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Anderlith
2013-02-01, 09:42 PM
So one of the statements of 5th Ed class design was that at high levels the wizard would be the one fighting a god & the fighter would handle the minions.

This kind of made me angry.

Why is it that a fighter cannot fight a god? There are gods of war & battle. Is it not okay for a fighter to challenge them? Why is the wizard the god killer? What do you think?

ngilop
2013-02-01, 10:00 PM
that the company is named WIZARDS of the coast...

byt yeah.. for some reason they refuse to accept the many mnay times in our own human earthern mythos that mundanes fought and killed ( or at least managed to come to a draw) dieties.

basically it what I was mostly afraid of with 5th ed. and that is just make the game "caster do it better'

ArcturusV
2013-02-01, 10:10 PM
As opposed to other editions outside of 4th?

Anyway, yeah. Kinda sucks. But that's not SO weird as a dynamic. I mean think of almost any game. You're going to have your blockers and you're going to have the guy who drops the hammer. Fighters just get pigeonholed into "Blocker" status, able to take punishment but not deal with it. Wizards get put into the "Hammer" status.

Except Wizards typically get lots of ways to be able to take (Or mitigate) punishment as well. And Fighters don't really get any method to Hammer. Least nothing anywhere near as good.

Not something I like. But I've kinda given up on the idea that they are ever going to make Fighters anything more than bodyguards for low level Wizards while they are sleeping, and random distractions at high levels to force foolish enemies who don't realize the wizard is the real threat to waste resources on the fighter.

Slipperychicken
2013-02-01, 10:11 PM
Well in 3.5 edition, this was known, but not addressed by the game. Gods weren't just big strong guys -they wield phenomenal cosmic power. And that's the way it is in 3rd: magic is what allows you to transcend mortal limits, and there's not much that muggles can do about it. Magic must defeat magic.

In D&D, magic is what makes Gods strong, and magic is the only thing which can beat magic. So it makes sense for the Wizard to be the one fighting a God.


The thing which sets Gods apart from everything else is they're not mortal. That literally means you can't kill them, and especially not by conventional stabby means. You want to pick a fight with Thor? Great! With a resounding lightning crash, Mjolnir just caved your head in, sending your crumpled lifeless body hurtling into the abyss. He relaxes back down to his throne with another swig of divine nectar, sheathing his epic hammer to its rightful place on his belt.

Any foolish mortal can challenge a God, sure, he's just not going to succeed because mortals are lower on the cosmic pecking order. Even if you win in some small way like beating one at a knitting contest, you're screwed even then because they'll just go *poof*, and you're suddenly facing poetic justice (or often injustice!) for messing with beings of such caliber. Of course, in D&D, Epic Wizards are good enough at tapping the God's power source (magic) to fight them on their level.

Anderlith
2013-02-01, 10:21 PM
Well in 3.5 edition, this was known, but not addressed by the game. Gods weren't just big strong guys -they wield phenomenal cosmic power. And that's the way it is in 3rd: magic is what allows you to transcend mortal limits, and there's not much that muggles can do about it. Magic must defeat magic.

In D&D, magic is what makes Gods strong, and magic is the only thing which can beat magic. So it makes sense for the Wizard to be the one fighting a God.


The thing which sets Gods apart from everything else is they're not mortal. That literally means you can't kill them, and especially not by conventional stabby means. You want to pick a fight with Thor? Great! With a resounding lightning crash, Mjolnir just caved your head in, sending your crumpled lifeless body hurtling into the abyss. He relaxes back down to his throne with another swig of divine nectar, sheathing his epic hammer to its rightful place on his belt.

Any foolish mortal can challenge a God, sure, he's just not going to succeed because mortals are lower on the cosmic pecking order. Even if you win in some small way like beating one at a knitting contest, you're screwed even then because they'll just go *poof*, and you're suddenly facing poetic justice (or often injustice!) for messing with beings of such caliber. Of course, in D&D, Epic Wizards are good enough at tapping the God's power source (magic) to fight them on their level.

That's only one way to look at gods. I usually run gods as people with a mantle of power, that isn't intrinsically arcane magic, just power. You can theoretically kill the god & assume his mantle

Joe the Rat
2013-02-01, 10:35 PM
One too many hits from what Gandalf's smoking?

Alternatively, the wizard is the only one power hungry and ]Gary Busey[ crazy enough to go and fight a God. Nobody said anything about winning.

The model only works if the alternate configuration (fighter going a-deity huntin', wizard mopping up the mooks) would spell failure all around. The fighter is built to fight an army single-handed, the wizard can block and wield the magic necessary to bring down the cleric's source of power.

No, a fighter should matter against the gods, with the right tools - which means magic.

ArcturusV
2013-02-01, 10:39 PM
Golden hyne's blood on an arrow... shoot god... dead god. Fighters DO have precedent in Fantasy and such. Just people don't consider it as popular and viable as Epic Spellcasting.

Lupus753
2013-02-01, 10:44 PM
I generally dislike the idea of physical creatures defeating Gods or even demons, but that's not the most distressing thing about this.

Many western game designers seem to think they need to integrate story-line power and game-play powers. Thus, magic-users are really powerful in the setting and so they must be more powerful than the other martial classes, even in game-play. That is a terrible way to approach the matter, as it punishes those who like to play martial classes.

A big problem is the basic mindset of western game developers. I think that they operate under the belief that fighter have to be basically normal guys that could almost exist in the real world, unlike mages. There's a reason why fans of powerful magic-users once coined the meme "Weeaboo Fightan Magic". Eastern game developers have lived in cultures that do not have these same limiting mindsets. You will easily find animes where "normal" people can toss buildings and slice up cliffs. Chinese kung-fu stories treat martial arts and magic powers to be almost synonymous.

If true balance between fighters and magic-users is to take hold even in D&D, this mind set of fighters being normal and magic-users as superhuman has got to stop.

ngilop
2013-02-01, 11:06 PM
You can find thousands of examples in western mythologies of the supernatural acts that mudnanes were capable of, see gilgamesh, beowulf, heraclues, Jacob, Roland, Archbishop Turpin, Indrajit. (yes i see hindu mythologies as more western than oriental) and thats just off the top of my head.


its Just they ( WoTC) are saying that the non-magical classes in D&D are beholden to real world laws of physicals and reality..

but they are forgetting that D&D is NOT THE &$@*%$ REAL WORLD!

so even though a fighter in D&D at high levels SHOULD be able to replicate sundering a mountain ala heracles, they say " nope only magic can do that.. you can hit things harder though mr fighter.."

Slipperychicken
2013-02-02, 12:13 AM
so even though a fighter in D&D at high levels SHOULD be able to replicate sundering a mountain ala heracles, they say " nope only magic can do that.. you can hit things harder though mr fighter.."

One thing I support in a D&D-magic setting is essentially giving the Fighter magic. Focusing his warrior spirit energy (or whatever excuse Monks get) and driving harder allows him to perform acts which are simply impossible by real world physics. Things like spinning his weapons/arms around really fast to propel him (kind of like Thor did in the recent Avengers movies), or hulk-jump miles at a time, or slash so hard that the shockwave rips through the air and deals 75% of the damage, or smack the ground hard enough that everyone in a 30ft radius burst takes 50% damage. At higher levels, he should be dong things like tear open spacetime and jump through the quickly-closing rift as a poor man's teleport and knocking buildings over with powerful blows.

Now all you need to do is slap an (Su) tag on it, then throw down a few paragraphs of technobabble (fantasy-babble?) about warrior spirit energy or Incarnum or Ki or whatever people accept these days. Then everyone stops whining about it.

Lupus753
2013-02-02, 12:49 AM
^There are many Japanese RPGs where fighters can swing their swords so hard that it creates a huge gust of wind that blows down or slices at enemies. This is a fairly low-level feat of theirs. It's unrealistic, but this is fantasy. It's one of those things that might make fighters more interesting to play.

omegalith
2013-02-02, 06:53 AM
I absolutely support the idea that a guy who only knows how to swing a weapon around should be a lot weaker than an equally experianced guy who's had a University level education in altering the fabric of reality through focused will and understanding of complex mystical principles.


...Which is why Fighter as it stands is an NPC class. The town guard are fighters. The low level conscripts in the army are fighters. Oleg Stonebreaker, chieftain of the local Hill Giant clan, has a few levels in fighter to differentiate him from his underlings. No one should have more than 6 levels in Fighter because you aren't ever going to keep up or reasonably be expected to survive on your own after that, even with magical equipment.

As others in this thread have said, the PC's should be following the Swordsage mould. Mystical energy is blatantly the path to power in a world where it's this omnipresent and easily acessed, and so the combat expert should be learning tightly focused, specialized but deadly combat magic.

The combat guy should be calling on the strength of ten bears, dueling on the surface of a lake, wreathing his weapon in elemental energy and casting leadership-based combat buffs on the low level conscripts in his army.

The combat guy should be the one forging legendary swords, just as the Wizard knows how to manufacture the tools of his own trade such as staffs.

The combat guy should be considering if he wants to take a Combat Illusionist prestige class to specialize in misdirection and trickery.

And at high Epic levels, the combat guy should be getting in Thor's face and duelling him almost equally as the sneaky guy flanks, the Cleric buffs and the Wizard readies whatever more esoteric effect is required.

GreenSerpent
2013-02-02, 08:09 AM
^There are many Japanese RPGs where fighters can swing their swords so hard that it creates a huge gust of wind that blows down or slices at enemies. This is a fairly low-level feat of theirs. It's unrealistic, but this is fantasy. It's one of those things that might make fighters more interesting to play.

This is one of the things I'm including in my martial character rewrite. I'm using the idea of Rokushiki from One Piece (essentially superhuman martial arts). What can these "fighters" do? Harden their bodies to the strength of steel, kick vacuum blades of air at their foes, stab with a finger like a bullet through people, jump on the air itself, relax their bodies to be like paper so they can wave past attacks, and move so fast they "blur" out of vision.

Make fighters more interesting? I certainly think so.

Partysan
2013-02-02, 08:23 AM
I politely disagree. It isn't neccessary to talk about some mystical fighter chi power, because even purely physical prowess can lead to feats that are way beyond what the real world allows and quite up to par with at least mid-level D&D.
For all the tools wizards may have inside their batbelt, if the problem is not so much that the physical things are mostly measured in numbers instead of options, but that the consequences of these numbers, which would in fact result in options, are not considered to their logical conclusion.
Why for example are strength and dexterity not factoring into the movement rate? A person with above 20 in those characteristics would in fact be able to move too fast for a normal person to even see, much less react. Why does movement speed not factor into AC? Can a wizard cast a spell on someone they cannot percieve? Effects similar to a mirror image would also be thinkable. One could even imagine someone becoming invisible simply by permanently moving solely inside the blind spots of all onlookers. Creating shockwaves in ground or air as mentioned is also theoretically a purely physical act, a normal human being just wouldn't be ablle to achieve it. However the stat values reached by D&D characters are above human levels, so should be their capacities. No magic neccessary. Also, while his is a difficult subject, physical abilities should often make for a more efficient use of magic items. So why talk about introducing Chi when we haven't even used all our mundane ressources yet?

Slipperychicken
2013-02-02, 10:01 AM
Another thing which we haven't touched on is that the D&D Fighter is denied many real world maneuvers, which even "ordinary" folk can do without the extensive training and specialization a feat implies. Things like hitting people in such a way they're knocked over, throwing opponents to the ground, getting limb-breaking holds, eye-gouging, ear-clapping (yes, that really does disorient you. Try clapping your palms into someone's ear in such a way that the air pressure has nowhere to go), groin-striking, and so on. There are a lot of status effects in there which Fighters should be able to inflict reliably with neither magic or special training.

So vastly expanding the combat maneuvers list (not ToB, I mean Bull Rush, Trip, Grapple, Etc) to inflict status effects, and not requiring feat-chains to use them effectively. Obviously, eye-gouging would blind opponents, performing knock-down strikes would Prone them, limb-breaking would impose penalties appropriate to the limb broken (arms get penalty to hit and ASF, legs halve movement speed. Magical healing recovers broken limbs), targeting veins may inflict repeating Bleed damage, and so on. Many of these could also deal normal (or slightly-reduced) damage in addition to the status effects.

A lot of those are present, but the means of acquiring them (feats) is absurdly restrictive, when real people could know all of them or more. For instance, knocking someone down should just be a natural consequence of all that force slamming into them -you don't need special training for that.

ZeroNumerous
2013-02-02, 10:12 AM
You can find thousands of examples in western mythologies of the supernatural acts that mudnanes were capable of, see gilgamesh, beowulf, heracles, Jacob, Roland, Archbishop Turpin, Indrajit. (yes i see hindu mythologies as more western than oriental) and thats just off the top of my head.

I'd like to point out that your "mundanes" aren't actually mundane at all: In all those mythologies they are either half-deities, have a deity in their corner, have deifacted weaponry, or any combination of these things. It is extremely hard to find truly mundane entities in mythologies, because the mundane isn't mythological.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 11:25 AM
The problem is not just Fighters not being allowed nice things - the other half of the problem is that little-g gods have become way overstated in later iterations of D&D.

It used to be possible to take on Lolth by relatively mundane means at level 8 or so in 1st Ed AD&D. Not so in later iterations.

It is because not only is any god of war a really big mundane threat, due to inflated physical stats and BAB, but they also have great magical powers due to the virtue of being gods. My theory is that wide-spread belief in omnipotent, omniscient monotheistic deity has caused those traits to creep into people's mental images of non-omnipotent, non-omniscient polytheistic deities, who often were much less powerful. Someone brought up Thor, which is interesting, because in original myth Scandinavien deities could grow old and infact only stayed immortal by eating golden apples - which a mortal could eat all the same, mind you. And in Ragnarok, most of those very same deities died.

It is one thing to argue that a mortal should be able to naturally triumph over a god, and yet another to argue that natural and supernatural powers should be balanced in some manner - but it is pretty damn hard to argue that someone with only natural power should be able to outcompete someone with great natural AND supernatural power!

It is entirely possible for natural-but-superhuman to strike down the supernatural in a wide variety of settings. In mine, a witty peasant could flee Death by starting a bonfire, or trap a Dread Wraith by submerging it in water. But for that to be possible in D&D, it would need reimagining of both the Fighter and deities.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 11:33 AM
I'd like to point out that your "mundanes" aren't actually mundane at all.

On this note, I'd like to call attention to two main definitions of the word "mundane":

1. everyday, ordinary, or banal
2. relating to the world or worldly matters

Natural things will always fit the second, but they don't need to fit the first! This is crucial to understand if you want to give non-magic userts nice things: you can be natural and still be extraordinary.

Because a Navy SEAL or olympic level athlete might be natural, but they are not everyday or ordinary. Neither is a hawk's ability to see in ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, or a pistol shrimp's ability to create a bubble of heated water approaching temperature of the sun's surface.

If you allow a character to break "mundane", human limits, there's still a long, long way to go before you will break natural, superhuman limits.

ArcturusV
2013-02-02, 04:23 PM
True enough. I can't think of a lot of polytheistic pantheons that really had Gods anywhere near as powerful as DnD Gods. I mean look at the Greeks. I think dead/slain gods outnumber the living gods by quite a bit. And a good half of them that survive got whipped into submission.

And while they have been attributed with "Popping a Miracle in someone's ass!" because they are petty jerks, Zeus Godbolting people, turning them into Sand, etc. Usually it was nothing anywhere near as direct (Making Ulysses take YEARS to go home instead of the month it should have, giving Hercules Impossible Tasks, etc).

Actually that's the other thing. It seems Polytheistic deities in OUR mythologies tend to be giant, colossal pricks. Well, some monotheistic deities have their moments of that too. But when you're talking about Pantheons they seem to have a bigger fixation on the mortal world. And a lot of mortal foibles. Something I oddly don't see come up in DnD at all outside of my own homebrew settings.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-02, 06:12 PM
Why for example are strength and dexterity not factoring into the movement rate? A person with above 20 in those characteristics would in fact be able to move too fast for a normal person to even see, much less react.
Do you really think that? 20 is only about 3 standard deviations from the mean. If Strength is normally distributed, that means 0.1% of people have a STR of 20. That's not a large percentage, but in terms of global population there should be 7 million odd people with that score. 0.1% of those will have a DEX of 20. Do you think there are 7 thousand people in the world capable of moving too fast to see?

You might be inclined to argue that 18 is the maximum possible human ability score, but frankly I don't buy it. That's just an artifact of the dice, the real world is not so constrained. The RAW don't support massively superhuman capabilities for a few points over 18 either (maybe slightly superhuman, but not hugely).

Slipperychicken
2013-02-02, 06:20 PM
You might be inclined to argue that 18 is the maximum possible human ability score

Levels in Human Paragon and Barbarian disagree.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-02, 06:24 PM
Levels in Human Paragon and Barbarian disagree.
And ability boosts every four levels, and any number of other effects. But the last time I tried to bring normal distributions into a discussion of ability scores I was told that an INT of 18 couldn't possibly be an IQ of 138, because 18 was by definition the maximum possible. So I thought I'd cut that off ahead of time.

hamishspence
2013-02-02, 06:35 PM
Mustn't forget the Prodigy mini-template from DMG2 (+2 bonus to an ability score, and a separate +4 bonus to all check modifiers (including ability checks and skill checks) based on that ability.

Slipperychicken
2013-02-02, 06:38 PM
And ability boosts every four levels, and any number of other effects. But the last time I tried to bring normal distributions into a discussion of ability scores I was told that an INT of 18 couldn't possibly be an IQ of 138, because 18 was by definition the maximum possible. So I thought I'd cut that off ahead of time.

The rules do have issues, but often times there's either a RAW fix (sometimes in splatbooks) or people just misread the rules, then don't dig deeper for the solution because they can fall back on "the rules are silly hahaha", which is a lot easier than scanning pages for an answer.

hamishspence
2013-02-02, 06:46 PM
A 1st level person with Dex 20 can pick up a ranged weapon they have absolutely no experience with (-4 nonproficiency penalty)- and still have a better than even chance of hitting an AC10 target within the range increment of the weapon.

Not sure how that compares to real naturally talented, inexperienced shooters.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 06:49 PM
The thought of 18 being "maximum human limit" is simply not true in D&D 3.5. Sure, it might have been (somewhat) true in earlier iterations, but that changed. Both the way ability bonuses work and how real-life humans have managed to break stated limits of an "natural 18" debunks the whole thing.

To elaborate a bit more, once upon a time, max Str of a human was "18/99". 3.x changed to linear attributes, so the scores from 18/00 to 18/99 became 19, 20 and so on.

If you look at the actual rules of D&D 3.x, it's obvious that maximum human potential is from 21 to 23, varying a bit by ability score - and that's if you buy into the notion that "real life" caps at level 6 or so and no magical boosts are allowed.

For example, a strong man at his peak could be modeled as Commoner 1 / Human Paragon 3, putting his 4th level ability boost into Strenght. Even if he started only with Str 16, he would still end up with 19. Natural 18 would land him at maximum of 21, and that's actually short of strongerst real life competitors. (Someone calculated an observed record of Str 23 based on deadlift amount.)

Besides, not all mundane characters in an RPG are even human. Once you're playing, say, a half-orc, you can't really say he "realistically" couldn't be that strong. Who says he can't? It's not like humans are the most physically impressing creatures in real life either. A chimpanzee can have thrice the arm strenght, for example.

But, on another note:


Do you think there are 7 thousand people in the world capable of moving too fast to see?

"Moving too fast to see" is not just a function of speed on the mover's part, it also has to do with lack of ability in the observer.

Human eyes can track very fast objects if need be, but doing so requires focus and ability to react. It is actually easy to move fast enough, or subtly enough, that an average joe just can't see it coming. Real life magicians and thieves use this to their advantage, using wit and sleight of hand to distract a hapless victim, but in a fight, a trained fighter can move and strike so fast an untrained person just can't keep up.

I know, because I've done it. It's not been just once when a less skilled person has commented how s/he "didn't even see me act" before finding themselves on the floor. Of course, now that they've trained too, I can't blindside them like that.

So indeed, I do believe there are 7 thousand, maybe 7 million people who are too fast to see on this planet - it's just a question of who's looking! A Str 10, Dex 10 person might be unable to follow an olympic level boxer, and a Wis 10 bypasser can't help being tricked by a Cha 14 street magician with ranks in Bluff and Sleight of Hand.. :smallwink:

Anderlith
2013-02-02, 06:51 PM
Do you really think that? 20 is only about 3 standard deviations from the mean. If Strength is normally distributed, that means 0.1% of people have a STR of 20. That's not a large percentage, but in terms of global population there should be 7 million odd people with that score. 0.1% of those will have a DEX of 20. Do you think there are 7 thousand people in the world capable of moving too fast to see?

You might be inclined to argue that 18 is the maximum possible human ability score, but frankly I don't buy it. That's just an artifact of the dice, the real world is not so constrained. The RAW don't support massively superhuman capabilities for a few points over 18 either (maybe slightly superhuman, but not hugely).
That isn't the standard of everyone in the world. That is the standard of every important adventuring person in the world

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 06:56 PM
3d6 has been the standard of normal folks ever since 1st AD&D. The standard for adventurers has been 4d6, drop lowest, starting with the same edition.

In 3.x Ed, it's obscured by a bit, but the "average array" and "non-elite array" are clearly derived from the 3d6 roll, while the "elite array" is statistically based on 4d6, drop lowest.

hamishspence
2013-02-02, 06:56 PM
For example, a strong man at his peak could be modeled as Commoner 1 / Human Paragon 3, putting his 4th level ability boost into Strenght. Even if he started only with Str 16, he would still end up with 19. Natural 18 would land him at maximum of 21, and that's actually short of strongerst real life competitors. (Someone calculated an observed record of Str 23 based on deadlift amount.)

That said- the aforementioned Str 23 strongman might not be able to do some of the other things a Str 23 D&D adventurer could do.

Carry 200 pounds or less as a light load (meaning they are no harder to hit than if they were carrying practically nothing- they can move at full speed, run, etc.)

Stagger along at 5 ft per round with double the amount they can lift over their head.

And so forth.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 07:03 PM
That is probable, but part of that is something you can legitimately blame on the system - fatigue from extertion is not something D&D models well on any level. It pretty consistently fails to model it on all levels, because even the Str 3 person can lift a certain amount practically unlimited times, though realistically that should not happen.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-02, 07:06 PM
"Moving too fast to see" is not just a function of speed on the mover's part, it also has to do with lack of ability in the observer.

Human eyes can track very fast objects if need be, but doing so requires focus and ability to react. It is actually easy to move fast enough, or subtly enough, that an average joe just can't see it coming. Real life magicians and thieves use this to their advantage, using wit and sleight of hand to distract a hapless victim, but in a fight, a trained fighter can move and strike so fast an untrained person just can't keep up.

I know, because I've done it. It's not been just once when a less skilled person has commented how s/he "didn't even see me act" before finding themselves on the floor. Of course, now that they've trained too, I can't blindside them like that.

So indeed, I do believe there are 7 thousand, maybe 7 million people who are too fast to see on this planet - it's just a question of who's looking! A Str 10, Dex 10 person might be unable to follow an olympic level boxer, and a Wis 10 bypasser can't help being tricked by a Cha 14 street magician with ranks in Bluff and Sleight of Hand.. :smallwink:
Well I guess this comes down to what Partysan meant, because I don't think it was Sleight of Hand checks (the rules already take into account a lot of what you're talking about just through that skill). Because he said "movement rates" I took it to mean literally running faster than the eye can see; it is a bit strange that everyone of the same race has exactly the same speed (Barbarian or Monk levels notwithstanding) but I actually looked into real data on human walking speeds for exactly this purpose a while ago and I came to the conclusion that WotC chose not to vary it because the differences really are slight. In the back of my mind I'd still like to have another look at it, though.

I think what you're talking about is close combat (which might have been what Partysan was talking about) but I think that already is modeled in the rules with stuff like Initiative, DEX bonus to AC, and maybe even Bluff and Sleight of Hand like you said. So because it's already in the rules and because he said "movement rates" I'm inclined to think that's not what he was talking about.


That isn't the standard of everyone in the world. That is the standard of every important adventuring person in the world
No, actually heroes' scores are skewed slightly higher (4d6 drop one). Ordinary folk get 3d6 flat. For the sake of simplicity I've assumed everyone gets 3d6, which has a mean of 10.5 and a standard deviation of 3.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-02, 07:16 PM
You have a point in that Partysan was probably talking about a different thing. On the other hand[, D&D does allow for blatantly superhuman abilities that somehow don't factor together even if they should. After all, wasn't there a build with movement speed high enough to break the speed of sound? That should start to have effect on other things.

Str 20 might not warrant special considerations, but what about 30? 40? More? It isn't impossible to get arbitrarily high ability scores, and at some point, they really ought to start granting more abilities than they did in 3.x. But on the other hand, 3.x was not a complete slouch in these - all abilities factor into proper skill checks, and some Epic uses of skills are a great example of "mundane superpowers" Partysan was after. The sad thing is, many of those were arguably too hard to obtain, compared to what low-level magic can do.

Partysan
2013-02-03, 01:46 PM
Actually Frozen_Feet got most of what I was talking about. Fact is that people who are trained to do stuff, no matter whether it's skills of ability scores, can do things that are nigh impossible to defend against without having been trained yourself, ability scores are just a very raw and pure part of this.

Walking speed is indeed not changed that much, but running speed is (which in D&D might also be indicated by a higher running multiplier instead of a speed increase) and combat is its own animal, because somehow D&D assumes that when fighting, you're still moving at walking speed... Yes, when you're standing on a hill and someone is running up to stright you for several hundred metres then you'll be able to see them no matter what. They could, however, if you'd not yet noticed them, get up to you unnoticed, which is vastly easier when being able to move fast by allowing them to stay out of the onlookers line of sight while approaching and by allowing to cross a vast distance in a very short time. Then, when you're in close combat range you might actually be able to stay in a person's blind spot all the time if you're a trained fighter and they're not.
It is also true that a real world person might get one ability score above twenty, but not two or three, and what these people are able to do already tends to defy common sense. Strength and dexterity supplement each other in the real world.

There's also another problem that Slipperychicken touched upon: abstraction. Magic and mundane in D&D are working on very different levels of abstraction - mundane being so highly abstracted that there isn't even active defence in combat (which is kind of a big deal in fighting) while magic has literally thousands of different spells, often doing the same thing in a different kind of fluff and is thus hardly abstracted at all. This is a big part of what makes mundane combat and utility so much weaker than magic.

AcerbicOrb
2013-02-03, 02:41 PM
I don't get how a fighter COULD fight a god. A sword slashing it's face won't do much. A swarm of mini fiery meteors, on the other hand, will.

Partysan
2013-02-03, 02:46 PM
I don't get how a fighter COULD fight a god. A sword slashing it's face won't do much. A swarm of mini fiery meteors, on the other hand, will.

Is that sarcasm? I'm seriously not sure.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-03, 03:24 PM
Actually Frozen_Feet got most of what I was talking about. Fact is that people who are trained to do stuff, no matter whether it's skills of ability scores, can do things that are nigh impossible to defend against without having been trained yourself, ability scores are just a very raw and pure part of this.

Walking speed is indeed not changed that much, but running speed is (which in D&D might also be indicated by a higher running multiplier instead of a speed increase) and combat is its own animal, because somehow D&D assumes that when fighting, you're still moving at walking speed... Yes, when you're standing on a hill and someone is running up to stright you for several hundred metres then you'll be able to see them no matter what. They could, however, if you'd not yet noticed them, get up to you unnoticed, which is vastly easier when being able to move fast by allowing them to stay out of the onlookers line of sight while approaching and by allowing to cross a vast distance in a very short time. Then, when you're in close combat range you might actually be able to stay in a person's blind spot all the time if you're a trained fighter and they're not.
So isn't that already represented by skills like Hide or Sleight of Hand? It seems to me that expecting it to be reflected in ability scores doesn't make sense when you keep talking about training, but even natural talent is reflected in the underlying ability modifiers of those skills. What, mechanically, do you think D&D should represent that it isn't already? Do you think it's not possible to play a skilled warrior capable of striking before the opponent notices? Like, say, a Rogue?


It is also true that a real world person might get one ability score above twenty, but not two or three, and what these people are able to do already tends to defy common sense. Strength and dexterity supplement each other in the real world.
7 thousand people should have two specific 20s, if we make certain assumptions about the distribution and so forth. It's possibly higher than that in reality, because as you note Strength and Dexterity are likely to be correlated in the real world, whereas D&D assumes they are completely independent.

Lupus753
2013-02-03, 04:35 PM
I don't get how a fighter COULD fight a god. A sword slashing it's face won't do much. A swarm of mini fiery meteors, on the other hand, will.

Certainly not as currently written. A fighter can only swing his sword a bit. But it makes just as little sense for a human (or humanoid) anything to take down a God, even allowing for the existence of magic. A lot of us here are thinking of ways to buff up fighters to mage levels, so the two types of classes can compete.

PS: If you were sarcastic, I apologize.

AcerbicOrb
2013-02-03, 04:46 PM
Certainly not as currently written. A fighter can only swing his sword a bit. But it makes just as little sense for a human (or humanoid) anything to take down a God, even allowing for the existence of magic. A lot of us here are thinking of ways to buff up fighters to mage levels, so the two types of classes can compete.

PS: If you were sarcastic, I apologize.


I wasn't being sarcastic. I see gods as just really, really high level people (I'm talking about hundreds of levels here), and so vulnerable to magic. 24d6 for a meteor swarm is far deadlier than 1d8 for a longsword.

For making fighters more powerful, maybe being able to literally throw enemies into each other, leap into the air and slam down for an AoE, stab enemies in certain places to make them bleed over time, etc.

Kane0
2013-02-03, 05:45 PM
One thing I support in a D&D-magic setting is essentially giving the Fighter magic. Focusing his warrior spirit energy (or whatever excuse Monks get) and driving harder allows him to perform acts which are simply impossible by real world physics. Things like spinning his weapons/arms around really fast to propel him (kind of like Thor did in the recent Avengers movies), or hulk-jump miles at a time, or slash so hard that the shockwave rips through the air and deals 75% of the damage, or smack the ground hard enough that everyone in a 30ft radius burst takes 50% damage. At higher levels, he should be dong things like tear open spacetime and jump through the quickly-closing rift as a poor man's teleport and knocking buildings over with powerful blows.

Now all you need to do is slap an (Su) tag on it, then throw down a few paragraphs of technobabble (fantasy-babble?) about warrior spirit energy or Incarnum or Ki or whatever people accept these days. Then everyone stops whining about it.

This is what I do too. Every martial class gets a small ToB-esque progression and can do things considered 'impossible' in all senses of the word.
It would not be uncommon for a level 1 fighter to use his sudden leap ability (thanks Tiger Claw) to jump over an enemy and then attack from behind to get the flank bonus. Even though 'realistically' even high level monks would have trouble pulling that kind of stunt off.

Partysan
2013-02-03, 06:04 PM
I wasn't being sarcastic. I see gods as just really, really high level people (I'm talking about hundreds of levels here), and so vulnerable to magic. 24d6 for a meteor swarm is far deadlier than 1d8 for a longsword.
Honestly, if talking from a sense perspective, I don't see hock rocks as more damaging to a godlike identity than sharp metal bits, talking from a game perspective a good melee build makes that 1d8+999999 points of damage. The real issue is that gods tend to be immune to most forms of killing.


So isn't that already represented by skills like Hide or Sleight of Hand? It seems to me that expecting it to be reflected in ability scores doesn't make sense when you keep talking about training, but even natural talent is reflected in the underlying ability modifiers of those skills. What, mechanically, do you think D&D should represent that it isn't already? Do you think it's not possible to play a skilled warrior capable of striking before the opponent notices? Like, say, a Rogue?
It's a bit difficult to think of examples that do not touch skills in any way. The shockwave thing for high strength maybe. However I wasn't just talking about approaching unnoticed, which in D&D is hard but possible, but e.g. staying out of sight in close proximity. See, in D&D you have line of sight if there isn't anything between you and the target, since by default there aren't rules for facing (there's an optional rule in UA or Miniatures or somewhere), so you can just fire at anything in range since the game assumes you'll just turn that way. I however postulate that someone with high dex and strength could in fact outmaneuver you faster than you could turn towards them, essentially depriving you of line of sight by way of speed. Also, keep in mind that these are just examples. What I'm trying to argue is the point that just giving you a bonus to AC for high dex (again, as an example) does not really do the things justice that someone with really high abilities could do, the ways they could move and so on..


7 thousand people should have two specific 20s, if we make certain assumptions about the distribution and so forth. It's possibly higher than that in reality, because as you note Strength and Dexterity are likely to be correlated in the real world, whereas D&D assumes they are completely independent.
I won't argue statistics here, and considering that this 7000 is just a millionth of the people we have I'm pretty much willing to believe that there actually are this many people who can do things that utterly defy common sense about what human beings can achieve.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-03, 06:38 PM
It's a bit difficult to think of examples that do not touch skills in any way. The shockwave thing for high strength maybe. However I wasn't just talking about approaching unnoticed, which in D&D is hard but possible, but e.g. staying out of sight in close proximity. See, in D&D you have line of sight if there isn't anything between you and the target, since by default there aren't rules for facing (there's an optional rule in UA or Miniatures or somewhere), so you can just fire at anything in range since the game assumes you'll just turn that way. I however postulate that someone with high dex and strength could in fact outmaneuver you faster than you could turn towards them, essentially depriving you of line of sight by way of speed. Also, keep in mind that these are just examples. What I'm trying to argue is the point that just giving you a bonus to AC for high dex (again, as an example) does not really do the things justice that someone with really high abilities could do, the ways they could move and so on..

I won't argue statistics here, and considering that this 7000 is just a millionth of the people we have I'm pretty much willing to believe that there actually are this many people who can do things that utterly defy common sense about what human beings can achieve.
I really don't know enough about this to comment on specific details but I will say that from the sounds of it, this is mostly down to training rather than natural ability. Even if great strength and dexterity are necessary to pull this kind of thing off, an unskilled but freakishly strong and dextrous person will still be outmaneuvered by a well trained person of average strength and dexterity. So whether D&D models this well or not, I don't think it should be solely based on ability scores. It sounds more like feats and skills, maybe even class features.

Slipperychicken
2013-02-03, 10:54 PM
This is what I do too. Every martial class gets a small ToB-esque progression and can do things considered 'impossible' in all senses of the word.
It would not be uncommon for a level 1 fighter to use his sudden leap ability (thanks Tiger Claw) to jump over an enemy and then attack from behind to get the flank bonus. Even though 'realistically' even high level monks would have trouble pulling that kind of stunt off.

Two things I think ToB could have done better: Be more liberal with (Su) tags, and be part of Core. There are a lot of things (which I bet they were going to fix in the errata if it wasn't a complete failure) which ought to have been called out as magical in nature, like the healing strikes and the Shadow Jaunt maneuvers. And setting up the expectation that maneuvers represent the norms of martial combat, rather than some kind of exotic "magic-but-not-magic", would have done a lot to persuade groups to use it.

Scow2
2013-02-03, 11:06 PM
The 3d6 attribute spread IS NOT an accurate representation of demographic spread. It's actually FAR more centrally-weighted than the dice give - but rolling a whole bunch of dice with their results thrown through a bell-curving function is far, FAR too complex.

18 is widely considered to be "Human Maximum capability" - A mortal, modern human might get as high as 19, but that's a world-record-holder.

However, anyone above level 6 in d20 is already capable of superhuman capabilities. It doesn't need to be 'special' stuff that makes even melee heroes strong enough to take on gods - They develop the ability to take hits that would slay lesser men, and deliver blows through mundane weapons to fell even the greatest foes. An adventuring heroic swordsman would eventually gain the power to take even gods on in mortal form, toughing out the deific wrath, and bringing martial punishment that could cleave even a physical god in twain (And gods are indeed physical beings in D&D.)

Low level fighters are constrained by mundanity - even low-level wizards can't do too much that's implausible despite that being in the job description. But it's high-level fighters that are capable of taking on gods and their minions through force of arms.

Slipperychicken
2013-02-03, 11:21 PM
even low-level wizards can't do too much that's implausible

Reading entirely off the SRD:

Rope Trick, Levitation, Magic Mouth, Web, Burning Hands, Feather Fall, Mount, Unseen Servant, Summon Monster. Also, they can get magic talking ravens who obey their every command at level 1. When their magic bird-companion dies, they can burn some incense and another one appears.

TuggyNE
2013-02-03, 11:45 PM
The 3d6 attribute spread IS NOT an accurate representation of demographic spread. It's actually FAR more centrally-weighted than the dice give - but rolling a whole bunch of dice with their results thrown through a bell-curving function is far, FAR too complex.

18 is widely considered to be "Human Maximum capability" - A mortal, modern human might get as high as 19, but that's a world-record-holder.

Carrying capacity (the single most easily-verifiable measure of an ability score) says no. As mentioned earlier, actual world records strongly suggest Str scores of around 21-23, not 19.

Whether the other ability scores are similarly spread out is more a matter of guesswork and assumptions, but it seems to me that the long tail effect on an absolutely enormous population should probably manage to have a few extremely rare outliers that 3d6 just can't represent.

Felandria
2013-02-03, 11:51 PM
Just leave Zeus alone.

I don't want to have to seek revenge.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 12:19 AM
The 3d6 attribute spread IS NOT an accurate representation of demographic spread. It's actually FAR more centrally-weighted than the dice give - but rolling a whole bunch of dice with their results thrown through a bell-curving function is far, FAR too complex.

18 is widely considered to be "Human Maximum capability" - A mortal, modern human might get as high as 19, but that's a world-record-holder.

However, anyone above level 6 in d20 is already capable of superhuman capabilities. It doesn't need to be 'special' stuff that makes even melee heroes strong enough to take on gods - They develop the ability to take hits that would slay lesser men, and deliver blows through mundane weapons to fell even the greatest foes. An adventuring heroic swordsman would eventually gain the power to take even gods on in mortal form, toughing out the deific wrath, and bringing martial punishment that could cleave even a physical god in twain (And gods are indeed physical beings in D&D.)

Low level fighters are constrained by mundanity - even low-level wizards can't do too much that's implausible despite that being in the job description. But it's high-level fighters that are capable of taking on gods and their minions through force of arms.

When it comes to things like this I find just a minor bit of dissonance.
My problem is this, we aren't talking about melee adventurers, we are talking about the FIGHTER class.
That class in particular in it's 3.x incarnation shouldn't be fighting 3.5 gods...

A deity in 3.5 (That isn't imhotep), is 20 levels of outsider just from the jump. Being a god nets you that alone. After DR starts going up, it gets crazy, and the more domains the deity has, the more potent their own casting becomes, as they cast those domains as 20th level clerics. Deities are natural clerics of their own power.

The reason that magic and deities are just not in the realm of fighters in 3.5 is because, firstly it is high magic. Magic is safe, fully developed, and easy to learn. It's the better option.

Deities ARE magic, so they are the best creatures. Their bodies are not made from what human bodies are, no matter how similar they may look. They are made from superior particles, and honestly, have probably transcended the particle state into the wave state. They are manifest phenomena, so can a warrior beat war? No. No flippin way.

If he can in whatever thing you got going on, then it's absurd. My take on it.

Think 3.5 gods are too strong? I don't.
I think they are weak as heck. They are as old as their own concepts, and usually only have about 40-60 Class levels? I don't think so. And the class levels are not even optimized.

Being divinely transcended beings, I would expect them to only choose the best.


A TO god would rip through SO much.
A fighter? Against something that has surpassed his skills before the fighter's world had even come into being. Nope.

Not before level 20 he won't.
Maybe a 60th level, hyper optimized, and decked out in items that he did not create.

But a naked fighter in a fist fight with a god that has been around for at least one human life? No. He already would have levels out the ying/yang.


A god proper IN 3.5 Style?
DR 20 deity with 60 class levels?
Lets say its a god of War-casters.

Warblade 20/STP Erudite 20/Cleric 20
Have the academic priest feat for the cleric for further INT synergy.
Take all necessary feats and SDA'S, and just for lulz, create some unique salient divine abilities.

Divine Adept to give warblade all TOB maneuvers.
Divine Erudite to give erudite all spells and powers to be manifested as powers and reduce costs to one PP for all powers. Metapsionics have no cost.
Divine Persist to allow all supernatural effects to be persisted for no cost.



Fighter? Come on down.
What are you gonna do when this beast comes at you at 300/km per hour?
You ain't gonna do nothin. You gonna dai.

Someone who knows 11 tricks SHOULDN'T be winning. Someone who knows 22 tricks shouldn't be winning.


Even if we had a 60th level commoner god of commoners (That is actually pretty cool sounding, being the god of unexceptional people.), with SDA's, he would still be far more difficult to handle than even an 80th level fighter.

Scow2
2013-02-04, 12:36 AM
You underestimate and short-sell the heroic principals the D&D world is built on. Gods have their power come to them through their nature. They're plenty powerful enough to be considered gods.

Heroes wrest that power by going through all sorts of trials and tribulations, and as they survive and overcome those challenges, they grow in power and exceed 'mortal' limitations. Although their lives are short, the fire in a hero, whether martial or magical, burns brighter and with a power unsurpassed by ANYTHING else in the cosmos. It is a power capable of slaying beasts that cannot be slain, changing up the status quo in ways that aren't meant to change, reshaping the world in ways unimaginable, bringing peace between nations that war for eternity, or breaking the staunchest alliances. There is nothing a heroically motivated person cannot do in D&D, represented by the constant, linear growth of their power. There is only one "God" that they answer to, and it is the source of their power as often as it is the bane of their existence - The one of Random Numbers.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 12:45 AM
You underestimate and short-sell the heroic principals the D&D world is built on. Gods have their power come to them through their nature. They're plenty powerful enough to be considered gods.

Heroes wrest that power by going through all sorts of trials and tribulations, and as they survive and overcome those challenges, they grow in power and exceed 'mortal' limitations. Although their lives are short, the fire in a hero, whether martial or magical, burns brighter and with a power unsurpassed by ANYTHING else in the cosmos. It is a power capable of slaying beasts that cannot be slain, changing up the status quo in ways that aren't meant to change, reshaping the world in ways unimaginable, bringing peace between nations that war for eternity, or breaking the staunchest alliances. There is nothing a heroically motivated person cannot do in D&D, represented by the constant, linear growth of their power. There is only one "God" that they answer to, and it is the source of their power as often as it is the bane of their existence - The one of Random Numbers.

That is poetic yes, but it is the argument that infants are the betters of adults. Deities are the Apex beings in D&D.

All that is nice and dandy until a god of death completely erases their existence. Humans are guppies to gods, which are sharks.

Unless they qualitatively change what they are, the human state is not enough to surpass that of gods. Gods have every option humans have, and humans completely lack the primary options that gods have.

When it comes to gods, one statement rings true on the subject of defeating them. "GET ON MY LEVEL!"
In the most literal sense.

Scow2
2013-02-04, 12:50 AM
That is poetic yes, but it is the argument that infants are the betters of adults. Deities are the Apex beings in D&D.

All that is nice and dandy until a god of death completely erases their existence. Humans are guppies to gods, which are sharks.

Unless they qualitatively change what they are, the human state is not enough to surpass that of gods. Gods have every option humans have, and humans completely lack the primary options that gods have.

When it comes to gods, one statement rings true on the subject of defeating them. "GET ON MY LEVEL!"
In the most literal sense.Adventuring and becoming a hero DOES qualitatively change what a mortal is, and starts bringing them on par with deific power. A god of death has as much power to erase a warrior from existence as any other God can completely strip away a spellcaster's spellcasting ability.

ZeroNumerous
2013-02-04, 02:24 AM
On this note, I'd like to call attention to two main definitions of the word "mundane":

Both of your definitions are broken by all the examples he lists. Every one of them is either backed up by a deity, half-deity themselves, or uses a deifacted weapon or ability.

None of these things are naturally created by, or made in, the Prime Material("the world").

Even jumping through some logical hoops to somehow make half-deities "mundane" would still run afoul of the fact that those very same half-deities had weaponry made by gods or magic. And, again, neither of those definitions fit a deifacted or magically manufactured weapon.


Someone brought up Thor, which is interesting, because in original myth Scandinavien deities could grow old and infact only stayed immortal by eating golden apples - which a mortal could eat all the same, mind you. And in Ragnarok, most of those very same deities died.

I would like to point out that only Idun--a deity--is capable of growing those apples. Which means a mortal that eats them is getting help from a deity to oppose other deities, which greatly takes away from his/her victory if he/she does succeed.

Regardless, the mythology around Ragnarok has many of the deities killed by other deities or magical beings. In fact, the dead souls of humans in Ragnarok are used as shock troops against the hordes of giants(magical beings who are not gods) in order to buy said gods time. In effect, "mundanes" are considered only useful to die for their gods.

This is really not something you want to draw inspiration from when considering how to fight a god as a "mundane" fighter. Because it's telling you that your fighter is only useful as a meat shield for his substantially more important deific patron. Which is exactly the kind of statement the OP says makes him angry.

If you're trying to draw inspiration for "mundanes" to slay gods in D&D 3.5: Western mythology isn't the place for that. Because the majority of western mythologies concerning deities coming into conflict with mortals is very rarely resolved by the mortal alone. Generally it is resolved by the interjection of another deity granting said mortal an ability/skill/item that protects him/her from another deity--or simply talking the angry deity down. This is especially prevalent throughout the Greco-Roman mythologies, as many of them involve deities using mortals as proxies against other deities, or other magical entities created/cursed by other deities. This implies that mortals are nothing but play things to deities, which is not good inspiration for fighters fighting gods to draw from.

Someone more knowledgeable concerning eastern mythologies may be able to point out examples of mortals opposing gods successfully, but I do know of any personally.

Anderlith
2013-02-04, 02:54 AM
To help end this fight, I'm not saying that the fighter must be deprived of all of his gear, magical or otherwise. I'm saying that WotC says that a fighter should not be able to kill a deity. Look at God of War, Kratos kills a whole bunch. In Norse myth all gods can die. Asian mythos have stories of mortal gods. It's not a new concept or something. D&D deities need to be brought down to within epic reach.

Eric Tolle
2013-02-04, 03:04 AM
When it comes to things like this I find just a minor bit of dissonance.
My problem is this, we aren't talking about melee adventurers, we are talking about the FIGHTER class.
That class in particular in it's 3.x incarnation shouldn't be fighting 3.5 gods...

A deity in 3.5 (That isn't imhotep), is 20 levels of outsider just from the jump. Being a god nets you that alone. After DR starts going up, it gets crazy, and the more domains the deity has, the more potent their own casting becomes, as they cast those domains as 20th level clerics. Deities are natural clerics of their own power.

The reason that magic and deities are just not in the realm of fighters in 3.5 is because, firstly it is high magic. Magic is safe, fully developed, and easy to learn. It's the better .

So you're arguing that 3.5 is incredibly badly designed. Which is something I can agree with. Any game that makes one character choice far superior to another needs to go back to the drawing board, no excuses.

It didn't used to be like that; back in 2nd edition fighters could hold their own along side casters. A max level fighter was as much a threat to gods as casters. But with the magic supremacy attitude of 3rd and later editions, that all was lost. And the game is distinctly weaker for that.

The sad thing is that people take incompetent design and think of it as a feature, and make all kinds of sad excuses for magic supremacy.

ArcturusV
2013-02-04, 03:14 AM
Indeed Eric, indeed.

And as someone else mentioned, porting the ideals of monotheistic deities (I am all powerful), into polytheistic models (Where they seldom were all powerful can could be outsmarted by a human, fought off by beasts, etc).

Scow2
2013-02-04, 01:15 PM
The difference between god and demigod and mortal becomes blurrier in worlds like D&D, due to the nature of Heroism. Wizards have all sorts of fancy abilities, but fighters - the quintissential 'hero', are a stronger chassis for the supernatural to attach themselves to and use to champion their causes.

Yes, a fighter's reliant on gear to remain 'relevant' - but he should get far more mileage out of that gear than any other class, using its power to its full potential. A fighter still needs to be resourceful - Strength and endurance aren't enough to carry the day, otherwise Giants and other brutes would be the champions.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 01:37 PM
Adventuring and becoming a hero DOES qualitatively change what a mortal is, and starts bringing them on par with deific power. A god of death has as much power to erase a warrior from existence as any other God can completely strip away a spellcaster's spellcasting ability.
On the first premise, I am PERSONALLY, not a fan of that idea.
In no way should questing qualify someone whom is NOT a god, to become one by sheer wonderlust alone. Deification should come about 3 ways. Consumption, bestowing, and birthright.

I HATE unexplained phenomena, especially in such a crunchy game. It is rules heavy, so when the rule of cool just lampshades all former precedent, I can't comply. So if someone is not inherently divine, digests divinity, or is bestowed divinity, I don't want to see anything close to it.

And yes, gods nullify spellcasting too. Don't get me wrong here, If fighters are linear, and spellcasters quadratic, Deities are Cubic. They too are in a totally different catagory, and I think they should stay that way.



So you're arguing that 3.5 is incredibly badly designed. Which is something I can agree with. Any game that makes one character choice far superior to another needs to go back to the drawing board, no excuses.

It didn't used to be like that; back in 2nd edition fighters could hold their own along side casters. A max level fighter was as much a threat to gods as casters. But with the magic supremacy attitude of 3rd and later editions, that all was lost. And the game is distinctly weaker for that.

The sad thing is that people take incompetent design and think of it as a feature, and make all kinds of sad excuses for magic supremacy.

Not so much in the way you are extolling. 2nd edition IMO is just as badly written.
Philosophically I agree with magic supremacy. I like the idea because it is rational. Lets say magic(M) is equal to Ritualistic Psychokinesis Fueled by cosmic power. And lets say that melee fighting is equal to any Rudamentary physical task (T) as in it requires equal physical sacrifice for gain(S).

Well M Does not require S, while T does.
Magic doesn't require the same back breaking labor to make something happen, and by definition, it is making impossible things happen BECAUSE it skips the steps to make it legitimate. If I say a few words that lifts a stone, that is far less consuming of physical energy than actually lifting it.

If I spend 5000 bucks to make ANYTHING happen, that is cheaper than actually trying to make anything happen.


Sure, someone theoretically could be strong enough to lift the world, but if one has a spell to do it, the same amount of energy is NOT used. Spells BREAK Newtonian laws completely.

That is why magic is and should be better than physical stuff. Cause it breaks all the rules. Or moreso, exists higher on the laws of the world.

In 3.5 it is

Divine
Supernatural
Physical

I am completely fine with that as it makes since.
What everyone here seemingly wants is absurdity. Like someone's muscles are so strong that they completely ignore physics. But there is no rules in the game which have that effect. It goes against the internal consistency of the game.
Dnd is not an equal world, It is hierarchical. There are better choices and worse choices. That is how it functions. Being a fly is worse than being a human, as you have less options for behavior, and less freedom.

Gods are the most free, as they are only constricted by the concepts that they personify, and those concepts are universal ones.

Sue me, when someone says they are a god, I expect them to be better than everyone else that isn't. And when someone says they are a mage, I expect them to be better than people that aren't.

DND does that fine.
That does NOT mean that they do melee fighters well, however. They do not.
That is the problem. Not that there needs to be some equality or sembalance of that. No. Then there would be no reason to choose anything other than a commoner other than playing dress up.

The problem is that even though melee should be somewhat inferior simply by nature of having less options, they mistake less options for less instrumentality. No. That is wrong. Physical stuff should fully expand on the range and capability of working within the physical realm, and in a fun way.

That is why I endorse the use of KI powers, or psionics, or whatever.
Fighters should be NPCs. They aren't special enough to hang with the big boys, and have only one source of strength. Feats. And feats suck, even as a concept.

If you want supernormal effects out of Normal muscles, then there has to be a cause to that effect. Something has to make it better. Just Cause isn't good enough on a logical basis.

Be it Ki Points
Rage Powers
Guts
Pneuma
Spell points or Psionics, there needs to be a reason.

If you want fighters to do ULTRA-DAMAGE, well then make a new class, but don't use the same fluff and just have random stuff there. Give the class a source of power.

Perhaps get rid of the barbarian and the fighter as they are in 3.5, and simply create a fusion class which increases different perameters with rage ki.

TBC

Scow2
2013-02-04, 02:06 PM
On the first premise, I am PERSONALLY, not a fan of that idea.
In no way should questing qualify someone whom is NOT a god, to become one by sheer wonderlust alone. Deification should come about 3 ways. Consumption, bestowing, and birthright.

I HATE unexplained phenomena, especially in such a crunchy game. It is rules heavy, so when the rule of cool just lampshades all former precedent, I can't comply. So if someone is not inherently divine, digests divinity, or is bestowed divinity, I don't want to see anything close to it.

And yes, gods nullify spellcasting too. Don't get me wrong here, If fighters are linear, and spellcasters quadratic, Deities are Cubic. They too are in a totally different catagory, and I think they should stay that way.
Implying that humans have no inherent divinity, a crux of your argument that doesn't hold up in the Heroic Fantasy genre (Or any mythology, for that matter). Humans (And other common races) stand above and beyond mere savage beasts through divine birthright.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 02:11 PM
PART 1

Part 2.

Now, you have got me thinking. Lets say we give this new generalized fighter a name. Instead of fighter, as all of them fight, Let's call this one a militant, as he fights in the military style. (Lets call it a replacement fighter for now.)

To properly make what you want I will suggest some things.

1.Full BAB, ALL good saves, proficiency with all weapons; all regular fighter skills as well as knowledge, survival,hide, move silently, gather information, intimidate, and diplomacy. 6 skill points+INT per level

2.Fighter feats that can be changed daily. For the price of two fighter feats, the militant can purchase any feat that he qualifies for

3.DR+1 every even level

4.Fast movement as monk

5. Focused strike (+1d4 per 3 levels on full attacks)

6. Rage and all of it's variants and upgrades,(Ferocity, whirling frenzy,[Greater,tireless,ect]). Changable every day.

7. Intensity
(Opposite of rage. Opens up mental faculties to their highest, and gives rage bonuses to mental scores and concentration bonus to any mental skill. Also has none of the downsides to concentration or behavior. Can't use rage while in Intensity. Also temporarily shuts down damage reduction.)


Now, that isn't anywhere close to what is going on with a mage at all, but it gives the Militant a lot more options than a fighter or barbarian would have.

Simply by removing one unnecessary class, by fusing them together, something better comes out. For a stronger fighter, the barbarian's framework was extremely effective. It grants them a source of strength in emotional control, which allows them to surpass regular limits of the human body while causing exhaustion and increasing danger.

Also by increasing the options and range of feats, rather than having 11 permanent feats, the Militant fighter now has any he can qualify at his disposal.

That brings him a few tiers higher.

Focused strike also allows him to be a better attacker than most.



It's not TOB, which everyone hates even though it's perfect, Doesn't make it TO ASIANY (racists) with KI/CHI, and definitely kicks what was the fighter up a few tiers.


Is it strong enough to beat a god? No.
But we already determined that it doesn't need to be. Since spellcasters can't either.

Is it strong enough to face challenges better than the fighter was before, and can contribute to the party? Heck yeah.



Fix the fighter? Easy.
Add skills, saves, proficiencies, Rolling feats,DR Rage(And it's variants), intensity, and some way to inherently boost damage.

Toss out barbarian, and simply use a militant when you want that same flavor, as the militant has only one flavor, and that is being an elite warrior in control of himself and what he knows. And that trancends culture.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 02:24 PM
Implying that humans have no inherent divinity, a crux of your argument that doesn't hold up in the Heroic Fantasy genre (Or any mythology, for that matter). Humans (And other common races) stand above and beyond mere savage beasts through divine birthright.

We aren't talking about any of those.
Leave your fantasy novels elsewhere.
DND has it's own inherent universe and rules.
It isn't GURPS. It's not completely modular. Some dragons in mythology can't speak, but they all speak common in DND right? Why? Because that is what Oerth happens to function like.

It's got it's own rules. That is my point. Don't like the rules? Change them. I just did with the idea of changing the mundane barbarian and fighter into a militant. But do so with skill and balance, and reason. Because if it is unskilled, unreasonable, and unbalanced, it is unattractive.

The militant gains strength from emotional control, which leads to physical control, and that control leads to flexibility in combat.
Simple, easy, general, universal.

That concept for a class isn't like a monk or a barbarian, but like a fighter. It is something that ALL fighters do, but focused upon, so it can be used in ANY setting. Barbarians cannot be used in any setting, and neither can monks, so it is better than both. It is flexible, it is powerful, and best of all, bland.
Add feats to taste.

Talakeal
2013-02-04, 02:58 PM
I agree with almost everything you said, DMverandi, except for the premise that the baseline should be drawn at the magic level rather than the mundane. For me the ideal game would have superior NPC mages, but not so superior that a good party of mundanes can't take one out.

Most fantasy has powerful wizards either in the role of evil overlord or mentor rather than an active member of the party, and that is how I like it.

All archetypes should be more or less on the same level as far as PCs go.
If you are going to have PC wizards I would prefer they are significantly less powerful than the NPC wizards, so you are travelling with Schmendrick rather than Raistlin.


Also, it isn't the players who put the "asian" descriptor on TOB. The book's own introduction clearly states that it is supposed to represent fighting styles present in asian fiction.

On the subject of magic and gods, its funny to look at how they have evolved over editions.

In first ed gods where just really big monsters that powerful PCs could kill.
In second ed gods had no stats and where basically omnipotent outside of DM fiat.
In third edition gods are statted again, but their stats are so inflated that taking them on isn't really feasible. Sort of a hybrid approach.
In fourth edition gods are again just big monsters, perhaps even more so than in first edition as they lack and real divine powers.

As for magic, in first and second edition magic was potent, but the magic users had a number of significant drawbacks that meant you always wanted a mixed party.
Third edition removed most of the wizards drawbacks and made the melee classes worse, thus creating the era of magic supremacy. Still, I postulate that it isn't as bad as people make it out to be if you have a DM who simply says no to the more broken spells and outrageous rules exploits / questionable interpretations.
Fourth edition all but removed out of combat magic and kept all the in combat options more or less equal in power. Balance through homogeny.

So talking about design intent or realism and saying it has to be a certain way is kind of silly. In my oppinion the ideal design is someplace between first edition and third edition in both the mortal vs gods and magic vs. mundane angles.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 04:21 PM
I agree with almost everything you said, DMverandi, except for the premise that the baseline should be drawn at the magic level rather than the mundane. For me the ideal game would have superior NPC mages, but not so superior that a good party of mundanes can't take one out.
I think one problem is that there is no general magic skill that everyone can buy into regardless of class. The idea of 4e's rituals was pretty good in that aspect but I think something like charms would be better.
Rather than rituals, simple gris-gris bags up to magic seals would kick butt.

Perhaps what I am advocating is not the creation of something new, but perhaps some feat to adjucate between artificers and other classes. Some way to not have any of the class features except for infusions. If somehow the feat made it so that you got infusions for free, but couldn't advance in any magic classes afterwards. That would kick butt.

It would give regular classes a little bit of bite as far as setting up anti-caster weapons and armors, but would completely take them out of the running for actual magic.



Most fantasy has powerful wizards either in the role of evil overlord or mentor rather than an active member of the party, and that is how I like it.
This is where we differ. That is a certain type of fantasy.
Another is full blown magery. That is the kind I like. Perhaps we are from different eras, but I love HIGH magic.


All archetypes should be more or less on the same level as far as PCs go.
If you are going to have PC wizards I would prefer they are significantly less powerful than the NPC wizards, so you are travelling with Schmendrick rather than Raistlin.
And this is where giving non-casters more options comes in.
With that militant, and perhaps the feat should be named "Tinkerer", one can be a non-caster, and have quite a bit of options.


Also, it isn't the players who put the "asian" descriptor on TOB. The book's own introduction clearly states that it is supposed to represent fighting styles present in asian fiction.
The book introduces it. The players and DM's ban it.
The book is better than most of 3.5 IMO.
The asian part is pure fluff, and is mutable. Throwing the book out because of it is a little...eh...



On the subject of magic and gods, its funny to look at how they have evolved over editions.

In first ed gods where just really big monsters that powerful PCs could kill.
In second ed gods had no stats and where basically omnipotent outside of DM fiat.
In third edition gods are statted again, but their stats are so inflated that taking them on isn't really feasible. Sort of a hybrid approach.
In fourth edition gods are again just big monsters, perhaps even more so than in first edition as they lack and real divine powers.
First and fourth are worst.
Third says basically all manifestations are avatars, and the avatar sda is basically a manifestation making an even LESS manifestation.
The concepts that they come from are more or less infinite, thus "stats" are just a conceivable feature of a quality becoming manifest.



As for magic, in first and second edition magic was potent, but the magic users had a number of significant drawbacks that meant you always wanted a mixed party.
Third edition removed most of the wizards drawbacks and made the melee classes worse, thus creating the era of magic supremacy. Still, I postulate that it isn't as bad as people make it out to be if you have a DM who simply says no to the more broken spells and outrageous rules exploits / questionable interpretations.
Fourth edition all but removed out of combat magic and kept all the in combat options more or less equal in power. Balance through homogeny.
So talking about design intent or realism and saying it has to be a certain way is kind of silly. In my oppinion the ideal design is someplace between first edition and third edition in both the mortal vs gods and magic vs. mundane angles.

Caster edition is only that way because it was an attempt at making casters viable. Before that, they were at best advanced player options, and at worst glass cannons. They were too nerfed.
So magic got easier to cast. Not too bad.

The problem is that it got the most focus out of all things. Every book HAD to have a wizard/cleric/druid spell in it. Every book did NOT have fighter feats.


Also, some options like spontaneous casters are less overpowering than prepared casters.
4.E did right in making all Martial characters have a TOB like format. It did wrong in making all CLASSES do it. That was a big issue. The formatting and mechanics are similar for everything.

Had 4.e made casters as they did,and fighters fight like 3.5 Martial adepts, with skilled people just getting massive bonuses on skills, I dare to say, everyone would have a role.

To me the casting method of 4.e with At-wills, encounters, and dailies works EXCELLENTLY for spellcasters, but not so well for everyone else.
Fighters probably should just have at-wills IMO,
And experts have a different set of at-wills and encounters that are closer to skill tricks.
That would have been excellent.

Talakeal
2013-02-04, 04:42 PM
This is where we differ. That is a certain type of fantasy.
Another is full blown magery. That is the kind I like. Perhaps we are from different eras, but I love HIGH magic.


Yes, this is a difference of opinion. There is nothing wrong with one type of game or the other, but D&D has to allow a compromise.

Casters and non casters have always been worked together in the same party (save for a period in later 3.X when the TO boards got a hold of it), and saying that one or the other has no place in D&D is going to be a drastic change of direction that will alienate a large portion of the player base for no good reason.

Denying people the option to play non casters in D&D would be no more fair than, say, insisting you add viable non spell casters as players in Magic: The Gathering.

Synovia
2013-02-04, 04:48 PM
To me the casting method of 4.e with At-wills, encounters, and dailies works EXCELLENTLY for spellcasters, but not so well for everyone else.
Fighters probably should just have at-wills IMO,
And experts have a different set of at-wills and encounters that are closer to skill tricks.
That would have been excellent.

Why should fighters just have at-wills?

Is this the silly idea that everything physical can be over and over? Ever maxed out on the bench, and then tried to do it again 5 minutes later?

Talakeal
2013-02-04, 04:55 PM
Why should fighters just have at-wills?

Is this the silly idea that everything physical can be over and over? Ever maxed out on the bench, and then tried to do it again 5 minutes later?

While a human bodies endurance isn't unlimited, it certainly isn't easilly quanitifiable using at will / encounter / daily. Some sort of endurance point / locational fatigue system might be closer to the mark, but would be a whole lot of work for something that isn't really neccessary.

I can't think of any physical feats which can only be done once a day (unless I injure myself, in which case I probably won't be able to do it the next day either) and very few that I can only do once an "encounter", especially without hindering my ability to do something else.

But most warrior powers are not things which would tax the body so. Something like disarming or tripping an opponent can be attempted all day long, atleast in a vacuum without the enemies input.

Can you give me some examples of things which real people can do but only once a day / hour that are not equally "silly"?

Synovia
2013-02-04, 05:21 PM
Can you give me some examples of things which real people can do but only once a day / hour that are not equally "silly"?
Lift very heavy things. (or anythign of that sort where you push a muscle to its limit). Usully its not once a day/encounter, but more of every couple of days.

If your max on the bench is Xlbs, you literally will not be able to lift that amount of weight for a couple of days after doing it.


Any sort of anaerobic physical activity that comes close to your physical maximum will not be able to be repeated for hours, or even days. You run a fast mile? The next one will be much slower.

Your muscles literally need to repair themselves before you're capable of performing at your best.

Now, it may make more sense to say that "encounter" type powers could be done more than once an encounter, but each succesive attempt past the first takes a penalty, but there's nothing ridiculous about saying you can only do "Super Meteor Hammer Slam" once every couple of hours.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 05:21 PM
Yes, this is a difference of opinion. There is nothing wrong with one type of game or the other, but D&D has to allow a compromise.

Casters and non casters have always been worked together in the same party (save for a period in later 3.X when the TO boards got a hold of it), and saying that one or the other has no place in D&D is going to be a drastic change of direction that will alienate a large portion of the player base for no good reason.

Denying people the option to play non casters in D&D would be no more fair than, say, insisting you add viable non spell casters as players in Magic: The Gathering.

Oh, I don't think they should be discounted in the least.
What I argue for is a legitimacy of the philosophy of caster supremacy, that is all. Not actual barriers, but simply the logical understanding that magic is the bee's knees.

If anything, I think Melee adventurers should be empowered. The problem with that is the only way to implement it in a way that everyone had access to it would be through a skill. That is fine with me.

Perhaps naming it Drive or Might, and making it a constitution skill that awards a constitution bonus to all dexterity and strength checks. Maybe also giving it skill tricks that directly influence combat as well.
It has always been a pet-peeve of mine that there was no way to quantify fitness in 3.5. the scores alone are hardly enough.

On top of that, creating the viable fighter replacement(For me, militant) and the replacement to reliance on casters for equipment (UMD+Infusion Feat).

And suddenly there is some more gumption in what is going on.
That is how I would change it.


Believe me, I am not advocating that melee classes should remain ineffectual. No. Just no punching a ray spell, or simply saying no to spell effects without probable cause.
If it's with your mental power, then that is psionics.
If it's with some power of your soul, then that is divine magic.
If it is cosmic power, then it is arcane, etc.

One's own untrained ability to resist casting is exemplified by saves. (Which should also have a mechanism for increase.)

So on and so forth. But the system doesn't have that capability, and without tasteful introduction, it just looks like a cry for results without any insightful effort made.


If the system is giving you the blues, Homebrew.
But make it work. Pure nerfing is just... gross.





Lift very heavy things. (or anythign of that sort where you push a muscle to its limit). Usully its not once a day/encounter, but more of every couple of days.

If your max on the bench is Xlbs, you literally will not be able to lift that amount of weight for a couple of days after doing it.


Any sort of anaerobic physical activity that comes close to your physical maximum will not be able to be repeated for hours, or even days. You run a fast mile? The next one will be much slower.

Your muscles literally need to repair themselves before you're capable of performing at your best.

Now, it may make more sense to say that "encounter" type powers could be done more than once an encounter, but each succesive attempt past the first takes a penalty, but there's nothing ridiculous about saying you can only do "Super Meteor Hammer Slam" once every couple of hours.

The problem for me is not trying to make sense of it, but that having everyone do the same thing, the same way, takes away the feeling of uniqueness. Having different named abilities is one thing, but playing with a completely different mechanic is altogether a different experience.

A Psion, cleric, and druid all play completely differently. They all use 9th level supernatural effects as class features, but how they are implemented are different. (In 3.5 I mean)

Of course in 4.e they all have seperate powers, which have seperate effects, but the powers known moves at exactly the same rate.
If perhaps that was changed with fighters using their powers in a different way than spellcasters, then there would be some difference.

I am not a 4e hater(Once I read it), but there are parts of it that could have been done better. Class formating and power lists.

Talakeal
2013-02-04, 05:26 PM
Stuff.


Ok, then we are pretty much in agreement. In your previous post you said "fighters should be NPCs" and I guess I read too much into it, I thought you were implying that in your ideal version of D&D all of the PCs would be spell casters and all non casters would be relegated to mooks and hirelings.

That wouldn't be D&D, and in my opinion (just my opinion mind you) if the power level was so extreme I would say it should be the caster's rather than the melee who would get shunted off into NPC land.


Lift very heavy things. (or anything of that sort where you push a muscle to its limit). Usually its not once a day/encounter, but more of every couple of days.

If your max on the bench is Xlbs, you literally will not be able to lift that amount of weight for a couple of days after doing it.


Any sort of anaerobic physical activity that comes close to your physical maximum will not be able to be repeated for hours, or even days. You run a fast mile? The next one will be much slower.

Your muscles literally need to repair themselves before you're capable of performing at your best.

Now, it may make more sense to say that "encounter" type powers could be done more than once an encounter, but each successive attempt past the first takes a penalty, but there's nothing ridiculous about saying you can only do "Super Meteor Hammer Slam" once every couple of hours.

Right, but there are three problems with that approach. One, very few of the things you listed would actually be fighter powers, fighter powers are things like cleave, trip, disarm, grapple, and bulrush rather than feats of strength.

Second, even if you can't do something at full effectiveness, you can still attempt it, and might be able to succeed. The 4E system says you can only attempt it once, at which point additional attempts become flat out impossible. In reality my second long jump probably won't be as good as the first, but I will still be able to do a long jump of some sort, and there is a chance my second might be even better.

Third, all of your examples place strain and fatigue on the body and will hinder the ability to perform other tasks, particularly those that use the same muscles, while fourth edition doesn't work like that. I would only be able to do a super strong arm punch once per day, but doing a super strong arm punch wouldn't at all limit my ability to do super strength power lifting with the same arm a moment later.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 05:37 PM
Ok, then we are pretty much in agreement. In your previous post you said "fighters should be NPCs" and I guess I read too much into it, I thought you were implying that in your ideal version of D&D all of the PCs would be spell casters and all non casters would be relegated to mooks and hirelings.

That wouldn't be D&D, and in my opinion (just my opinion mind you) if the power level was so extreme I would say it should be the caster's rather than the melee who would get shunted off into NPC land.


Goodness, no... I Just meant they aren't actually much different than the warrior class. It doesn't exemplify a supreme combat monster, but a guy who knows only eleven tricks in his whole career. way too weak in my opinion.
Warblades aren't too much better off, but they trade out their maneuvers at least.

I would think a fighter, as a feat master, would take no time to be able to swap things out. A day studying a for dummies book, and he's got the knack down. Other than that, the ability to steel himself with resolve in combat in different ways, and It is my ideal type of soldier.

Synovia
2013-02-04, 05:52 PM
Right, but there are three problems with that approach. One, very few of the things you listed would actually be fighter powers, fighter powers are things like cleave, trip, disarm, grapple, and bulrush rather than feats of strength.

Second, even if you can't do something at full effectiveness, you can still attempt it, and might be able to succeed. The 4E system says you can only attempt it once, at which point additional attempts become flat out impossible. In reality my second long jump probably won't be as good as the first, but I will still be able to do a long jump of some sort, and there is a chance my second might be even better.

Third, all of your examples place strain and fatigue on the body and will hinder the ability to perform other tasks, particularly those that use the same muscles, while fourth edition doesn't work like that. I would only be able to do a super strong arm punch once per day, but doing a super strong arm punch wouldn't at all limit my ability to do super strength power lifting with the same arm a moment later.

The fact that 4th edition isn't super realistic doesn't mean the idea of At WIll/Daily/Encounter/etc is useless for melee combatants. Absolutely nothing about Casting makes any sense, and yet we don't let reality get in the way. We're trying to abstract combat.

I would think that disarm, trip, etc, would make great at-wills. Things that are a little crazy (like the epic fighter using his ridiculous strength to break a mountain in half) would be daily, etc.

ngilop
2013-02-04, 06:23 PM
When it comes to things like this I find just a minor bit of dissonance.
My problem is this, we aren't talking about melee adventurers, we are talking about the FIGHTER class.
That class in particular in it's 3.x incarnation shouldn't be fighting 3.5 gods...

A deity in 3.5 (That isn't imhotep), is 20 levels of outsider just from the jump. Being a god nets you that alone. After DR starts going up, it gets crazy, and the more domains the deity has, the more potent their own casting becomes, as they cast those domains as 20th level clerics. Deities are natural clerics of their own power.

The reason that magic and deities are just not in the realm of fighters in 3.5 is because, firstly it is high magic. Magic is safe, fully developed, and easy to learn. It's the better option.

Deities ARE magic, so they are the best creatures. Their bodies are not made from what human bodies are, no matter how similar they may look. They are made from superior particles, and honestly, have probably transcended the particle state into the wave state. They are manifest phenomena, so can a warrior beat war? No. No flippin way.

If he can in whatever thing you got going on, then it's absurd. My take on it.

Think 3.5 gods are too strong? I don't.
I think they are weak as heck. They are as old as their own concepts, and usually only have about 40-60 Class levels? I don't think so. And the class levels are not even optimized.

Being divinely transcended beings, I would expect them to only choose the best.


A TO god would rip through SO much.
A fighter? Against something that has surpassed his skills before the fighter's world had even come into being. Nope.

Not before level 20 he won't.
Maybe a 60th level, hyper optimized, and decked out in items that he did not create.

But a naked fighter in a fist fight with a god that has been around for at least one human life? No. He already would have levels out the ying/yang.


A god proper IN 3.5 Style?
DR 20 deity with 60 class levels?
Lets say its a god of War-casters.

Warblade 20/STP Erudite 20/Cleric 20
Have the academic priest feat for the cleric for further INT synergy.
Take all necessary feats and SDA'S, and just for lulz, create some unique salient divine abilities.

Divine Adept to give warblade all TOB maneuvers.
Divine Erudite to give erudite all spells and powers to be manifested as powers and reduce costs to one PP for all powers. Metapsionics have no cost.
Divine Persist to allow all supernatural effects to be persisted for no cost.



Fighter? Come on down.
What are you gonna do when this beast comes at you at 300/km per hour?
You ain't gonna do nothin. You gonna dai.

Someone who knows 11 tricks SHOULDN'T be winning. Someone who knows 22 tricks shouldn't be winning.


Even if we had a 60th level commoner god of commoners (That is actually pretty cool sounding, being the god of unexceptional people.), with SDA's, he would still be far more difficult to handle than even an 80th level fighter.

basically its this line of thought is why 3rd ed is so borked.

People refuse to accept that D&D is not the real world then on teh same line say "D&D is its own place and has its own rules"

so we have this HUGE hypocrisy. wherein anything with magic can do whatever they want to do, becuase 'hey its magic and magic rules'

BUT, we have these guys called Fighters and these other guys called Rogues who are beholden to earthen laws of gravity, inertiam motion, thermo dynamics, electrostratic/elecotrmagnetism, and realtivity.

Its D&D though.. why cna a fighter not be able to say with his warrior spirit burst forth his weapon in flames ( invoking the 2nd law of thermodynaicms here) There are cases here in our real world where sometimes laws need to be re-written.

why can people not just accept the fact that mundane in D&D is not 'Earth mundane'

why is it that a wizard can go invisible at 3rd level and nobody says anything contrary to that. but If a rogue is able to hide so well its mechanically the same thing as being invisible people ( well non-old-schoolers i play with really haven't experienced any outside source here) peopel get all up in arms about it.

But a swordsage can becuase he has 'sword magic RAWR!!"?

again D&D is not earth and people really need to just face the fact that putting our actual real life limitations on D&D characters is beyond absurd.

Synovia
2013-02-04, 06:30 PM
again D&D is not earth and people really need to just face the fact that putting our actual real life limitations on D&D characters is beyond absurd.

Its not just absurd, it makes a good chunk of the material unplayable.

DMVerdandi
2013-02-04, 08:16 PM
basically its this line of thought is why 3rd ed is so borked.

People refuse to accept that D&D is not the real world then on teh same line say "D&D is its own place and has its own rules"

so we have this HUGE hypocrisy. wherein anything with magic can do whatever they want to do, becuase 'hey its magic and magic rules'
Let me pose you this, "magic HAS rules, which is why it rules".
Magic has the most concrete rules in the game. You can do anything with it because there are already spells, thus rules for anything the heart desires.

Because there are already rules, there is almost 0 DM interference for doing the most wild things.
Fighting differs because pre-tob, they didn't have consistent and easily interchangable means to cause alternative status effects that scaled.


BUT, we have these guys called Fighters and these other guys called Rogues who are beholden to earthen laws of gravity, inertiam motion, thermo dynamics, electrostratic/elecotrmagnetism, and realtivity.

Well, mages are initially beholden to all of those things. Spells actively revoke those laws, but there is no passive part of their powers. Spells must be cast.


Its D&D though.. why cna a fighter not be able to say with his warrior spirit burst forth his weapon in flames ( invoking the 2nd law of thermodynaicms here) There are cases here in our real world where sometimes laws need to be re-written.
No problem with a warrior being able to do that, but not without source. Warrior spirit? Make it. Thumos is what the greeks called it. Spirit/vigor. But make some connection.

If a human is to become better than what he is by class levels, it must be explained.




why can people not just accept the fact that mundane in D&D is not 'Earth mundane'
But it is... More than you know.


why is it that a wizard can go invisible at 3rd level and nobody says anything contrary to that. but If a rogue is able to hide so well its mechanically the same thing as being invisible people ( well non-old-schoolers i play with really haven't experienced any outside source here) peopel get all up in arms about it.

No problem. But not a rogue. Perhaps a shadowdancer. There is an ability that does that. It is hide in plain sight.


But a swordsage can becuase he has 'sword magic RAWR!!"?

Yes. It's Just that easy. Create precedent, expand on it without difficulty. If ALL classes give this unspoken ability to RAWR, then do the spellcasters not benefit just alike?

And if you give it only to certain melee classes, what about the rest?



again D&D is not earth and people really need to just face the fact that putting our actual real life limitations on D&D characters is beyond absurd.
No it isn't. Any law not changed explicitly by a rule is as earth is.
If it weren't the whole game would fall apart. Reverse gravity can only be under the assumption that gravity exists. Fly means that spellcasters naturally lack that ability.

Without base human, nothing is special. There needs to be a 0 on the number line for 1 to have any significance.

ArcturusV
2013-02-04, 09:35 PM
Actually I'd say "Magic has no rules" in so far as one of the chief rules of magic is "If somehow out of the thousands of spells that are printed you can't find something that you want, especially with a lot of open ended effects like Wish and Miracle... you can just MAKE UP a new effect to do whatever you want, and add it to your list to be used several times a day."

That is the rule of magic.

Now if a fighter wanted to say something like "Hm, I'm going to come up with a revolutionary Art that will allow me to do something the world has never seen before..." he can't do it. If he wants to be like Sasaki Kojiro and invent the Turning Swallow Cut, nope. Rules don't allow it. Just suck it up and pick Power Attack and a Great Sword and be very simplistic and boring, highly limited in what you can do.

Now if Fighters were given the blank check to make up moves to do whatever they wanted as long as it fell under some vague description of a martial ability... *shrug* We'd see. But it's never happened. Don't think it will. I wish it would. Even as someone who usually plays a caster.

Jack of Spades
2013-02-04, 10:01 PM
Let me pose you this, "magic HAS rules, which is why it rules".
Magic has the most concrete rules in the game. You can do anything with it because there are already spells, thus rules for anything the heart desires.

Because there are already rules, there is almost 0 DM interference for doing the most wild things.
Fighting differs because pre-tob, they didn't have consistent and easily interchangable means to cause alternative status effects that scaled.

Well, mages are initially beholden to all of those things. Spells actively revoke those laws, but there is no passive part of their powers. Spells must be cast.

No problem with a warrior being able to do that, but not without source. Warrior spirit? Make it. Thumos is what the greeks called it. Spirit/vigor. But make some connection.

If a human is to become better than what he is by class levels, it must be explained.

-Snip-

Yes. It's Just that easy. Create precedent, expand on it without difficulty. If ALL classes give this unspoken ability to RAWR, then do the spellcasters not benefit just alike?
Magic (in DnD and related systems) only has rules in an out-of-game sense, and even then most of them only apply on a per-spell basis. In-game, magic has NO rules. At least, none that don't end up getting hand-waved in the course of play. Materials are free-flowing, power is accessed through the simple act of staring at a book for an hour a day, and it takes the same amount of effort to unlock the secret to breaking the laws of the universe on a whim that it does to become slightly better at swinging a stick.

In DnD, magic is easy. It asks nothing of the caster, other than a bit of time and a pinch of guano here or there. And in exchange you get to outstrip and eventually make redundant everyone in the party who wanted to play something other than a full caster simply because casting a spell is more cool than punching someone.

Which is why a logically thought-out universe that includes magic needs to be able to answer the question: "Why the hell isn't everyone a magic-user?"

DnD's answers are shaky at best, ranging from a lack of inherent ability to a lack of education, which is not good enough when you are making a game system in which everyone who plays will be able to choose every circumstance of their character's early life on principle because they are cherry-picking the person in the canon who was lucky enough to have the spark or go to university or whatever.

And the solution is to nerf magic. Not necessarily by making it less powerful, but by making it cost something. Magic ought to be difficult, if not dangerous, and if it is possible to bypass that fact only powerful beings should be able to do so, and only through great personal effort and/or cost. The laws of the natural world are being broken. The natural world should not be able to shrug that off, and that should be recognized in the mechanics of magic.

Buffing martial characters enough to even begin to compare to such unfettered mages only serves to break immersion and strain theme. Martial characters who can jump over buildings and cut through mountains works fine in anime, but it does not mesh with the more western set of tropes that DnD is made to operate within. The setting has the same rules as the real world, but with magic. Meaning that to do the impossible, one needs magic. That is simply how the game works. If you want the rules for what is impossible by natural law to be different from a fluff standpoint, you can 'fix' things, but DnD isn't made to be that.

In DnD, magic is broken compared to anything that isn't more magic because there's nothing stopping them from being so. The same is true, to some extent, of the pantheons. Any costs or effort needed to maintain immortality and power in the respective mythologies was washed away in an attempt to translate the old ideas of polytheism (gods who can generally be hurt/killed, very few non-mortal qualities besides power over this or that and immortality, limited scope to that power, oftentimes reliant on an external source of power) into a western world with widely Abrahamic views on what it means to be a god (omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent).

Without base human, nothing is special. There needs to be a 0 on the number line for 1 to have any significance.
Erm... Zero actually took quite a while to earn a place on the number line, depending on the culture. Not that it serves as any sort of rebuttal to your point.

Lupus753
2013-02-04, 11:34 PM
Actually I'd say "Magic has no rules" in so far as one of the chief rules of magic is "If somehow out of the thousands of spells that are printed you can't find something that you want, especially with a lot of open ended effects like Wish and Miracle... you can just MAKE UP a new effect to do whatever you want, and add it to your list to be used several times a day."

That is the rule of magic.

Now if a fighter wanted to say something like "Hm, I'm going to come up with a revolutionary Art that will allow me to do something the world has never seen before..." he can't do it. If he wants to be like Sasaki Kojiro and invent the Turning Swallow Cut, nope. Rules don't allow it. Just suck it up and pick Power Attack and a Great Sword and be very simplistic and boring, highly limited in what you can do.

Now if Fighters were given the blank check to make up moves to do whatever they wanted as long as it fell under some vague description of a martial ability... *shrug* We'd see. But it's never happened. Don't think it will. I wish it would. Even as someone who usually plays a caster.

That is why I love homebrew. Of course, it's a problem that the rules don't already have templates for making up maneuvers or martial abilities, or limit the caster's ability to make new spells.

In fact, I've trying to rewrite the Monk to make it useful, but balancing classes is very hard.

Synovia
2013-02-05, 01:54 AM
Buffing martial characters enough to even begin to compare to such unfettered mages only serves to break immersion and strain theme. Martial characters who can jump over buildings and cut through mountains works fine in anime, but it does not mesh with the more western set of tropes that DnD is made to operate within.

This just isn't true at all. There are plenty of examples of western martial characters that do "magic" things with their sheer physical abilities.

Paul Bunyan supposedly would break windows for miles around him just from the vibration of his clapping. He built Mount Hood trying to smother his campfire with rocks. He created the Grand Canyon with his axe.

Pecos Bill could ride so well that he once rode a tornado.

These are the sort of things a high level DND martial character should be able to do. A 20th level Wizard can break the universe. Why do people have so much of an issue with a 20th level fighter being able to smash a mountain?

Talakeal
2013-02-05, 02:14 AM
This just isn't true at all. There are plenty of examples of western martial characters that do "magic" things with their sheer physical abilities.

Paul Bunyan supposedly would break windows for miles around him just from the vibration of his clapping. He built Mount Hood trying to smother his campfire with rocks. He created the Grand Canyon with his axe.

Pecos Bill could ride so well that he once rode a tornado.

These are the sort of things a high level DND martial character should be able to do. A 20th level Wizard can break the universe. Why do people have so much of an issue with a 20th level fighter being able to smash a mountain?

Different expectations I imagine. D&D has, for the most part, tried to replicate high fantasy, which as a genre is generally more restricted than the above quoted tall tales when it comes to feats of strength. Hercules, King Arthur, Conan, Aragorn, Beowulf, and Goku are all examples of fantastically high level fighters, but their specific feats varry greatly because they are all from settings with a different tone.

Lupus753
2013-02-05, 02:19 AM
There is a huge impasse from those who think that Fighters should be normal people you could imagine being with years of experience and training and those who staunchly believe that the classes should be balanced to not punish players who want to play a certain way.

The latter believe that supernatural martial classes can be easily justified (I'm part of the latter). The former don't, which is why some vocal fans derided Tome of Battle as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic", as if that was a bad thing.

ArcturusV
2013-02-05, 02:40 AM
*shrug* I straddle a middle ground myself, with possible exceptions for actual, explicit "magic fighter" stuff like Paladins and Rangers.

I don't mind insane "not really possible" stuff like the mentioned Turning Swallow Cut, which was made to be able to cut a swallow in mid flight by effectively cutting three times at nigh instant speed so it dodged right into the third cut.

Getting to the point where I can literally straighten a river by tying a rope around my shoulders and pulling (As in Paul Bunyan mythology), a little too much for me.

I don't even mind the idea of a fighter being able to throw down with a God and come out on top. Outside of a very few incarnations in the rules, the Gods typically aren't all powerful, unstoppable deities. And it's such an iconic image to think of the Warrior who challenges the very gods themselves.

MeaningfulName
2013-02-05, 02:44 AM
This just isn't true at all. There are plenty of examples of western martial characters that do "magic" things with their sheer physical abilities.

Paul Bunyan supposedly would break windows for miles around him just from the vibration of his clapping. He built Mount Hood trying to smother his campfire with rocks. He created the Grand Canyon with his axe.

Pecos Bill could ride so well that he once rode a tornado.

These are the sort of things a high level DND martial character should be able to do. A 20th level Wizard can break the universe. Why do people have so much of an issue with a 20th level fighter being able to smash a mountain?
If one wants more traditional Western mythologies then we've got Beowulf, who solo'd what was at minimum an adult dragon (yes Wiglaf was there but he really only amounted to being a cheerleader and shield carrier) in his old age (though admittedly that could be anything from 30 up). This is also the same guy who tore the arm off of a troll then wrestled it's stronger and deadlier mother to a standstill. But hey, Beowulf was probably supported by God, or so our only record of this story claims, so let's move on.

How about Hercules who was admittedly a demi-god except his only godly power was the very ridiculous feats of strength that fighters shouldn't be able to do. His feats include beating the stuffing out of the gigantes, who piled mountains on top of one another so they could scale up to Mt. Olympus. That isn't even all that exceptional considering his standard feats.

More mortal? Okay, how about Thjalfi, who is pure vanilla mortal seeing as how he's the son of some random farmer. Thjalfi's a farmer and one day Thor and Loki show up on his doorstep asking for shelter. He provides it though he has little to offer as a host, so Thor kills his magical goats to make a stew but makes Thjalfi and his family swear not to break any of the bones to suck the marrow out. Loki of course tricks the poor farmer into doing just that and in the morning, when Thor resurrects his goats and notices one of them has a broken leg is furious. Ultimately Thor's convinced to spare Thjalfi's and his family's lives but in return they have to serve him. So Thjalfi goes with Thor and Loki to the home of the Frost Giants for some reason which I cannot recall at this moment, and there they meet Utgardt-Loki, kind of the Frost Giants. They make some demands of him, what I don't recall, and Utgardt-Loki agrees on the condition that the three guests (Loki, Thor, and Thjalfi) each participate in a series of contests. Of course the contests are all rigged but all three do surprisingly well despite losing. For instance, Thor nearly manages to fight off Old Age, and drinks so much from a drinking horn connected to the world's oceans that he lowers the water levels. Loki nearly out eats fire itself. Thjalfi though, poor simple mortal Thjalfi, gets into a foot race with Thought, and while he loses he keeps up with it. Thjalfi. The farmer. Runs fast enough to keep up with the speed of thought.

To argue that having non-magical focused characters doing epic deeds rings untrue to the cultural mythology which it is based says only one thing; you haven't read enough of that cultural mythology.

In any case the argument is moot because DnD's cultural inspirations have departed a fair bit from simply Lord of the Rings. They certainly are present in the foundational concepts but they are no longer the only ones.

Axolotl
2013-02-05, 04:00 AM
There is a huge impasse from those who think that Fighters should be normal people you could imagine being with years of experience and training and those who staunchly believe that the classes should be balanced to not punish players who want to play a certain way.Not really, those two views aren't mutually exclusive. I much prefer mundane classes to be mundane but that doesn't mean I don't want balance, it just means I think that the problem is with the, magic using classes and how they work.

Gettles
2013-02-05, 04:51 AM
Different expectations I imagine. D&D has, for the most part, tried to replicate high fantasy, which as a genre is generally more restricted than the above quoted tall tales when it comes to feats of strength. Hercules, King Arthur, Conan, Aragorn, Beowulf, and Goku are all examples of fantastically high level fighters, but their specific feats varry greatly because they are all from settings with a different tone.

The problem is that they seem to design classes on completely different levels and expect that it won't be a problem when very low fantasy fighters (attack 5 times in 6 seconds as long as you stand still) share a party with super high fantasy casters(Stop time, build your own dimension.) And this can't work. They have Inigo Montoya in the same party as Lina Inverse and don't see the problem.

Jack of Spades
2013-02-05, 07:54 AM
To argue that having non-magical focused characters doing epic deeds rings untrue to the cultural mythology which it is based says only one thing; you haven't read enough of that cultural mythology.

In any case the argument is moot because DnD's cultural inspirations have departed a fair bit from simply Lord of the Rings. They certainly are present in the foundational concepts but they are no longer the only ones.

All of this doesn't change the fact that DnD was built to create a world in which the mundane are limited to real-world (or less) levels of capability. Sure, I'm sure that if we looked hard enough we could find non-magical folk in every mythology who performed epic deeds. However, DnD's source and default setting is Tolkein-style high fantasy. And in that default setting the only way a martial character is able to do anything that rates as impossible is if 'a wizard did it' somewhere down the line. Also, in said default setting, magic is ludicrously easy and effective with no discernible drawback to breaking the rules of the universe.

Synovia
2013-02-05, 11:12 AM
All of this doesn't change the fact that DnD was built to create a world in which the mundane are limited to real-world (or less) levels of capability.

The fact that something has always been wrong is no reason to keep it wrong.

D&D has a lot of problems, and it'll never get better until we stop thinking those problems are cute.

Talakeal
2013-02-05, 12:32 PM
Again it is a difference of taste and genre. I love the Matrix, which has all sorts of
"supernatural" martial arts. I also love James Bond, who does not. If the next James Bond movie had 007 flying around and fighting in bullet time like Neo I would be seriously alienated, and I think most James Bond fans would feel the same.


The fact that something has always been wrong is no reason to keep it wrong.

D&D has a lot of problems, and it'll never get better until we stop thinking those problems are cute.


I really wish you people would stop referring to mundane melee as a "problem".

For some people, I know this is shocking, that is fun.

I like playing a character who is essentially human, someone who I can relate to and understand.

I like my challenges to be, well, challenging. Fighting a dragon with your strength and quick wits is difficult, dangerous, and fun. To me, snapping your fingers and summoning an army of archangels to do it for you is not.


You don't need to give everyone magic to fix the "problem".

If you have a DM with the balls to ban the truly broken spells and rule on the side of caution when it comes to fuzzy rules exploits 90% of the tier 1 classes power disappears.

If a new edition then brought back the spells per day, casting time, and disruption rules of 1E and 2E then 90% of the remaining problem disappears. Make caster's roll to cast spells, and an equal level caster and melee are almost on the same page.

Which is not saying that melee types are perfect. Full attacking needs to be fixed. Monks need good BaB, fighters need better saves and more skills. The combat maneuvers need to be baseline rather than feats. Melee dead levels needs to be filled with abilities, preferably passive combat bonuses.

Do all this and you have a game where play skill far outweighs the "tier" of classes.

I am not saying you can't have a game with mystically augmented melee characters. I think the sword sage and various gishes should receive a lot more support to better fill that role. But I do not think that you need to make that the default. If you want that play a game like Exalted which is designed for it. If you suddenly remove the option you will alienate long time players.

You can argue that tradition is not a good way to dictate future development, which is true, but that isn't an excuse to get rid of variety. If Baskin Robbins did a study and found that 90% of people prefer chocolate to vanilla and then suddenly stop carrying vanilla ice-cream they risk losing 10% of their customer base, which is both bad business and a slap in the face to loyal customers.


There is a huge impasse from those who think that Fighters should be normal people you could imagine being with years of experience and training and those who staunchly believe that the classes should be balanced to not punish players who want to play a certain way.

The latter believe that supernatural martial classes can be easily justified (I'm part of the latter). The former don't, which is why some vocal fans derided Tome of Battle as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic", as if that was a bad thing.

The second paragraph was really unnecessary, your views were pretty obvious when you refer to playing a low tier character as "punishing" the player.

The game was obviously designed around the midpoint, use the Monster Manual as the example. A party can handle anything in there without t1-2 casters or ToB melee. It is not "punishing" people to ask them to play the game at the intended level of difficulty anymore than it would be "punishing" me to ship a console game without cheat codes or allowing you to see the full game on tutorial difficulty.

neonchameleon
2013-02-05, 01:31 PM
So one of the statements of 5th Ed class design was that at high levels the wizard would be the one fighting a god & the fighter would handle the minions.

This kind of made me angry.

Why is it that a fighter cannot fight a god? There are gods of war & battle. Is it not okay for a fighter to challenge them? Why is the wizard the god killer? What do you think?

The other point is that WotC have this absolutely and completely 100% backwards. If you want to deal with the minions you want the wizard. Who drops walls of fire, meteor swarms, fireballs, and the works. Crispy fried minions far faster and far more efficiently than the fighter will ever manage.

But magic? Against a God? Not a chance. Gods live off magic and are magic. You should have less chance of hurting a God directly by magic than of hurting a fire elemental by fireballing one. If a wizard tries to duel with a God, one lightning bolt later and the wizard's boots will be empty and smoking. The wizard's protections are simply destroyed by overwhelming force.

What you need to kill a God is a fighter. Wrapped in a steel faraday cage, the lightning bolt won't have much effect except to show where the fighter is (http://www.youtube.co.uk/watch?v=pJqoRaphiEk). Even bare chested, the fighter can take the lightning bolt without flinching. And then when it comes to damaging the god, cold steel cuts through magic. Unlike the wizard, the fighter can hurt the God directly the way Achiles or many other mythological heroes could. The fighter is the class whose job it is to wrestle with dragons and keep beating Gods down until they simply don't get back up again. The wizard's job is to keep the minions off his back while he does it. And to help him get there.

neonchameleon
2013-02-05, 01:36 PM
I really wish you people would stop referring to mundane melee as a "problem".

For some people, I know this is shocking, that is fun.

I like playing a character who is essentially human, someone who I can relate to and understand.

So do I. That's why I like playing rogues. Not people who are supposed to go toe to toe with dragons but those who sneak around them and operate through sheer skill, speed, and finesse. A head on attack from a mundane character on a dragon is Darwin Award worthy - to be anywhere there you have to think like a rogue, not like a fighter. And above all stick to the shadows.

If we make the rogue, not the fighter the mundane class then everyone gets what they claim to want. People who want to play larger than life warriors who cut down the enemy get fighters. People who want to rely on wits and sneakiness get most of the rogue class.

Partysan
2013-02-05, 02:35 PM
All of this doesn't change the fact that DnD was built to create a world in which the mundane are limited to real-world (or less) levels of capability.
But they aren't. A high level barbarian of fighter can go skinny dipping in a volcano and suffer no more than a sunburn and will survive a fall with terminal velocity just about every time. They can also kill an elder dragon in one hit (if they hit, that is). That's not real-world levels of capability. That's far beyond anything a mortal could ever even hope to achieve. And yet, somehow this doesn't result in more epic options than they had before, it's all just numbers. And I think those numbers would actually indicate certain options.


Sure, I'm sure that if we looked hard enough we could find non-magical folk in every mythology who performed epic deeds. However, DnD's source and default setting is Tolkein-style high fantasy. And in that default setting the only way a martial character is able to do anything that rates as impossible is if 'a wizard did it' somewhere down the line. Also, in said default setting, magic is ludicrously easy and effective with no discernible drawback to breaking the rules of the universe.
Actually, in Tolkiens worlds magic was ludicrously rare, being performed almost only by demigods or sometimes beings touched by the divine, and beings without any magic like Beren stood toe to toe with a dark god and survived.

neonchameleon
2013-02-05, 03:04 PM
All of this doesn't change the fact that DnD was built to create a world in which the mundane are limited to real-world (or less) levels of capability.

Out of interest, have you read Appendix N (http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm)? The heroes of that are almost all significantly larger than life, whether magical or "mundane". And Gygax intentionally built the game to be balanced (and went on record on ENWorld as saying part of the point of Unearthed Arcana was to help balance the martials against the magicals).


However, DnD's source and default setting is Tolkein-style high fantasy. And in that default setting the only way a martial character is able to do anything that rates as impossible is if 'a wizard did it' somewhere down the line.

In Tolkein itself, there were only a handful of wizards - and they were all effectively angels. The dwarves had absurd levels of crafting - but they didn't have spellcasters, and the difference between mundane and magical crafting is not always clear. Aragorn was no wizard - but combined with Athelas he had supernatural healing abilities.

MeaningfulName
2013-02-05, 03:43 PM
All of this doesn't change the fact that DnD was built to create a world in which the mundane are limited to real-world (or less) levels of capability. Sure, I'm sure that if we looked hard enough we could find non-magical folk in every mythology who performed epic deeds. However, DnD's source and default setting is Tolkein-style high fantasy. And in that default setting the only way a martial character is able to do anything that rates as impossible is if 'a wizard did it' somewhere down the line. Also, in said default setting, magic is ludicrously easy and effective with no discernible drawback to breaking the rules of the universe.
As it's basis, not as it's sole defining feature. If that were the case then any magical class like the wizard or sorc would be unplayable because the only wizards/sorcerers in the setting are, as already mentioned, demi-gods, and exist as NPC controlled mentor figures/deus ex machina, not player characters. You don't get to have it both ways. Either the possibility of playing as some sort of transcendent god-like being is possible, and as such should be possible for everybody, or it shouldn't be possible for anybody except non-players as plot devices.

Lord Haart
2013-02-05, 04:09 PM
Lets say magic(M) is equal to Ritualistic Psychokinesis Fueled by cosmic power. And lets say that melee fighting is equal to any Rudamentary physical task (T) as in it requires equal physical sacrifice for gain(S).

Well M Does not require S, while T does.
Magic doesn't require the same back breaking labor to make something happen, and by definition, it is making impossible things happen BECAUSE it skips the steps to make it legitimate. If I say a few words that lifts a stone, that is far less consuming of physical energy than actually lifting it.Oh, but is it so? Speaking of strictly physical energy — probably yes. Speaking of overall energy (physical and mental alike), of time invested, magic isn't inherently less taxing than inserting pointy things into stuff (otherwise everybody and their grandmothers would use it). Main difference is, with physical combat you have to spend energy while you fight (of course, you can also train beforehand, but this doesn't free you from panting and sweating), while magic might take its toll in advance or at all time. Wizards spend decades studying, researching, filling their memory with spells to the exclusion of their own names, wasting their eyesight and paying for scrolls and stuff. Sorcerers struggle with inner power that is beyond their comprehension (and their ancestors had to pay their part of the toll as well, although this is rarely brought up). Clerics, in addition to study and prayers, have to exemplify their faith; when cleric creates food from thin air, that means that he spend last ten years preaching, crusading and adventuring for this food. Warlocks… Well, they took magic in mortgage, so you won't see them paying anything until they discover they still have to, big time. Genies have phenomenal, cosmic power and itty-bitty living space. Even gods have their probably inconprehensible duties, portfolios and cosmic responsibilities (not to mention having to deal with other gods and all the god-slayers around here). Comparing to that, doing what everyone might do — some with less skill, some with more — spending only some adenosine triphosphate, is much less demanding, even if limited by laws of physics.

If I spend 5000 bucks to make ANYTHING happen, that is cheaper than actually trying to make anything happen.Paying 5000 bucks to teleport instantly from one place to another sure is faster and less fatiguing than walking or driving. Now if you take earning those bucks into account, picture might change. And to perform bigger miracles like going into space, which can't be replicated by muscle, you need more bucks by orders of magnitude (or perfect health and decades of cosmonaut training).

Jack of Spades
2013-02-05, 05:14 PM
As it's basis, not as it's sole defining feature. If that were the case then any magical class like the wizard or sorc would be unplayable because the only wizards/sorcerers in the setting are, as already mentioned, demi-gods, and exist as NPC controlled mentor figures/deus ex machina, not player characters. You don't get to have it both ways. Either the possibility of playing as some sort of transcendent god-like being is possible, and as such should be possible for everybody, or it shouldn't be possible for anybody except non-players as plot devices.
I'd honestly prefer the latter, if the only other option is to have Bob outstrip Joe and eventually make him redundant just because Bob chose to play a character who isn't arbitrarily all-powerful. Being a mage should not be "playing as some sort of transcendent god-like being." It should be a path to great power, sure, but it should be difficult. Casting individual spells should be a taxing, if not risky, endeavor.

Oh, but is it so? Speaking of strictly physical energy — probably yes. Speaking of overall energy (physical and mental alike), of time invested, magic isn't inherently less taxing than inserting pointy things into stuff (otherwise everybody and their grandmothers would use it). Main difference is, with physical combat you have to spend energy while you fight (of course, you can also train beforehand, but this doesn't free you from panting and sweating), while magic might take its toll in advance or at all time. Wizards spend decades studying, researching, filling their memory with spells to the exclusion of their own names, wasting their eyesight and paying for scrolls and stuff. Sorcerers struggle with inner power that is beyond their comprehension (and their ancestors had to pay their part of the toll as well, although this is rarely brought up). Clerics, in addition to study and prayers, have to exemplify their faith; when cleric creates food from thin air, that means that he spend last ten years preaching, crusading and adventuring for this food. Warlocks… Well, they took magic in mortgage, so you won't see them paying anything until they discover they still have to, big time. Genies have phenomenal, cosmic power and itty-bitty living space. Even gods have their probably inconprehensible duties, portfolios and cosmic responsibilities (not to mention having to deal with other gods and all the god-slayers around here). Comparing to that, doing what everyone might do — some with less skill, some with more — spending only some adenosine triphosphate, is much less demanding, even if limited by laws of physics.
Paying 5000 bucks to teleport instantly from one place to another sure is faster and less fatiguing than walking or driving. Now if you take earning those bucks into account, picture might change. And to perform bigger miracles like going into space, which can't be replicated by muscle, you need more bucks by orders of magnitude (or perfect health and decades of cosmonaut training).
Yes, magic is just as, if not more, taxing as fighting through martial means. In the canon. In the actual game which we play, mages just get a free ticket to break the universe at next to zero cost to themselves. Especially if you consider the phenomenon of multi-classing, by which player characters regularly bypass the implied years of training that their friend had and suddenly become capable of magic just because they spent some time in caves. To borrow the money metaphor, mages don't need to go earn anything. They're just told that they have 5000 bucks by the book. Whereas fighters can never have more than a fifty in their pocket because no-one ticked the "Magical?" box on their class entry. Not only that, but this disparity of power growth persists even though the mage, whose hobby is cracking open the world to see what's inside, is doing exactly the same amount of adventuring as his buddy fighter who is restricted to hitting things with a stick.

The fact that something has always been wrong is no reason to keep it wrong.

D&D has a lot of problems, and it'll never get better until we stop thinking those problems are cute.
I agree completely with both of those statements. Which is why mages need to be nerfed. The problem is not that mundane characters have realistic (save for some outliers, happy nitpickers?) capabilities, the problem is that some players seem to think they are entitled to play near-limitless gods who can do anything they can imagine on a whim for no actual cost.

Synovia
2013-02-05, 05:23 PM
I agree completely with both of those statements. Which is why mages need to be nerfed. The problem is not that mundane characters have realistic (save for some outliers, happy nitpickers?) capabilities, the problem is that some players seem to think they are entitled to play near-limitless gods who can do anything they can imagine on a whim for no actual cost.

Its an issue of D&D really being two separate games: the low magic gritty mundane classes, and the magic classes.

We either need to severely nerf the casters, or make it so that when casters can break the world, so can physical combatants.


People have mentioned the LotR stuff a couple of times. If the LotR stuff was D&D, Gandalf wouldn't have needed a hobbit to help the Dwarves take Smaug's lair, because he'd be a better thief than the hobbit. He wouldn't have even needed the dwarves. He'd just walk in tell Smaug to GTFO.

If you've got PCs that can break the world at will, PCs who can't have no way to be meaningful.

AcerbicOrb
2013-02-05, 06:12 PM
For casters, you could have some kind of break the world limit like an NPC from this game from Dragonfable. Basically, this guy's mana bar filled up when he used magic and emptied over time, but if it filled he would literally destroy the world or something. I don't remember the specifics, but something like this could keep magic casters and melee fighters equal at epic level. Might be a bit OP for low level though.

Bogardan_Mage
2013-02-05, 06:39 PM
There is a huge impasse from those who think that Fighters should be normal people you could imagine being with years of experience and training and those who staunchly believe that the classes should be balanced to not punish players who want to play a certain way.

The latter believe that supernatural martial classes can be easily justified (I'm part of the latter). The former don't, which is why some vocal fans derided Tome of Battle as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic", as if that was a bad thing.
There's a third group, I think (or a third approach, it's not exactly mutually exclusive with the others). Those who believe Fighters (and, well, D&D characters in general) are already capable of superhuman feats at high levels and that this should be embraced rather than pushed aside. As mentioned before, if you accept that a character can fall 200 feet on to a rocky surface, then get up and continue fighting unhindered, why is it so hard to accept other impossible feats of that character? Balance be damned, it's clear what a level 20 fighter is already capable of doing, so where does this "Fighters aren't allowed to do anything that's impossible in the real world" even come from?

Traab
2013-02-05, 07:33 PM
I'd like to point out that your "mundanes" aren't actually mundane at all: In all those mythologies they are either half-deities, have a deity in their corner, have deifacted weaponry, or any combination of these things. It is extremely hard to find truly mundane entities in mythologies, because the mundane isn't mythological.

I just wanted to point something out here, sorry if it got covered already, but what is your point? I mean, in D&D those deific legendary weapons exist. Humans are a very small part of this world, with all sorts of magical races that have well above human capabilities similar to the demigod statuses of several of the heroes. The ingredients are all THERE for a warrior to take on the gods.

So if in the course of my travels as a warrior class, I come across a sword forged with the blood of some suitably powerful demon capable of injuring gods, and am wearing the armor of some high ranking champion I looted from an ancient shrine, why shouldnt I be able to walk up to whatever god is pissing me off and sunder his damn head from his poxy shoulders?! Why is it that a wizard can do this, but me, even with incredible artifacts of awesome power, am nothing more than damage bait to absorb a few hits while the wizard sets up his ultimate attack?

Jack of Spades
2013-02-05, 09:57 PM
For casters, you could have some kind of break the world limit like an NPC from this game from Dragonfable. Basically, this guy's mana bar filled up when he used magic and emptied over time, but if it filled he would literally destroy the world or something. I don't remember the specifics, but something like this could keep magic casters and melee fighters equal at epic level. Might be a bit OP for low level though.
I prefer systems that make one jump through hoops or take risks in order to do powerful magic. And I play magic-users almost exclusively. It's fun. So I definitely don't have any sort of grudge against players who like using magic.

I like knowing that whenever my huckster casts a hex he runs the risk of going mad or taking damage. Because it makes it that much more meaningful that he chooses to cast hexes anyways. I also like when it takes me as much as several sessions to prepare a powerful spell, because that makes that spell an accomplishment. Having an actual in-game cost (generally risk of injury/insanity with occasional material or time costs added on) is the best way I've encountered for letting magic still be powerful while remaining balanced. Most systems do this also make magic hard to learn-- in game terms, it generally costs more XP to advance a magical skill than a martial one.

And all of that is why I hate the game design of DnD. Magic just can't be balanced meaningfully thanks to the way the game works. No matter how many class abilities and save increases you give martial classes, they're still gaining levels at the same rate as the wizards that are growing more powerful twice as quickly with the same amount of XP.

If everyone's special, no one is. A system where everyone has world-shattering powers that they can use freely ends up just being a bunch of boring sabre-rattling between the players until someone pulls the trigger and ends the universe.

I've played the equivalent of all-magical games (WoD and others) and I've played several all-martial games, and I've always preferred the mundane ones by far. The game becomes a lot less focused on who knows the system better, because mundane power levels tend to be more easily (and thus better) balanced. Also, the plot tends to work a lot better because there's no mages around to ignore/trivialize all or part of it. So my tendency when thinking of a solution is to knock mages down a peg rather than trying to make mundanes supernatural in one way or another.

MeaningfulName
2013-02-06, 01:00 AM
I'd honestly prefer the latter, if the only other option is to have Bob outstrip Joe and eventually make him redundant just because Bob chose to play a character who isn't arbitrarily all-powerful. Being a mage should not be "playing as some sort of transcendent god-like being." It should be a path to great power, sure, but it should be difficult. Casting individual spells should be a taxing, if not risky, endeavor.
I think we're largely on the same page regarding that then. However in the context of this thread, which was started on the basis that WotC is apparently building 5th ed around having Wizards (eventually) fighting gods, where as their sword swinging buddies will be regulated to smacking the minions about, the idea of physical limitations with regards to character builds is simply silly regardless of which class you're going with. My point was that if you're going to be creating a game with this kind of party dynamic and using the literature which the game is based upon as your reasoning then it's a flawed argument because in that very same literature either the sword swinging schmuck has as good of a chance of offing the all-powerful as their reality warping pals, or the reality warpers weren't styled as player characters and were instead restricted primarily to mentor/plot device territory.


I agree completely with both of those statements. Which is why mages need to be nerfed. The problem is not that mundane characters have realistic (save for some outliers, happy nitpickers?) capabilities, the problem is that some players seem to think they are entitled to play near-limitless gods who can do anything they can imagine on a whim for no actual cost.
That's more to do with human nature then it does to making a good game. When given the option of either reducing the abilities of one class vs raising the abilities of every other class (or whatever ratio you think appropriate) most will opt for power creep because it plays more to their personal epic fantasy. From a logistics perspective though it makes more sense to go with option B rather than A because one could argue that those who want to play a more "realistic" game could simply just play low level campaigns where as if you went with option A you wouldn't be able to play out your god-killing fantasies without homebrewing.

Personally, I don't really care if the angle is Epic (So are we overthrowing Asmodeus today or was that next week?) or if it's more Sword and Sorcery style (Oh ****, run for your lives, the city guard is coming!), I just don't want the game to restrict your narrative or play options by pigeon holing any class as the only one that can be the proverbial Chosen One.

Traab
2013-02-06, 09:05 AM
I think that, at the very least, there should be a symbiotic relationship between the warriors and the mages. Sure, give the mages the ability to rewrite reality to suit their whims, give them the ability to give a pimp slap to the gods, but make it so they cant survive doing that without a fighter with them. Make them true glass canons. Make it so an epic level wizard couldnt hope to survive long enough to kill a god, unless he had his warrior friend there to pull its attention to himself and soak up that damage without getting obliterated while he works his mojo.

The warrior focus would be on becoming the unkillable juggernauts. They guys who could jump into a terrasques mouth and carve his way out of its belly laughing the whole time. The guy who can taunt and berate his opponents so badly they will focus on bouncing their attacks off his rock hard skin and armor even while the wizard is winding up an apocalyptic blast. And for gods sake add some pvp balance as well. Make it a good match. Sure that wizard can nuke from orbit, but the warrior is built to TAKE those blasts, and if he can catch the wizard, will split him in half from crown to crotch with his axe. And there should BE ways for the warrior to catch him. After all, what good is a tank if the bad guys can just bypass him?

I think setting things up like that would be worthwhile. There are people who like to blow up the world, and people who like being able to stand there and shrug off those world ending blasts. By arranging things so there is a pvp balance of some sort between the two, it would really help stop this type of argument. Right now the feeling is the warriors serve no real purpose at high end. The wizard is so strong he can handle it all himself. Take away some of that insane survivability, give more to the tank, and make it an equal partnership where one cant win without the other.

ArcturusV
2013-02-06, 05:38 PM
Maybe. Though I'd be kind of sad if Fighters ended up getting pigeonholed into their MMORPG role of "Sit there and take it". Tanking through being a damage sponge is... typically not fun when there are other, more dynamic roles to be played. Even in MMORPGs were "Tanking" is really supported, it's rare I know someone who wants to really play a Tank. At the very least they still want disables and possible finisher moves to put the hurt on a target.

Then again MMOs tend to be based around a dynamic generally where Warriors start off weak, but are consistent (If not getting stronger) the longer a battle goes on. And Mages start off powerful and get consistently weaker as a battle drags on. But even at their most powerful they aren't really given abilities to One Shot a fight unless they are massively overleveled compared to the fight.

So I think looking at the relationship between Spellcasters and Fighters in DnD based around the MMO RPG role of "Fighter takes the hits" isn't necessarily going to work. Not without a massive rewrite of how spellcasting works. Which doesn't sound like it's the case if the goal of 5th Edition is still "A wizard can kill a god".

Based on not completely reinventing the wheel though, the only option that really pops out to me? Is basically dumbing down magic (All magic fits into Blasty Categories or Team Buffing, etc) or making all Fighters effectively Paladins, Rangers, etc, who have spellcasting to compensate and giving them the key spells they need.

Traab
2013-02-06, 07:28 PM
Maybe. Though I'd be kind of sad if Fighters ended up getting pigeonholed into their MMORPG role of "Sit there and take it". Tanking through being a damage sponge is... typically not fun when there are other, more dynamic roles to be played. Even in MMORPGs were "Tanking" is really supported, it's rare I know someone who wants to really play a Tank. At the very least they still want disables and possible finisher moves to put the hurt on a target.

Then again MMOs tend to be based around a dynamic generally where Warriors start off weak, but are consistent (If not getting stronger) the longer a battle goes on. And Mages start off powerful and get consistently weaker as a battle drags on. But even at their most powerful they aren't really given abilities to One Shot a fight unless they are massively overleveled compared to the fight.

So I think looking at the relationship between Spellcasters and Fighters in DnD based around the MMO RPG role of "Fighter takes the hits" isn't necessarily going to work. Not without a massive rewrite of how spellcasting works. Which doesn't sound like it's the case if the goal of 5th Edition is still "A wizard can kill a god".

Based on not completely reinventing the wheel though, the only option that really pops out to me? Is basically dumbing down magic (All magic fits into Blasty Categories or Team Buffing, etc) or making all Fighters effectively Paladins, Rangers, etc, who have spellcasting to compensate and giving them the key spells they need.

You could still give all sorts of abilities to the warrior types along the lines you mentioned. After all, just because the tank can take obscene amounts of damage doesnt mean he wouldnt be able to dish out any. But I dunno, if it was really done well, a defense based system for melee types could work well. You can justify a lot of things in the name of being a better tank. Debuffing and crowd control for example, eye gouging to lower accuracy, tendon strikes to lower enemy damage or slow movement speed, shield or weapon bashing to stun. All these could add an interesting depth to the tank archetype.

And being the rough tough unstoppable wall of metal that you are, you could justify feats that make you highly resistant to any crowd control techniques attempted on you. Your focus on the enemy becomes total, allowing you to continue fighting on no matter what the enemy tries to stop you. Something along those lines. And once again, like I said in my last post, with a symbiotic relationship between the tank and the mage, it means while you dont kill the god, he wont be killing gods either without you there, so its an actual team effort instead of, 'You go handle the annoying trash, ill solo this god."

ArcturusV
2013-02-06, 09:56 PM
That would also need to be coupled with an MMO mechanic as well, because it's a bit more complex than just the fighter taking hits, and the mage doing the serious damage while being squishy. It's also a case of that the Mage, in any given fight, is not going to be able to end a fight with his magic (Again, excluding rare scenarios/being over leveled), and counts on the Fighter who is ramping up to actually finish off targets.

So as the fight goes on the mage's potential starts from something like "I just up and slaughtered 1 guy out of 10 enemies in 2 seconds" to eventually piddly damage, equatable to the first level Crossbow or Slinging mage of desperation. And the Fighter meantime is going from low damage "plinking" at start, to unlocking high damage finisher moves towards the end of a fight, actually getting stronger not just in comparison to the mage at that point, but also stronger than it started the fight.

That sort of trade between "Who is doing the job" with Fight Tempo is really missing from the game. In our God Example it's not so much that the Fighter "Tanks" the god, though he probably will as well. It's that the mage opens up with a huge starting salvo that strips away a lot of the God's Defenses and HP. Then the Mage is spent and says "up to you", and the fighter gets all, "My blood and adrenaline are REALLY flowing now" and unleashes his best techniques (That he'd normally be unable to use at the start of a battle).

The thing that usually screws with this relation isn't so much that the mage can one shot an encounter typically (Even then the process COULD exist if enough encounters played out over a period of time between rests), it's that the MMO ideal is all based around damage. Mages do damage. Period. Yeah, sometimes they'll get a disable, but the disable is usually geared towards damage as well, either inflicting damage on it's own or meant to prolong AoE DoT effects.

In DnD though? Mages do anything but pure damage. Well they can deal pure damage. But the vast majority of their abilities are not in the realm of "pure damage". You don't see wizards casting Fireballs so much as Fly, Meteor Swarms instead of Wish, etc. Since their magic isn't geared towards damage only, it gives them ways to trivialize encounters that the MMO formula doesn't account for. The idea has always been in the game that somehow the "MMO Formula" would work. That Wizards would blast and do a high alpha strike then be near helpless while the Fighter cleared the rest of the encounter, etc. That seems to have been the ideal since about day 1. And it happens. Sometimes. At low level. Less often so since the Bonus Spells for High Stats thing occurred in recent editions.

It's a nice idea. Just don't think it could work out without totally revamping the system. This is one of the reasons 4th is so balanced. Not just because of the "powers" system... but the fact that almost all powers are directly combat based, like 90% of them. So it lends naturally towards everyone having their role in combat. Though the Fighter/Mage MMO balance doesn't exist due to Fighters and Mages basically doing exactly the same sorts of damage at any given level at any time in a fight. More just a question of how they do it than the Tempo.

*shrug* I'll see what 5th edition does for it. But I'm not holding out any real hopes.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-07, 08:05 AM
Both of your definitions are broken by all the examples he lists. Every one of them is either backed up by a deity, half-deity themselves, or uses a deifacted weapon or ability.

And I don't care, because they aren't broken by the things *I* listed. :smalltongue: I thought it might have tipped you off that I didn't quote any of those things!

I was calling attention to the definition of mundane precisely because defenders of martial characters often tend to forget it.



This is really not something you want to draw inspiration from when considering how to fight a god as a "mundane" fighter.

You got my whole point backwards, sir. I did not invoke Scandinavian mythology and other polytheistic faiths in order to bring mundanes up, I invoked them to bring gods down.

Because as mighty as he is, Thor can not win old age. He can not drink the seas. He can not lift the word serpent. He is destined to die in a fight against said serpent, and there's nothing he can do to circumvent that fate. He can be bluffed by giants (non-gods). He can be outrun by a mundane farmer boy.

Thor, as he is in myth, can be modelled within D&D 3.5 as a mid-level Fighter/Barbarian with a magic hammer enchanced with Thundering and Returning Enhancements and the ability to Call Lightning and Control Weather. He does not have even half of the qualities the system attributes to being a god.

On another note, I think this side-project of mine (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270715) is of interest to anyone reading this thread.

Talakeal
2013-02-07, 01:07 PM
Just as an aside note, here is how I do it in my campaign world:

A spirit is the ambient psychic energy of a place and its population.

A spirit is completely alien and morally different than a human.

A spirit can manifest a form that vaguely resembles a living creature, referred to as a god.

There are 15 planes. Each one corresponds to the spirit of one of the planets in the solar system, and represents a concept, an element, and an emotion. For example the planet Mars represents the element of fire, the concept of war, and the emotion of anger.

A God (capital G) is a manifestation of one of the 15 planes. For example, Ares, Thor, Surtur, Morrigan, Sekhmet, Nergal, Moloch, Kuan Ti, would all be Godly manifestations of Mars.

These Gods are basically the biggest things in the setting, and slightly beyond mortal reach, but they still play by the same rules as anything else, and a high level party can defeat one.

The spirits which the gods come from, on the other hand, are a lot more like the monotheistic concept of deities, all powerful, all knowing, and omnipresent within their sphere of influence and with thought processes that are unknowable to mankind.

Destroying one of these is all but impossible for anyone, although I suppose a mage would have an easier time. Doing it would require extinguishing all belief in the god, physically destroying the planet its plane is anchored to, and eliminating the concept(s) that power the god. Not something that is realistically going to happen.


Note that these manifestations are NOT the same thing as avatars, that is something else in my setting. They are literally required for a spirit to think or act on the mortal level, and most exist for very long periods of time.

Anderlith
2013-02-07, 01:48 PM
ugh, I hate the idea that the number of followers dictates how powerful something is. Believe should not equal power. Leave that garbage to Disney.

Gods are just beings with power & influence, they give help & receive tribute.

You can kill that being if you are strong, fast, & smart enough. But you cannot destroy their power.

There is the Cognitive side & the Mantle of powerr. If you slay the Cognitive part you can take up their Mantle. You could also surround yourself with enough power as to become a god.

I'm not saying that Fighter should be able to slay a god without magic. I'm saying a Fighter should have the ability to slay a god. WotC thinks they shouldn't. They think a Fighter is a meat shield, a component of a bad MMO that "tanks" everything. That is bullsh*t. There should be no TANK, no DPS, no HEALER. That is all bullsh*t. You have power, & you have options. A mage with illusions & etherealness, invisibility, & teleports could be just as effective at "tanking" as a fighter in armor. A fighter should be able to cleave foes asunder, hitting godlings & gods & driving them to their knees. Wizards are saying that if your aren't a mage, you have no place in this world. That a wizard has more right to kill the God of War than a pissed off barbarian.

Magic can make disintegrate spells but they can't make swords of disintegration? There are spells of Magic Missile, but you can't make a Missile weapon that will always strike true? BULLSH*T. Magic should allow mages to play catch up with the skills & abilities of those that took the time to train them. Sure you are no warrior but if you enchant his blade you can fight competently enough for a while. You are no thief but you can make yourself invisible, no scholar, but you can summon a demon from hell & ask him. Likewise magic should allow non-mages to cheat at being a wizard, Necklaces of Fireballs & Cloaks of invisibility, bows that shoot through walls, etc.


Debuff the sheer can-do-everything of spellcasters.
Divide the spell lists up into Traditions. A folk magic hedgemage wouldn't know too much about fighting with fire, but they can divine the future, Charm people & animals & transform into cats. A war wizard can leave a battlefield a wasteland but he can't see the future, & doesn't Charm people. If you actually altered the Spell Lists, then the visatility of a wizard is now within bearable levels. & a DM could say, that there is no Shaman, or Oracle or Battle Magic traditions, every mage is trained at the Merlin Institute of Technology (They almost showed signs of doing this in one Playtest Packet, but then they changed it back to Spell Schools)
Raise magic melee armaments to be able to be effective as magic.
Mundane melee's don't need to be wuxia, chi powered, super-saiyans. No need to have anime-style enormous swords batting away arrows. No powering up a sword strike & cutting up mountains. You don't need that to make the game balanced.

Synovia
2013-02-07, 01:52 PM
ugh, I hate the idea that the number of followers dictates how powerful something is. Believe should not equal power. Leave that garbage to Disney.

Gods are just beings with power & influence, they give help & receive tribute.


If belief doesn't influence the power of a god, why would one (other than the benevolent god of happy-goodness) ever give help?



Debuff the sheer can-do-everything of spellcasters.
Divide the spell lists up into Traditions. A folk magic hedgemage wouldn't know too much about fighting with fire, but they can divine the future, Charm people & animals & transform into cats. A war wizard can leave a battlefield a wasteland but he can't see the future, & doesn't Charm people. If you actually altered the Spell Lists, then the visatility of a wizard is now within bearable levels. & a DM could say, that there is no Shaman, or Oracle or Battle Magic traditions, every mage is trained at the Merlin Institute of Technology (They almost showed signs of doing this in one Playtest Packet, but then they changed it back to Spell Schools).

This is something I've been playing with in a homebrew system... essentially make spellcasters choose something like cleric domains.

Kind of flows with the idea that if a wizard spends a ton of time studying fireball, it'd probably help him to learn delayed blast fireball, produce flame, and resist energy: fire, but he probably hasn't spent a whole lot of time working on divining spells.

Anderlith
2013-02-07, 02:00 PM
If belief doesn't influence the power of a god, why would one (other than the benevolent god of happy-goodness) ever give help?


Tribute, & subservience to those within his domain. Like a king accepting fealty from his subjects. He helps them, they help him. If you are a warrior you are in Ares's domain for he is the god of war. There is a level of meta-reality that exists because of the sphere's of influence of a god. If you are a sailor, you venture into the domain of Poseidon. Give him tribute or he will be wroth. They have priests so that they can better act & speak to the masses.
God's are colossal things, & when they walk the earth trembles. God's have need of those that take softer steps.

RPGuru1331
2013-02-07, 02:09 PM
Wow, that's surprisingly honest. Gonna have to write off future DnD editions.

ArcturusV
2013-02-07, 02:15 PM
As an alternate to Belief, and thus why gods do things...

... think what you might do if you were ageless, nigh immortal, and had nigh unlimited magical powers. For the first few years this might be kick ass.

Eventually though you get bored.

So you start doing things. Maybe you're a creationist and you go around putting new Platypus style creatures just for laughs. "Take that Darwin, Impossible Biology!"

Maybe you want to let out some frustration with your boredom at the time. "Suck it, I'mma GODBOLT your city just because I have nothing better to do"... which is kind of in line with Greek Gods actually now that I think about it.

But to me? The logical extension is "TV" basically. Mortals are entertainment for you. The Mortal World has it all. Romance, Drama, Comedy, Tragedy, etc. If you care about a plot and someone kisses up to you enough you might deign to go "Eh. Go have a shiny and see what you can do with it." Or maybe pop in Avatar form and show them just how you roll on your immortal plane.

You don't fix everything with your nigh limitless power, because... well if you fixed everything, no more conflict. The entertainment is over. You're fixing small stuff to shoot new dynamics into things and shake things up. You inspire people to do things you'd think are entertaining like a Crusade against the Undead or building some 1000 year empire which is doomed to failure.

And this? Perfectly acceptable for a DnD God. It even makes sense. The few times I had players ascend to Godhood anyway, this is more or less what they did. Piss around with unlimited power for a while. Then go manipulate events in the mortal world (Or if they were ballsy, among other gods) in order to have fun and create more drama where none existed.

Talakeal
2013-02-07, 02:55 PM
ugh, I hate the idea that the number of followers dictates how powerful something is. Believe should not equal power. Leave that garbage to Disney.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that spirits needing mortal belief is a large component of many eastern religions, but is a somewhat foreign concept to western audiences. Not sure why you associate it wi Disney, the only Hollywood film I can think of off the top of my head which uses that logic is Nightmare on Elm Street, which is about as far from Disney as you can get.

Aside from that small nitpick I agree with everything you said, great post.

ArcturusV
2013-02-07, 02:58 PM
Probably because Disney often does ideas like "If you believe hard enough you can do it" and such. Though less so in their movies and more a matter of course in TV shows they do.

Talakeal
2013-02-07, 03:00 PM
Probably because Disney often does ideas like "If you believe hard enough you can do it" and such. Though less so in their movies and more a matter of course in TV shows they do.

Ah yeah that line of thinking. I remember people using similar logic to justify the crusader's extraordinary blasts of holy energy that smite enemies and heal allies.

RPGuru1331
2013-02-07, 03:01 PM
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that spirits needing mortal belief is a large component of many eastern religions, but is a somewhat foreign concept to western audiences.
Noted Eastern Theologian J.M. Barie agrees with you. Consider yourself corrected.

Also amused at the idea that belief getting tangible results is ridiculous, whilst the do-anything-with-magic Swiss Army Wizard is more or less fine (Perhaps too powerful, but conceptually fine).

ArcturusV
2013-02-07, 03:03 PM
Which honestly wouldn't have any problem at all except they put that (Ex) next to the name from what I gather. If it was (Su)... no one would think twice about it.

Anderlith
2013-02-07, 03:03 PM
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that spirits needing mortal belief is a large component of many eastern religions, but is a somewhat foreign concept to western audiences. Not sure why you associate it wi Disney, the only Hollywood film I can think of off the top of my head which uses that logic is Nightmare on Elm Street, which is about as far from Disney as you can get.

Aside from that small nitpick I agree with everything you said, great post.

ArturusV has the right of it. My statement "Believe should not equal power" was a seque. Disney & other children's stories/shows etc. have the running theme of believing in yourself or something else (friends, love, etc) will let you win or be stronger than your opponent

RPGuru1331
2013-02-07, 03:05 PM
Which honestly wouldn't have any problem at all except they put that (Ex) next to the name from what I gather. If it was (Su)... no one would think twice about it.

Like how nobody has a problem with Desert Wind.

Synovia
2013-02-07, 03:59 PM
Tribute, & subservience to those within his domain. Like a king accepting fealty from his subjects. He helps them, they help him. If you are a warrior you are in Ares's domain for he is the god of war. There is a level of meta-reality that exists because of the sphere's of influence of a god. If you are a sailor, you venture into the domain of Poseidon. Give him tribute or he will be wroth. They have priests so that they can better act & speak to the masses.
God's are colossal things, & when they walk the earth trembles. God's have need of those that take softer steps.
But you still haven't explained why a god would help a mortal, if a mortal has no way to help that god. How does a mortal help a god?

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-07, 04:17 PM
Out of compassion, out of love, because it's amusing, out of spite towards some third party, so on and so forth.

But I think you're loading the question by assuming there's nothing the mortal can do for a god. As long as a deity is not entirely omnipotent, there are multiple things it might want help with.

Synovia
2013-02-07, 04:26 PM
Out of compassion, out of love, because it's amusing, out of spite towards some third party, so on and so forth.

But I think you're loading the question by assuming there's nothing the mortal can do for a god. As long as a deity is not entirely omnipotent, there are multiple things it might want help with.
If a mortal can help a god, then the god's power is partially determined by who it is worshiped by.

Scow2
2013-02-07, 04:32 PM
If a mortal can help a god, then the god's power is partially determined by who it is worshiped by. Nah. He just has the power of that Mortal to call upon - but the world's not even or fair in its distribution of power among mortals and gods.

Talakeal
2013-02-07, 04:45 PM
I actually think that White Wolfs oWoD games handled this the best. Gods do not necessarily need prayer or belief to exist and do not gain their power from it, but the mortal consciousness does define the spirit world. In a world where people live in misery and suffering the powers of evil will grow stronger than they would in an egalitarian utopia, and the more of the world that is at war at any given time the stronger gods of war would be, while during a period of enlightenment gods of knowledge would have an advantage.

This means that gods do not directly rely on mortals, but they do have an interest in promoting their portfolio in the mortal world, and you get all of the gods sort of working against each other subtly to manipulate the direction of mortal society in a great divine cold war.

Anderlith
2013-02-07, 04:48 PM
But you still haven't explained why a god would help a mortal, if a mortal has no way to help that god. How does a mortal help a god?

Firstly gods are not all powerful or all knowing. Second of all mortals can do things the gods cannot. I refer you to the fable of the Lion & the Mouse

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-07, 05:12 PM
If a mortal can help a god, then the god's power is partially determined by who it is worshiped by.

Which is not the same thing as being defined by, or requiring, belief. Not in the slightest. If I ask you to give me food, your opinion on what I am or can do will not change the fact that I need to eat. And as long as I get fed, it's irrelevant if I get my food from someone who thinks highly of me, or scavenge it from a scrap heap.

Synovia
2013-02-07, 05:39 PM
Which is not the same thing as being defined by, or requiring, belief. Not in the slightest. If I ask you to give me food, your opinion on what I am or can do will not change the fact that I need to eat. And as long as I get fed, it's irrelevant if I get my food from someone who thinks highly of me, or scavenge it from a scrap heap.

But again, we're talking about things you said that Gods CAN NOT DO ON THEIR OWN.

To borrow your example, its like you asking me for food, when you can't feed yourself. You're reliant on my help.

If Gods need help from mortals, then the power of a specific god is partially defined by his mortal followers. IE, a god with less followers is less powerful.

Anderlith
2013-02-07, 05:53 PM
But again, we're talking about things you said that Gods CAN NOT DO ON THEIR OWN.

To borrow your example, its like you asking me for food, when you can't feed yourself. You're reliant on my help.

If Gods need help from mortals, then the power of a specific god is partially defined by his mortal followers. IE, a god with less followers is less powerful.

No it isn't. I mentioned the fable of Lion & the Mouse for this exact reason.
A lion gets a thorn in it's paw, no matter how strong it is it can't pull it out because it's too small. A mouse has to help him.

It's a level of magnitude. a god simply can't operate on a small scale. The world shakes when a god walks. They need smaller people to do their bidding

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-07, 05:54 PM
Well duh. That is equally true of all limited beings.:smalltongue:

But getting help from followers is distinct from having direct ontological dependence on belief. Anderlith, for example, is perfectly fine with former, but detests the latter.

And as I hoped to explain by my analogue, benefiting from worship is not the same as requiring it to survive.

RPGuru1331
2013-02-07, 06:54 PM
But again, we're talking about things you said that Gods CAN NOT DO ON THEIR OWN.

To borrow your example, its like you asking me for food, when you can't feed yourself. You're reliant on my help.
Ares was not reliant on Arachne just because Arachne was a much better spinner than he was... Even in the metaphor, there was another way.


If Gods need help from mortals, then the power of a specific god is partially defined by his mortal followers. IE, a god with less followers is less powerful.
Not really. Whether or not Thor needs his forging done for him doesn't change that his power is defined as power over thunder.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-08, 01:46 AM
To put it in another way, my ability to punch you in the face is not defined by inability to knit my own socks.

Synovia
2013-02-08, 11:36 AM
To put it in another way, my ability to punch you in the face is not defined by inability to knit my own socks.
No, but your overall ability is defined by both. As is a god's.


A god that has X powers and millions of followers to do things for him is more powerful than a god with X powers and no follower to do things for him, right?

Anderlith
2013-02-08, 12:02 PM
No, but your overall ability is defined by both. As is a god's.


A god that has X powers and millions of followers to do things for him is more powerful than a god with X powers and no follower to do things for him, right?

Only in the most contrived sense. He does not require followers to be powerful he only has them to increase his influence

Scow2
2013-02-08, 12:04 PM
No, but your overall ability is defined by both. As is a god's.


A god that has X powers and millions of followers to do things for him is more powerful than a god with X powers and no follower to do things for him, right?
Assuming X = X.

But sometimes, a God Doesn't need followers. A deity's dependence on followers is determined by their portfolio.

Synovia
2013-02-08, 01:23 PM
Only in the most contrived sense. He does not require followers to be powerful he only has them to increase his influence

Influence and power are pretty much the same thing.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-08, 03:12 PM
No, but your overall ability is defined by both. As is a god's.

I already said yes to that. It's also not a problem. Anderlith's original point of complaint was about needing belief or worshippers to be a god, which is a distinct issue.

Anderlith
2013-02-08, 04:42 PM
Influence and power are pretty much the same thing.

Firstly, you keep moving your point.
Secondly, Power is the ability to effect your will. Influence is a route to power yes. But when I said "Power" in this context I meant it to mean the god status of deities.
I am saying, that the god does not derive his existing god staus & godlike power, from influence.

If gods derived their powers from belief then their personality & existence could be swayed by public opinion. Everyone goes from believing Hextor is a evil warrior of tyranny, to Hextor is a neutral warrior spirit of discipline & suddenly Hextor changes to reflect the public opinion, forgets his rivalry with Heironious, & stops enslaving souls for his legions. Not that this kind of system wouldn't be interesting but in generic fantasy it doesn't fly.

ArcturusV
2013-02-08, 04:56 PM
And in case the Lion and Mouse fable was a bit too esoteric or old fashioned for the reader, there's always the "Like swatting a fly with a rocket launcher" saying and ideal. Sometimes, you just need a more precise, appropriate tool for a job.

Though I did play one fantasy RPG, where "Belief=Power" was going on. The Goddess of "Seduction" was basically dying off because people were misconstruing her role and temperment. Instead of being about winning people over and the pursuit of others it ended up with mortals using her worship as an excuse to just mindlessly get their rocks off on whatever they wanted. Or worse yet, thinking "seduction" meant "domination" as in the "break your will and make you do whatever I want"... Which lead to the Goddess of Seduction weakening and dying off while the God of Conquest and Tyranny, and the God of Slaughter and Hedonism were flourishing.

Of course there is also the practical, theoretical example that comes out with Warhammer 40k. Where the belief, actions and thoughts of Humans are giving power to the Chaos Gods. And they are so invested in Humanity that should some genocidal event happen, and every human died, the Gods of Chaos would be no more. Not that they ever got to that point, and I doubt they will... but there are people who "know" that and are working to do so in that setting.

Scow2
2013-02-08, 06:50 PM
And in case the Lion and Mouse fable was a bit too esoteric or old fashioned for the reader, there's always the "Like swatting a fly with a rocket launcher" saying and ideal. Sometimes, you just need a more precise, appropriate tool for a job. Are you trying to say that rockets AREN'T appropriate fly-eliminating tools?

tbok1992
2013-02-08, 09:07 PM
Actually I'd say "Magic has no rules" in so far as one of the chief rules of magic is "If somehow out of the thousands of spells that are printed you can't find something that you want, especially with a lot of open ended effects like Wish and Miracle... you can just MAKE UP a new effect to do whatever you want, and add it to your list to be used several times a day."

That is the rule of magic.

Now if a fighter wanted to say something like "Hm, I'm going to come up with a revolutionary Art that will allow me to do something the world has never seen before..." he can't do it. If he wants to be like Sasaki Kojiro and invent the Turning Swallow Cut, nope. Rules don't allow it. Just suck it up and pick Power Attack and a Great Sword and be very simplistic and boring, highly limited in what you can do.

Now if Fighters were given the blank check to make up moves to do whatever they wanted as long as it fell under some vague description of a martial ability... *shrug* We'd see. But it's never happened. Don't think it will. I wish it would. Even as someone who usually plays a caster.

Actually, that seems to be the point of 5e's Martial Damage Dice, being able to build your own maneuvers out of various bits and bobs, but at the cost of raw damage on each attack to avoid overexertion. And that's why I adore the idea.

ArcturusV
2013-02-08, 09:22 PM
Hmm. I'd say neat. The concept is neat. Sounds like fertile ground. Though I don't like the idea of giving up something temporarily to get something else temporarily.

I mean the comparison at this point to my mind is:

I give up damage (One of the few things I can do), in order to get a one shot bonus.

Compared to:

I give up a little bit of Gold/Time which I have almost no use for, in order to get a permanent ability/bonus (As in Spell Research/Crafting).

I dunno. I'll have to see how it plays out. But it doesn't sound like as much of a trade. The Fighter is giving up something they typically need (Damage). The Wizard gives up something they don't really need (Gold).

Scow2
2013-02-08, 11:20 PM
Now if a fighter wanted to say something like "Hm, I'm going to come up with a revolutionary Art that will allow me to do something the world has never seen before..." he can't do it. If he wants to be like Sasaki Kojiro and invent the Turning Swallow Cut, nope. Rules don't allow it. Just suck it up and pick Power Attack and a Great Sword and be very simplistic and boring, highly limited in what you can do.

Now if Fighters were given the blank check to make up moves to do whatever they wanted as long as it fell under some vague description of a martial ability... *shrug* We'd see. But it's never happened. Don't think it will. I wish it would. Even as someone who usually plays a caster.
Actually, there are rules for making new feats (Combat and otherwise) that are just as broad as the rules for making/creating new spells. So yes, a fighter CAN create a new style. In fact, most splatbook feats are merely examples of custom feats. It's part of the nature of the d20 OGL.

Lupus753
2013-02-08, 11:46 PM
I dunno. I'll have to see how it plays out. But it doesn't sound like as much of a trade. The Fighter is giving up something they typically need (Damage). The Wizard gives up something they don't really need (Gold).

I'm having trouble thinking of how a martial class would do it differently. Really, how would they. Like, have the Fighter spend some Gold and prep time to make the sword lower an enemy's defenses on a successful skill check (done after a successful attack)? With the justification that..uh... the Fighter was busy sharpening his sword so it cleaves the enemy's armor or damage their hide?

Yeah, that was just an errant thought of mine. You might work a couple good things in, but the method for making new abilities would be far more limited than the Wizard's spell crafting. Unless you nerf the spell crafting, which is probably the best idea.

At least the martial dice could address one major problem with the Fighter: boredom and lack of versatility.

ArcturusV
2013-02-08, 11:58 PM
Well, ideally a Fighter would create a technique like any warrior in life would. Time, experimentation, inspiration. So less "on the fly" and more "I developed this last time I was meditating on my weapon... and now I can do something unique, a maneuver the world has never seen before, that I can use at will and as the situation calls for it".

I'd like to see something like that.

TuggyNE
2013-02-09, 12:49 AM
Actually, there are rules for making new feats (Combat and otherwise) that are just as broad as the rules for making/creating new spells.

Which rules are those? I've ... actually never seen them.

Wardog
2013-02-10, 09:46 AM
If one wants more traditional Western mythologies then we've got Beowulf, who solo'd what was at minimum an adult dragon (yes Wiglaf was there but he really only amounted to being a cheerleader and shield carrier) in his old age (though admittedly that could be anything from 30 up). This is also the same guy who tore the arm off of a troll then wrestled it's stronger and deadlier mother to a standstill.

Don't forget that he also swam across the Gulf of Finland, while wearing full armour and holding a sword, and only lost the race because he was too busy killing all the sea-monsters that got in his way.


And for other mortal heroes of legend, don't forget Roland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland), who created this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Br%C3%A8che_de_Roland)while trying to break his sword.

Or Finn McCool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finn_McCool), who (among other things) inadvertantly created the Isle of Man while throwing part of Ireland at a rival.

(I present the above as evidence for my theory that a lot of myths, legends and folklore are basically the ancient/medieval equivilent of Chuck Norris Facts).

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-10, 03:37 PM
Pffft, it's old news that all such stories have always been about whose god or national hero has the biggest rooster.:smalltongue: