your infinity for this. Compare your lift given your modifier with your weight as if black holes were classical. You weigh as much as the earth would in 1g? Got a strength above 800 (think that's about earth mass iirc...)? You climb out using the fabric of spacetime for handholds.

[Yakmala]

I've been in a campaign for over a year that uses the Epic Legacy Core Rulebook by 2C Gaming, which takes 5E characters from Level 21 to 30, where, depending on their class and the campaign, they can undergo divine ascension. I've really enjoyed it and it makes the characters feel powerful in a way that goes well beyond what upper level 5E play allows.