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View Full Version : What classes could realistically/what creatures could conceivably exist in our world?



Morph Bark
2013-02-13, 09:07 AM
So I was thinking about how many people compare DnD stuff to real world things, even trying to calculate what level people would be in the real world and suchlike, so I started to wonder... what DnD classes could realistically exist in our world?

Related to that is the second question. A lot of creatures are magical in nature and likely could not conceivably exist in our world (undead and elementals especially), at least as we understand it now (for all I know science might discover ways). Other creatures are magical in nature, but could conceivably exist in our world if you take away that part of nature and switch it for a biological one (fey, as well as a many outsiders). Which creatures all in all could fit?

EDIT:
To explain, I want to figure out how a DnD-like world truly compares to our world, and in turn figure out how our world could turn into a DnD-like world, so that I can figure out how such a history would compare to my campaign setting's. This because of the fact that originally it was conceived of as an alternate, supernaturally-influenced future of sorts. This is just background information to the pertinent questions in the thread title right now.

Yora
2013-02-13, 09:25 AM
All Dire Animals without problems.

And I would dare say all Humanoids as well. Would require some environmental conditions that did not happen on Earth, but are well within the realm of physics and chemistry.

Owlbears really aren't much different from an oversized Archeopteryx. No problem with them either.
Bullets are basically rhinoceroses or hippotamuses with oddly shaped head. That should work.

Getting a bit more unusual, I think worgs could work as well. Developing the brain capacity for speech might be complicated, as it is assumed that primates have their brainpower from navigating jumping between branches while coordinating very accurate five-fingered hands and feet. But then we have Orcas who also possess rudimentary language and don't even have arms or legs. I don't think three-dimensional awareness underwater is a lot more complex than running on uneven terrain, so if they can evolve smart brains, why wouldn't wolves be able to?

Griffons, hippogriffs, pegasi, and centaurs have the problem that they have six limbs, which no Veterbrates on earth have. To my knowledge it's always four or none (if they disappeared over time). However, there is no reason why there couldn't be any six-limbed vertrbrates.
Getting them to fly is a bigger problem since there physics come into play and the proportions they are shown with in images just can't work. If you make the bodies smaller, the wings bigger, and change how muscles are arranged, and so on, I think flying quadrupedes should be possible. Even Quetzalcoatlus could fly, or at the very least it's only slightly smaller ancestors would have.

Now an interesting cantidate would be wvyerns. The picture in the 3rd and 2nd Edition Monster Manual is way to heavy to fly. But the ones in Baldur's Gate do seem to have proportions similar to Quetzalcoatlus. Getting that poison stinger on the tail to a flying dinosaur would require some unusual evolutionary coincidences, but to that my whole reply is "platypus".

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 09:47 AM
Well, to tell you something obvious, yes, fighters can indeed exist, along with rogues...at least if you're willing to interpret hp as something more along the lines of "general ability to survive in combat" and hits as less actual hits as maneuvers in combat that reduce overall chances of survival.

More interesting though, is that Paladins (at least the nonspellcasting variants) could pretty easily exist in real life, as super-soldiers or something similar. "Smite Evil" could become a trained hormonal reaction to people you're particularly opposed to, and "Lay on Hands" could involve boosting people with chemicals. Divine Grace? Again, hormones. The degree to which their personality is chemically boosted also is a pretty good metric of how their bodily resistance is.

The only difficult part would have to be the mount...which not all paladins have, I might add. Perhaps some collapsible bike-type thing, plus AI.

The fact that Lay-on-Hands works means that healing+Bull's Strength+most physical boosters also work, I might add.

hamishspence
2013-02-13, 10:13 AM
All Dire Animals without problems.

Some approach the upper limits of feasibility though. A Dire Polar Bear, for example (Frostburn) is much larger than the estimated upper limit for a predatory land mammal of 1.5 tons- it's Huge, and several tons in weight.

Yora
2013-02-13, 10:17 AM
I was going for the "could be adapted to be plausible" approach and not the 1 on 1 one. Reducing everything to fluff concepts seems mandatory for this question to me. As I mentioned, the concept of wyvern should work, even though most presentations don't.

But yeah "all without problem" is a bit of an overreaching statement. :smallbiggrin:

Raimun
2013-02-13, 10:19 AM
Any class that has Ex(tra Ordinary) Abilities and no Su(pernatural) Abilities.

... Or perhaps not.

hamishspence
2013-02-13, 10:20 AM
I could see a Dire Hawk as Haast's Eagle- Medium sized, capable of killing full grown moas.

Guizonde
2013-02-13, 12:05 PM
a guy that knows how to track, hunt specific targets, find paths, find food, find subtle natural details gone unnoticed by most, make traps,be unseen for days at a time, to whom one kind of habitat is home, eagle-eyed, as silent as a ghost?

why yes, i'm describing regular hunters of today! :smallbiggrin:

ok, i'm describing the ranger... the point stands. we call them "hunters", "trappers", "pathfinders", "scouts", or simply "woodsmen"

the same kind of shtick can be applied to warriors/fighters, and to assassins. bards are easy to pull off: check out the influence of just one no-talent popstar on the masses. yeah, it's kinda like that.

Synovia
2013-02-13, 01:00 PM
Some approach the upper limits of feasibility though. A Dire Polar Bear, for example (Frostburn) is much larger than the estimated upper limit for a predatory land mammal of 1.5 tons- it's Huge, and several tons in weight.

And yet, we have this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium

A 4 ton omniverous hunter/scavenger. Just like a gigantic bear.

Deepbluediver
2013-02-13, 01:12 PM
The biggest issues with flying creatures is that that square/cubed law gets in the way for wing size and lift; you conceiveable COULD have a quadruped with wings (6 limbs total) but most likely it would never be larger than 40-50 pounds (about the size of a dog) because the muscles can't grow large enough to power the wings. So dragons and a whole host of other flying creatures with more than 3 HD are out.

Some magical creatures seemed like just scaled up versions of regular creatures and/or dinosaurs, and are probably viable with minor alterations. For example, elephants can't actually run (at least this is what I've heard); when they charge really its just a fast walk. This is because as their bodies get larger the strength of their legs and bones can't keep up (again see square/cube law). So most of the larger creatures might not have quite the same quickness, but outside of supernatural abilities are otherwise reasonable. This is also the reason why Giants can't exist (at least not in human-like proportions).

Part of this requires some interpreation on how we can convert certain aspects of the game: can I think of robots as Constructs? Is a human with enough prostetic limbs like a Warforged?

The question of intelligence is another one open to interpretation. The general rule for IQ is not based on brain size (or whales would be ruling the planet) but on the ratio of brain-size to body mass. So get me some drawn-to-scale pictures and we can probably calculate which non-humanoid creatures have reasonable cranial capacities.

When you start getting into creature types like Outsiders, many of them are based on interpreations of real world religions, with followers who already believe something like that to exist. Do I need to invent a device that measures "magic particles" (sort of like the LHC but different :smallwink:) before I can claim those aspect are real?


Interesting thoughts, need more info on what direction I should head in.

Ashtagon
2013-02-13, 01:41 PM
Classes: Anything that uses magic, spell-like, or supernatural abilities would not exist. That leaves barbarian, fighter, and rogue (plus all SRD NPC classes except adept). Complete Warrior has spell-less options for paladin and ranger, so those can be added. There's a few more once you go into splatbook territory.

Core PC races: All except the gnome, and even gnomes could work if you remove their innate magical powers.

Monsters: Generally agree with @Yora. Humanoids have the caveat that those with inherent supernatural or spell-like powers wouldn't work.

Bullettes however, shouldn't work. They swim through soil the way fish swim through water. That's not physics as we know it.

While most creatures have some capacity for communication within their own species, language as humans can recognise it and use to communicate meaningfully with that species is much more limited. So far, only higher primates and dolphins are known to have such capacity (cats and dogs, not so much, pet owners notwithstanding). There's no logical reason any animal with lungs couldn't evolve a working voicebox, although they is reason to suspect quadrupeds wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time, due to the way the ribcage and hence breathing is in lockstep with the forelimb girdles.

While six-limbed vertebrates don't really exist, there's no physical reason they couldn't have evolved, so griffons etc are not ruled out by physics. Whether their wings would be functional is another question.

Worth noting as well is that feathered wings are from the dinosaurian branch of evolution, which would make mammalian (hairy) creatures with feathered wings quite improbable. A pegasus with bat-like wings is more likely than one with bird-like wings. For Similar reasons, wyverns would be more believable from an evolution point of view with bird-like rather than bat-like wings.

@hamishspence dire polar bears aren't so outlandish. Given their cold climate, it would make perfect sense for them to evolve to be larger, to preserve body heat.

Giant insects would generally not be possible. The largest insect ever had a wingspan of about three feet, and required an atmosphere with 30% oxygen to support it.

hymer
2013-02-13, 01:56 PM
@ Synovia: Hunter/scavenger? The megatherium was in every likelihood a herbivore. It certainly didn't hunt anything in the way bears bring down big prey.

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 03:00 PM
Classes: Anything that uses magic, spell-like, or supernatural abilities would not exist. That leaves barbarian, fighter, and rogue (plus all SRD NPC classes except adept). Complete Warrior has spell-less options for paladin and ranger, so those can be added. There's a few more once you go into splatbook territory.

Well...supernatural abilities are actually possible, iif they're explained really differently. Hell, even some spells might be...

For example, using Oxytocin (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3029708/), you can alter someone's personality so as to make them more willing to trust people belonging to their own kind, and less willing to trust people who don't. It's pretty conceivable that this could equate to a Charm Person sort of thing with a high enough dosage/druglike mixture.

Although there'd no longer really be "casting stats".

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 03:13 PM
Yeah, but charm person is a ranged spell that doesn't even require breathing the same air (it can be cast through glass) last time I checked, whereas oxytocin is a blood agent, and doesn't even affect people the way the spell would, or as intensely (when considering nontoxic doses).

Barring a flurry of actually engineering technology we only have begun to master, you'd obviously have to make some changes--the similarities aren't total.

But, regardless, even you admit that a toxic dose of the substance, however acquired, would allow you to have an easier time persuading someone similar to you. (I mean, we have drugs that can seriously alter behaviour--why not an oxytocin drug?)



And if oxytocin is modelling charm person, what's modelling oxytocin?

...I really don't get this. Explain?

hamishspence
2013-02-13, 03:13 PM
Worth noting as well is that feathered wings are from the dinosaurian branch of evolution, which would make mammalian (hairy) creatures with feathered wings quite improbable.
True- though protofeathers can look a lot like hair from a distance. Some birds, like the kiwi- have feathers that look a bit like that.

hamishspence dire polar bears aren't so outlandish. Given their cold climate, it would make perfect sense for them to evolve to be larger, to preserve body heat.

Problem is the walking around on land (albeit hunting in the water), and the finding enough to feed a body that large. A dire polar bear is 20 ft long and about 15000 lb in weight.

Ursus maritimus tyrannus, the polar bear's prehistoric ancestor, was big- but not nearly that big.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursus_maritimus_tyrannus

Ordinary Dire bears, while still on the heavy side at 8000 lb, do have a possible "real-life equivalent" which could have weighed around 3500 lb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctotherium

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 03:17 PM
The only thing I acknowledge about a toxic dose of the substance is that it is liable to do physical harm to the person who receives the dose.


...in the same way a toxic dose of say, lead, or alcohol does harm?

Toxic doses of substances tend to have many and varied effects, some of which are behavioural changes. So...


Prolonged dizziness and/or nausea are the nicest possible outcomes from toxic doses.


That is actually not true. There are nicer outcomes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria)*

*Well, if you consider a chronic mild physical effect "nicer" than even a temporary acute "dizziness/nausea".

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 03:30 PM
http://pregnancy.emedtv.com/pitocin/pitocin-overdose.html

It's used to treat certain issues in pregnancy. Overdoses result in medical shock, bleeding, brachycardia, vomiting, and seizures.

So, no. Not really on a par with alcohol or lead poisoning. Quite a bit worse. Worse enough that immediate and urgent medical attention should be sought.



Enhhh...

There are levels of "toxic" that are a bit different from "overdose", though. Alcohol again being a great example--sure, if you drink too much of it, you die, but there's a wide swathe of territory where you're intoxicated but not dead.

Hell, Botox, of all things, is deadly in anything larger than trace quantities.

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-13, 03:34 PM
Dude, do you have any medical training at all? Or just what you read on wikipedia?


Admittedly I can't call myself an expert, no, but it's not like I'm without any knowledge at all, or can't contribute to the debate.


Now, if you've got an actual way to respond to my point that you can be intoxicated without being overdosed, I'd love to hear it.

Deepbluediver
2013-02-13, 03:38 PM
I think we're getting off topic here.

The original question asks about classes and creatures, and I admit to ranging somewhat far afield with regards to ideas, but this is a half-dozen posts about one tiny little thing.

How about we compromise and say that "Charm" as a spell is out, but the Alchemist class is a possibility.

We can rate things on a 3-tier scale, like Mythbusters:
True
False
Possible but unlikely

Morph Bark
2013-02-13, 06:57 PM
The biggest issues with flying creatures is that that square/cubed law gets in the way for wing size and lift; you conceiveable COULD have a quadruped with wings (6 limbs total) but most likely it would never be larger than 40-50 pounds (about the size of a dog) because the muscles can't grow large enough to power the wings. So dragons and a whole host of other flying creatures with more than 3 HD are out.

While something with size may well correlate with flight problems for six-limbed creatures, there have been creatures of stunning size capable of flight. I know there've been pterosaurs that had massive wingspans, and apparently also birds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis), but especially pterosaur subspecies such as this one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatzegopteryx). (I used wiki links because they're the easiest and with the info organized well intuitively speaking, but there are a bunch of articles on these out there.) They wouldn't be as massive as dragons are commonly portrayed to be, but it could be possible. There once was even a show on the Discovery Channel about how, if so, dragons could have evolved from dinosaurs, even including fire breath, though that was of course a big, big load of speculation and theorizing about something that didn't happen.


We can rate things on a 3-tier scale, like Mythbusters:
True
False
Possible but unlikely

Sounds good.

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-14, 05:46 AM
Warrior, Aristrocrat, Expert, Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, spell-less Ranger, spell-less Paladin, Knight, Swashbuckler and spell-less Assassin are at least possible class wise. Monks may exists as well depending on how seriously you take the tales about Himalaya budhist monks. :smalltongue:

I'd say most Large or smaller creatures that are not supernatural in origin or abilities could exist. Evolution has created as bizarre things before. I'm not entirely discounting giant insects etc. either, as while they'd need to be very biologically different from their smaller cousins, well, such things have existed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurypterid)

Ashtagon
2013-02-14, 06:00 AM
I'd say most Large or smaller creatures that are not supernatural in origin or abilities could exist. Evolution has created as bizarre things before. I'm not entirely discounting giant insects etc. either, as while they'd need to be very biologically different from their smaller cousins, well, such things have existed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurypterid)

Worth noting that this particular order of arthropod were exclusively aquatic. We really don't know how they obtained oxygen though, which is the biggest issue with large "air-breathing" insects. If their entire body was able to act as a "gill", then the biggest stumbling block to large insect evolution would be solved, at least for submarine insects.

Absorbing O2 from water across a membrane is a lot easier than from air, chemically speaking.

bbgenderless100
2013-02-14, 07:49 AM
So I was thinking about how many people compare DnD stuff to real world things, even trying to calculate what level people would be in the real world and suchlike, so I started to wonder... what DnD classes could realistically exist in our world?

Related to that is the second question. A lot of creatures are magical in nature and likely could not conceivably exist in our world (undead and elementals especially), at least as we understand it now (for all I know science might discover ways). Other creatures are magical in nature, but could conceivably exist in our world if you take away that part of nature and switch it for a biological one (fey, as well as a many outsiders). Which creatures all in all could fit?

EDIT:
To explain, I want to figure out how a DnD-like world truly compares to our world, and in turn figure out how our world could turn into a DnD-like world, so that I can figure out how such a history would compare to my campaign setting's. This because of the fact that originally it was conceived of as an alternate, supernaturally-influenced future of sorts. This is just background information to the pertinent questions in the thread title right now.

I'm thinking anything animal related and how calculations would work?

Who knows.

hamishspence
2013-02-14, 08:43 AM
Worth noting that this particular order of arthropod were exclusively aquatic. We really don't know how they obtained oxygen though, which is the biggest issue with large "air-breathing" insects. If their entire body was able to act as a "gill", then the biggest stumbling block to large insect evolution would be solved, at least for submarine insects.

There was a large "true scorpion" as well- though also aquatic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontoscorpio

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-14, 08:45 AM
I think we're getting off topic here.

The original question asks about classes and creatures, and I admit to ranging somewhat far afield with regards to ideas, but this is a half-dozen posts about one tiny little thing.

The problem with this, though, is that in order to gauge the possibility of classes that cast spells/make magic items, we're pretty much going to have to analyze things spell-by-spell, or at least school-by-school.


How about we compromise and say that "Charm" as a spell is out, but the Alchemist class is a possibility.

Probably Artificer would be the most supported IRL...


We can rate things on a 3-tier scale, like Mythbusters:
True
False
Possible but unlikely

Seems pretty nice. I like.

Ashtagon
2013-02-14, 09:44 AM
There was a large "true scorpion" as well- though also aquatic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontoscorpio

Well, yeah. Aquatic.

I suspect the issue of extracting oxygen from air via typical arthropod "breathing" is a major limiter on size. The one era in history in which large air-breathing insects flourished also had an unusually high atmospheric oxygen content (30%).

Morph Bark
2013-02-15, 08:07 PM
I guess animals and vermin are covered pretty well so far then. How about magical beasts or dragons? Or plants? Are there even any plants in our world that can move around, rather than be rooted in place?

Frozen_Feet
2013-02-15, 08:58 PM
Well, plants do move, they just tend to do it really slowly. There might be some plants that slowly crawl across the ground, but most grow rather than uproot themselves to reach new places.

But based on real carnivorous plants, I'd say plants that stay rooted but can capture man-sized prey should be possible.

Also, oozes have some precedence in weird bacterial masses of real world.

Volthawk
2013-02-16, 05:36 AM
Oozes could be slime moulds, I guess. They just combine into larger entities than RL slime moulds.

Morph Bark
2013-02-16, 07:36 AM
Well, there have been stories of giant amoeba colonies in South America so large they could envelop small animals with ease, if only they were fast enough, so some oozes are probably possible.

Hmmm... thinking about it, aren't there some occassions of creatures under some sort of influence from drugs or molds or such that essentially turn them into zombies of a sort? Would that count as "undead"?

TuggyNE
2013-02-16, 07:40 AM
Hmmm... thinking about it, aren't there some occassions of creatures under some sort of influence from drugs or molds or such that essentially turn them into zombies of a sort? Would that count as "undead"?

Not really; they're still the same creature physically, they're just mind-controlled/etc. So no crit immunity, still have a Con score, etc. They do presumably become mindless if they weren't already, though. (I'm thinking ants with Cordyceps here.)

AgentofHellfire
2013-02-16, 04:31 PM
Not really; they're still the same creature physically, they're just mind-controlled/etc. So no crit immunity, still have a Con score, etc. They do presumably become mindless if they weren't already, though. (I'm thinking ants with Cordyceps here.)

However...


If you throw in, perhaps, a whole lot of mechanical additions to a mentally "zombified" creature, you might be able to throw in some redundant organs or the like. Or even just heavily armor-plate the vitals, where crits would most likely happen...

Edenbeast
2013-02-16, 05:58 PM
The Alchemist could easily exist. Creating drugs and explosives. Not all extracts would be possible, for instance invisibility, but the mutagen is pretty much like the enhancements Lance Armstrong depended on.

Janus
2013-02-22, 05:09 PM
"Lay on Hands" could involve boosting people with chemicals.
Well, many religions have a ritual involving laying on hands, sometimes in relation to healing people. Granted, that doesn't solve the "clearly definable/recordable results" trait that you seem to be going for.

Edenbeast
2013-02-23, 10:05 AM
Lay on hands as a well-timed massage for stress relief :) Healing hitpoints is more supernatural, but some of the mercies the paladin gains, like no longer fatigued, exhausted, or frightened.

randomhero00
2013-02-23, 01:20 PM
Here's something in real life that's so strange, its not even possible in DnD :smalltongue:

Undead Plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_plant

Well sort of :)

Madeiner
2013-02-24, 07:29 AM
Here's something in real life that's so strange, its not even possible in DnD :smalltongue:

Undead Plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_plant

Well sort of :)

I have one of those. I wouldn't define that resurrection, rather extreme resilience. It's true though, my desert rose "woke up" after 5 years of complete dehydration and absence of light.