The Guy at the Gym Fallacy [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

bekeleven

2013-09-12, 11:41 PM

No matter how high level a Barbarian or Rogue get, picturing them being able to heal the injuries/afflictions of others for instance, or raise the dead, strains disbelief.

THE GUY AT THE GYM FALLACY: Or, People Can't Fly
http://i.imgur.com/WtqYUsq.png?1 (http://mangafox.me/manga/fate_kaleid_liner_prisma_illya/v01/c004/14.html)

Anybody that accepts the tier system, or even anybody who has played Dungeons And Dragons 3.0, 3.5 or 3.P past 10th level can agree: If you're a mundane, you suck. Spells are where it's at. And if you can't cast spells, you'd better have powers. And if you have neither of those, you should at least be able to bind vestiges, or use strikes, or have some other wacky ability.

When I say mundane, I mean classes like the barbarian, the fighter, the rogue, the scout, the samurai... and even the monk for the most part. Hell, besides spellcasting, ranger fits as well. What do all of these classes have in common?

They do things we can do. Not that we can do them as well. We can jump; they can jump 50 feet. We can shoot a bow; they can shoot a man at 500 yards with a crooked sight. We can swim; they can swim across the ocean. You know... maybe if the guy doing laps at the gym could.

This mindset forms the core of the Guy at the Gym fallacy. Because they do things that we can do, they cannot do things we cannot do. It's that simple!

Why this is a problem
Because mundanes are underpowered. You can only get so far in D&D without the ability to tell reality to sit down and shut up. Even initiators need three blatantly supernatural schools in order to be effective martial combatants. Simply put, supernatural abilities give you options, options that come from being able to do things that the guy at the gym cannot.

Imagine if I tried to make a class based on the wandering troubadour (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgCuyLumKDE) of our middle ages. Well, take the bard to start. Then cut out spells. And finally, cut out all of the supernatural or spell-like bardic music abilities (which is all of them). There, now we have a reasonable approximation of how bards work... at least the bards you'd find at a gym. Except that I don't think any Trobairitz actually used magical devices, so let's take that off the skill list for a finishing touch.

When this fallacy applies
If somebody is playing a core-only 3.5 game, then learning about Guy At The Gym won't impact their game except maybe as an incidental introduction to the tier system. The main uses are:

To defend and explain the "magicness" of certain martial classes (Tome of Battle in particular)
As a defense and guide of homebrew mixing "magic" with "mundane/martial"

Note that in general, this assumes the players want a tier higher than 5 as their balance point. Tier 3 has been standard in my experience. Thus the fallacy compares tier 5 characters like the fighter to tier 3 characters - the first tier at which "mundane need not apply", which coincidentally is the tier known for power and versatility without breaking the game.

People are welcome to, instead, nerf every class down to tier4-5 if they like. But they should be aware that their party will be unable to battle encounters of normal CRs except in a minority of circumstances, because those tiers lack power and/or versatility.

Why this fallacy doesn't even make sense
Mundanes in D&D do things gym rats can't dream of already! Imagine your local weight lifter running 80 feet and stabbing an armored knight multiple times within six seconds. Imagine him firing arrows at a rate of nearly 1 per second and still reliably hitting targets 100 yards away. That's not just impossible, that's past legolas impossible. That's legend-tier archery. So why is he unable to heal his wounds, even when HP can be considered abstract enough to mean "combat vigor" or "fighting spirit"?

Here is an example of how not to do hit points: "The axe swings into the barbarian's forehead. The blow would've cleaved a lesser man's skull clear in two, but his finely honed forehead muscles deflected it." Here is another example of how not to do hit points: "The axe swings into the barbarian's forehead. The blow would've killed a lesser man, but he was too enraged to notice half of his head missing."

In other words, for nearly every justification of why mundanes can't do something, there's equally valid fluff for why it makes sense without magic. I made a class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=302593) that's so genre savvy he can spot illusions by "what doesn't make dramatic sense." How is that less reasonable than a man being fast enough and buff enough to take out a small army? How is that less reasonable than a man with a sword running 20 feet, jumping in the air, and his landing strike cleaving a house in two?

Note that you don't have to have justifications like this - but they help if you want to keep "magicless flavor" on the mundanes. The alternative is, of course, to rule that the abilities are magical - and simply say that everybody picks up a little bit of magic as they adventure.

Examples of the fallacy in action
These examples taken from the "Stupid House Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=299020)" thread.

Rangers don't get spellcasting, because Aragorn didn't cast spells.

I've seen Natural 1's (after several checks), end up droping your sword, falling down, attacking someone else.[50,000 other fumble house rules omitted for brevity. Could some guy at the gym swing a sword all day and never drop it? Therefore, a fighter can't.]

Swordsages and monks hurt themselves and take 1d6 damage while punching "hard" stuff. Like a wooden chest.

On the other side of the fence, guys at the gym don't cast spells. So why would spellcasters suffer any of the gym rat's unreasonable limitations? As you read these, consider: Have you ever seen a spell that needed multiple pages to be written? Have you personally ever seen a seventh-level wizard unable to permanently de-magic an item?

Spells, regardless of their level, only take up 1 page in the Spellbook each.

I've seen DM's allowing the wizards to know EVERY spell, cause thats how spellbooks work...

Spells do not have foci or material components. At all. His reason: Because everyone gains Eschew Materials at 1st level if they are a spellcaster, and that completely bypasses the material component.
Targeted Dispel Magic can act like MDJ if used on a single item. His reason: It made sense because magic works better if you focus it.

Conclusion
In a better balanced game, things like this wouldn't be necessary. That's because a fit dude with a sword and a bow (a few arrows wouldn't hurt) could be as versatile and effective as anybody else. Unfortunately, people - including the writers of the player's handbook - have decided that it wouldn't make sense for the fighter (from the player's handbook, filed under F, after D for Druid) to be able to teleport, or heal, or turn invisible, or break the action economy in any way other than iterative attacks. Guys at the gym hit things with sticks, duh.

If you want a martial class to be interesting to play, the only real option in D&D as it exists is to give them abilities normally considered under the purview of spells. Whether these are actual spells is up to you. Tome of battle is a good example of many abilities, largely extraordinary and occasionally supernatural, that make a martial class less one-trick and more versatile by application of abilities generally though of as magical.

If the goal is an internally balanced party, the other alternative is that nobody (or everybody) plays nonmagical martial classes. That works as well, but it rings far weaker to me.

Player 1: "My character is an Artist. I make a quick sketch of the suspect"
DM: "Make a skill check"
Player 2: "I cast Silent Image to create a likeness of the suspect."
DM: "OK"

Thoughts?

Lord Raziere

2013-09-12, 11:50 PM

I think I'll just clap, thanks.

*clap clap*

but we really need more abilities for fighters. like an ability for the fighters to like, grab the entire rest of the party then leap to wherever they need to go- as in, leap from one town, straight over a mountain and land in the other town. or possibly even leap to other planes through sheer strength and focus.

DarkSonic1337

2013-09-12, 11:53 PM

It may be stating the obvious...but thank you.

Thank you.

Spuddles

2013-09-13, 12:09 AM

Imagine your local weight lifter running 80 feet and stabbing an armored knight multiple times within six seconds.

Premise is preposterous. Followers of Brodin forsake cardio, as it prevents the gainz.

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 12:17 AM

That's not a fallacy on Psyren's part, that's simply knowledge of the power sets available to those character classes and acknowledgement of the general tone and flavor of the types of powers made available to different archetypes by convention. Technically the rogue due to access to UMD could kludge something there, but that specific use of UMD isn't going to be what is typically associated with rogues.

edit: I'm all for changing up business as usual and going against convention, especially with regards to giving "mundanes" nice things, but I probably won't give a barbarian a unique power to raise the dead. I'd honestly prefer to go to something more along the lines of rituals for resurrection anyway, since making it the schtick of a single character kinda screws things if that's the character who gets offed.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 12:21 AM

That's not a fallacy on Psyren's part, that's simply knowledge of the power sets available to those character classes and acknowledgement of the general tone and flavor of the types of powers made available to different archetypes by convention. Technically the rogue due to access to UMD could kludge something there, but that specific use of UMD isn't going to be what is typically associated with rogues.

I didn't mean to pick on Psyren. The quote was just too close to the fallacy for me to pass it up.

I'm sure Psyren is an upstanding member of his community and pays his taxes mid-February. If I ever meet him in real life, I will be happy to buy him a beer, and/or tea and biscuits, depending on nationality.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 12:25 AM

I'll bite.

THE GUY AT THE GYM FALLACY: Or, People Can't Fly

Anybody that accepts the tier system, or even anybody who has played Dungeons And Dragons 3.0, 3.5 or 3.P past 10th level can agree: If you're a mundane, you suck. Spells are where it's at. And if you can't cast spells, you'd better have powers. And if you have neither of those, you should at least be able to bind vestiges, or use strikes, or have some other wacky.

When I say mundane, I mean classes like the barbarian, the fighter, the rogue, the scout, the samurai... and even the monk for the most part. Hell, besides spellcasting, ranger fits as well. What do all of these classes have in common?

They do things we can do. Not that we can do them as well. We can jump; they can jump 50 feet. We can shoot a bow; they can shoot a man at 500 yards with a crooked sight. We can swim; they can swim across the ocean. You know... maybe if the guy doing laps at the gym could.

This mindset forms the core of the Guy at the Gym fallacy. Because they do things that we can do, they cannot do things we cannot do. It's that simple!

You're on to something, but you're mis-identifying the problem.

You list a bunch of "trans-mundane" things that a high-level fighter-type could do that the Guy at the Gym couldn't because we have laws of physics. (You know what, let's just call them superpowers.)

Most spells don't have any logical relation to the fighter-type's concept. LEgendary warriors should have warrior-type superpowers.

Why this is a problem
Because mundanes are underpowered. You can only get so far in D&D without the ability to tell reality to sit down and shut up. Even initiators need three blatantly supernatural schools in order to be effective martial combatants.

What you're saying is a funhouse mirror way of saying that "casters (especially high-level casters) are overpowered."

Simply put, supernatural abilities give you options, options that come from being able to do things that the guy at the gym cannot.

Why this doesn't even make sense
Mundanes in D&D do things gym rats can't dream of already! Imagine your local weight lifter running 80 feet and stabbing an armored knight multiple times within six seconds. Imagine him firing arrows at a rate of 1 per second and still reliably hitting targets 100 yards away. That's not just impossible, that's past legolas impossible. That's legend-tier archery. So why is he unable to heal his wounds, even when HP can be considered abstract enough to mean "combat vigor" or "fighting spirit"?

So he's fighting, using his combat vigor, and then after a while, he pulls out another six-pack of combat vigor? That doesn't really make much sense. IT doesn't fit their theme.

In other words, for nearly every justification of why mundanes can't do something, there's equally valid fluff for why it makes sense without magic. I made a class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=302593) that's so genre savvy he can spot illusions by "what doesn't make dramatic sense." How is that less reasonable than a man being fast enough and buff enough to take out a small army? How is that less reasonable than a man with a sword running 20 feet, jumping in the air, and his landing strike cleaving a house in two?

It's not. If your Genresavvyist (swashbuckler? bard? whatever) is well done, he'll have abilities that fit in his theme and source of power.

But he shouldn't have superpowers that don't relate to being genre-savvy. He shouldn't be able to fall from space and survive like a high-level barbarian, or shoot fire from his hands. He sSHOULD be able to find secret doors and detect magic because those are always where they are because Plot.

You want to argue that a high-level thieves should be able to be flat-out invisible? I buy that. Fits their theme. Yes, they're so good at hiding and being stealthy that they can walk through a crowded marketplace unseen. In game-mechanic terms, I could see feats that give them Invisibility, Silence, Knock, Darkness, Spider Climb. They have such keen eye for detail that they can Detect Magic, Detect Invisible. Improved Critical on sneak attacks? Sure.

You want to say that they should be able to fly over a cornfield? No, that's stupid.

Note that you don't have to have justifications like this - but they help if you want to keep "magicless flavor" on the mundanes.

Without flavor, what are we doing playing D&D? If you want to stack incompatible abilities on top of each other without regard for whether it makes sense, get out a Munchkin deck.

Examples of the fallacy in action
These examples taken from the "Stupid House Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=299020)" thread.

Some of these I have individual issues with.

[50,000 other fumble house rules omitted for brevity. Could some guy at the gym swing a sword all day and never drop it?]

Yeah, probably. But maybe it's different when nine feet, 350 pounds of ogre which has never seen a toothbrush is swinging a 7 foot axe at him.

[quote]On the other side of the fence, guys at the gym don't cast spells. So why would spellcasters suffer any of the gym rat's unreasonable limitations?

There's a fairness argument that if there's a fumble/critical mechanic for mundanes, there should be one for casters. Critical--free spell, fumble--spell backfires for damages to the caster.

Originally Posted by Tengu_temp View Post
Rangers don't get spellcasting, because Aragorn didn't cast spells.

I'm not really a fan of fighter-types casting spells, but then again I see the ranger as a rogue subtype--skill monkey with specialized combat abilities. And like the thief I talked about above, high-level rangers make sense having nature-related abilities that have spell equivalents. (Most of the druid list, basically.)

Conclusion
In a better balanced game, things like this wouldn't be necessary. That's because a fit dude with a sword and a bow (a few arrows wouldn't hurt) could be as versatile and effective as anybody else.

No, because in reality, you can't develop all skills and talents equally. If you don't pick one sphere to be good at, you have to pretty much suck at everything. A fit dude who has put in the time to become proficient with a sword and a bow hasn't had the time to put in the study to figure out how to use magic to "tell reality to go jump in a lake." He has to wait a few levels before he has the skills to grab reality, make a grapple check and stick a knife to its neck and dictate terms.

Unfortunately, people - including the writers of the player's handbook - have decided that it wouldn't make sense for the fighter (from the player's handbook, filed under F, after D for Druid) to be able to teleport, or heal, or turn invisible, or break the action economy in any way other than iterative attacks. Guys at the gym hit things with sticks, duh.

In the real world, we make choices. If you decide to major in economics, you can't also major in film study. OK, you could double major, but the point is that there are tradeoffs.

This is fantasy roleplaying. The first question I ask newbie roleplayers is "Do you want your guy to be strong, to be magic, or to be sneaky?" If they say "all of the above," I have to explain that if they try that, they're not going to be especially good at any of them. (See Nale/Elan.)

If the goal is an internally balanced party, the other alternative is that nobody (or everybody) plays martial classes. That works as well, but it rings far weaker to me.

Or de-power the high-level casters, so that the sizable damage that the fighter-types are doing matters again.

Just to Browse

2013-09-13, 12:28 AM

I'm not sure if this count as a "fallacy".

Also it seems more like a Conan thing... but The Conan Problem doesn't have nearly as much of a ring to it.

DarkSonic1337

2013-09-13, 12:35 AM

While maybe the exact example isn't something I think a Rogue would do....fitting through impossibly tight spaces, turning invisible (or maybe just hiding so well that you can't see them despite...looking at them), escaping out of situations with no explicable reason (like Houdini style ****), running straight up ****ing walls or trees, sticking to ceilings, hitting vitals from ridiculous distances, looking like other people (fooling even their closes friends), all to successfully infiltrate the MOST well defended fortress and find all of their dirty little secrets, are EXACTLY what I expect from a rogue in a high fantasy game.

Ninja is not a class, it's a specialization of the broad thing we call Rogue. So is "thief acrobat," assassin, master spy, or other generally sneaky ****. So why doesn't the superclass Rogue get cool things?

Deophaun

2013-09-13, 12:40 AM

So he's fighting, using his combat vigor, and then after a while, he pulls out another six-pack of combat vigor? That doesn't really make much sense. IT doesn't fit their theme.
Sure it does. How many times have you seen a movie where the good guy gets his ass kicked, only to dig deep, find that thing worth living for, and proceed to return the favor ten fold? It's very thematic.

But he shouldn't have superpowers that don't relate to being genre-savvy. He shouldn't be able to fall from space and survive like a high-level barbarian
Real-life human beings have performed similar feats. The human body is remarkably resilient.

This is fantasy roleplaying. The first question I ask newbie roleplayers is "Do you want your guy to be strong, to be magic, or to be sneaky?" If they say "all of the above," I have to explain that if they try that, they're not going to be especially good at any of them. (See Nale/Elan.)
And you would be lying. Totemists can do all of the above (though maybe not all on the same day), and be very good at them. Wizards as well, if they gish (not something for a newbie to really try). A bardblade does all three just fine, if he wants to.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 12:46 AM

You're on to something, but you're mis-identifying the problem.

You list a bunch of "trans-mundane" things that a high-level fighter-type could do that the Guy at the Gym couldn't because we have laws of physics. (You know what, let's just call them superpowers.)

Most spells don't have any logical relation to the fighter-type's concept. LEgendary warriors should have warrior-type superpowers.Glad to see we're on the same page so far.

What you're saying is a funhouse mirror way of saying that "casters (especially high-level casters) are overpowered."The two are essentially equivalent. The difference is small but crucial, mainly that most groups I've played with find tier 5 boring. Not having options is considered a failed build, essentially.

An all-commoner party is underpowered. Conversely, this means that a Samurai is relatively overpowered. But more people would want to play the samurai.

Do you see why I phrased it as what people think of as purely mundane is mechanically underpowered?

So he's fighting, using his combat vigor, and then after a while, he pulls out another six-pack of combat vigor? That doesn't really make much sense. IT doesn't fit their theme.Again, this isn't exactly a guide on what to do with the fighter class in the SRD. Rather, it's a guide on how "martial classes" in general should be treated - classes without explicit magical fluff. It's a response to people calling tome of battle dumb. It's a suggestion for homebrew.

It's not. If your Genresavvyist (swashbuckler? bard? whatever) is well done, he'll have abilities that fit in his theme and source of power.

But he shouldn't have superpowers that don't relate to being genre-savvy. He shouldn't be able to fall from space and survive like a high-level barbarian, or shoot fire from his hands. He sSHOULD be able to find secret doors and detect magic because those are always where they are because Plot.Erm, I agree. I tried to build him high-power but, for a mundane, versatile (I'd call the finished product high tier4 or low tier3). I didn't give him the ability to cast all spells ever. Other tier3s, even full casters like beguilers, can't do that. No tier 3 can fall from space using anything short of fire resist, and high hit points (for reference, my class had D10).

You want to argue that a high-level thieves should be able to be flat-out invisible? I buy that. Fits their theme. Yes, they're so good at hiding and being stealthy that they can walk through a crowded marketplace unseen. In game-mechanic terms, I could see feats that give them Invisibility, Silence, Knock, Darkness, Spider Climb. They have such keen eye for detail that they can Detect Magic, Detect Invisible. Improved Critical on sneak attacks? Sure.

You want to say that they should be able to fly over a cornfield? No, that's stupid.This is what I am saying. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear.

For reference, no tier3 class has fly on their spell list (although factotums, wildshape rangers, warlocks, binders, and likely others could manage).

Without flavor, what are we doing playing D&D? If you want to stack incompatible abilities on top of each other without regard for whether it makes sense, get out a Munchkin deck.There are two ways to build a fighter-type martial class with abilities like true seeing, freedom of movement, fast healing, etc.:

Justify their powers using mundane powers (like Ex Hide in Plain Sights, or my Genre Savvy example).
Make them explicitly magical (Factotums or Shadowdancers).

That's all I'm saying. I'm giving DMs and homebrewers a toolbox for if they like the first option. "Here is why you can justify powers generally though to be supernatural on martial characters. Alternatively, just say that all player characters eventually pick up some magic."

Yeah, probably. But maybe it's different when nine feet, 350 pounds of ogre which has never seen a toothbrush is swinging a 7 foot axe at him.That was my point, actually. Because a guy at the gym would drop his sword, so should fighters. That's the fallacy.

And to address fumbles in a general way - 99% of all fumble mechanics punish mundanes over casters, even with 9-tiered safeguards to prevent it. By the time the results are truly equalized, the rules are a byzantine mess, and it's a lot of effort to go through for a rule that punishes PCs more than monsters in the first place.

No, because in reality, you can't develop all skills and talents equally. If you don't pick one sphere to be good at, you have to pretty much suck at everything. A fit dude who has put in the time to become proficient with a sword and a bow hasn't had the time to put in the study to figure out how to use magic to "tell reality to go jump in a lake." He has to wait a few levels before he has the skills to grab reality, make a grapple check and stick a knife to its neck and dictate terms.

In the real world, we make choices. If you decide to major in economics, you can't also major in film study. OK, you could double major, but the point is that there are tradeoffs.Which brings us back to: Martial characters suck. All of the abilities they have are 100%, strictly, unarguably worse than those of, for instance, tome of battle classes, factotums, or beguilers. If you say "pick one sphere to be good at. Your options are the sphere of versatility and effectiveness, or the sphere of being a load on your party" you are presenting trap choices. This is what the PHB did, and that's what I'm against. Explaining this is the goal of, for instance, the tier system. (note that my arguments are not original - Even the name "the guy at the gym" I've seen around somewhere, I've just never seen it stated concisely).

This is fantasy roleplaying. The first question I ask newbie roleplayers is "Do you want your guy to be strong, to be magic, or to be sneaky?" If they say "all of the above," I have to explain that if they try that, they're not going to be especially good at any of them. (See Nale/Elan.) Actually, no. A tier 3 class is better at all of those than a tier 5 class. Nearly all tier3 classes are in some way magical.

On the other side of balance, the definition of tier 1 is: "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing." But I wasn't dealing with tier 1s in this post. This post only really deals with classes up to tier 3, the point at which nearly everybody is doing something magical.

I hope that explains what I was trying to say a little better. Simply put, we agree a lot more than we disagree. I wrote the majority of this assuming an implicit balace point higher than tier 5. Because according to myself and most people I know, tier 5 is not fun to play. And tier 3 is fun. It's a ton of fun. But it's also "mundanes need not apply."

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 01:10 AM

bekeleven: If you want a martial class to be interesting to play, the only real option in D&D as it exists is to give them abilities normally considered under the purview of spells. Whether these are actual spells is up to you. Tome of battle is a good example of many abilities, largely extraordinary and occasionally supernatural, that make a martial class less one-trick and more versatile by application of abilities generally though of as magical.

If the goal is an internally balanced party, the other alternative is that nobody (or everybody) plays martial classes. That works as well, but it rings far weaker to me.

I can find another way to make them interesting. Give the mundanes a few more things to do and then severaly nerf the casters.

That way noone has to feel left out and suspension of disbelief is not broken.

bekeleven: Why this is a problem
Because mundanes are underpowered.

Or maybe the casters are overpowered?

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 01:22 AM

I can find another way to make them interesting. Give the mundanes a few more things to do and then severaly nerf the casters.The problem is that you're either hitting everybody above tier 5 with a really huge nerf stick, or... well, or you're still doing that, and all of your adventures and encounters are extremely painfully contrived.

Or maybe the casters are overpowered?I've edited the OP to explain why I assume tier 3 as a balance point (hint: because tier 5 is mechanically boring and can't fight encounters of its own CR). In my response to johnbragg I explain a bit further.

eggynack

2013-09-13, 01:28 AM

This is fantasy roleplaying. The first question I ask newbie roleplayers is "Do you want your guy to be strong, to be magic, or to be sneaky?" If they say "all of the above," I have to explain that if they try that, they're not going to be especially good at any of them. (See Nale/Elan.)

Or you could just give them a druid, and give them simultaneous competence in all three aspects simultaneously. Sneakiness is a little more distant than the other two, but it's doable, particularly if you work at it. Small wild shape forms can get you pretty far. Alternatively, you could go cleric, which can hit all three without stretching. Alternatively alternatively, bards are actually pretty sweet, and factotums are even better.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 01:32 AM

Glad to see we're on the same page so far.

The two are essentially equivalent. The difference is small but crucial, mainly that most groups I've played with find tier 5 boring. Not having options is considered a failed build, essentially.

I don't know. I think part of it is that my knowledge is somewhat obsolete--I haven't gamed regularly since 2009, and we didn't use much splatbook. Frankly, I don't know what the majority of the classes in this list are.
http://www.brilliantgameologists.com/boards/?topic=1002.0

An all-commoner party is underpowered. Conversely, this means that a Samurai is relatively overpowered. But more people would want to play the samurai.

Do you see why I phrased it as what people think of as purely mundane is mechanically underpowered?

Yes, I do. But I don't know that the best way to handle it is to power up the mundanes--I think that's how we ended up with those cheesy-sounding Tier 3 classes in the first place. That just creates an arms race, since the caster-classes take a look at the powers and abilities and say "That's pretty nice, I'm going to start researching that as a spell."

Again, this isn't exactly a guide on what to do with the fighter class in the SRD. Rather, it's a guide on how "martial classes" in general should be treated - classes without explicit magical fluff. It's a response to people calling tome of battle dumb. It's a suggestion for homebrew.

There are two ways to build a fighter-type martial class with abilities like true seeing, freedom of movement, fast healing, etc.:

Justify their powers using mundane powers (like Ex Hide in Plain Sights, or my Genre Savvy example).
Make them explicitly magical (Factotums or Shadowdancers).

No, I think there's another option--make an argument that it's an outgrowth of their combat focus, and maybe limit it accordingly. When he's in combat, he's in his element and can do amazing things. A feat that allows a high-level fighter to see through illusions as combat went on? That would be a great feat, and would make all kinds of sense. Walking down a dungeon corridor with no enemies in sight? Not as much.

Fast healing? That makes sense for a combat-focused character. (I think it makes more sense than giving the fighter the equivalent of a Cure Wounds spell).

That's all I'm saying. I'm giving DMs and homebrewers a toolbox for if they like the first option. "Here is why you can justify powers generally though to be supernatural on martial characters. Alternatively, just say that all player characters eventually pick up some magic."

I like the last approach. Magic is shaping reality to your focused willpower, and high level fighters start doing that through their combat abilities. High level rangers do that with plants and animals. Rogues do that with stealth and subtlety. ETc.

Which brings us back to: Martial characters suck. All of the abilities they have are 100%, strictly, unarguably worse than those of, for instance, tome of battle classes, factotums, or beguilers.

So if those classes fight as well, or almost as well, as fighter-types, while casting like a bard (or maybe better), then those classes are garbage.

If you say "pick one sphere to be good at. Your options are the sphere of versatility and effectiveness, or the sphere of being a load on your party" you are presenting trap choices. This is what the PHB did, and that's what I'm against.

That's not my experience with Core 3.0 or 3.5, but I never played at really high levels where weapon damage becomes trivial.

But it certainly sounds like 3.5 + Widely Accepted Splatbooks did that.

Explaining this is the goal of, for instance, the tier system. (note that my arguments are not original - Even the name "the guy at the gym" I've seen around somewhere, I've just never seen it stated concisely).

I think there is a dual problem. The original problem was that casters had an advantage over noncasters. The "fix" made the problem worse--base classes that added casting to mundanes. Which just created classes that still weren't as good as the elite casters, while making the martial classes redundant.

I think the answer was to rein in the casters.

Actually, no. A tier 3 class is better at all of those than a tier 5 class. Nearly all tier3 classes are in some way magical.

And they still fight at least as well as clerics, right? Horsecrap.

On the other side of balance, the definition of tier 1 is: "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing." But I wasn't dealing with tier 1s in this post. This post only really deals with classes up to tier 3, the point at which nearly everybody is doing something magical.

Yeah, if the choices are "guy who's really good with a sword" vs "guy who's pretty good with a sword and pretty good with magic and has other good skills" then yeah. Without buying Tome of Battle, I don't know if those classes should have been prestige classes or just should have been chucked. But they certainly don't sound like base classes, which is what they are.

I hope that explains what I was trying to say a little better. Simply put, we agree a lot more than we disagree.

Like I said at the beginning, You're on to something, but you're mis-identifying the problem.

I wrote the majority of this assuming an implicit balace point higher than tier 5. Because according to myself and most people I know, tier 5 is not fun to play.

Paladin is listed as Tier 5. Something has gone horribly wrong when the conventional wisdom is "Paladins just don't get enough sparkly shiny toys."

And tier 3 is fun. It's a ton of fun. But it's also "mundanes need not apply."

I think part of the problem is stupid classes. Part of the problem is weakness in the design of the base casters. But is part of it also playing at levels where weapon damage and armor worn are trivial?

Toy Killer

2013-09-13, 01:32 AM

I always found it interesting that the crux of fantasy is an evil wizard is up to no good, making trouble in the neighborhood and such, but every 'Obviously BBEG' class features at least some spell casting.

Either they knew spell casting was above par, and never figured to allow fighter types a mean to inhibit it, or they just didn't consider the ramifications of allowing spell casters on both sides of the DM screen.

I was really intrigued at the idea of NPC classes when I heard of it, I thought it was how they were going to balance a Big Bad against a similar level party. Instead, I got commoners, warriors, experts and nobles.

A_S

2013-09-13, 01:33 AM

Why this fallacy doesn't even make sense
Mundanes in D&D do things gym rats can't dream of already! Imagine your local weight lifter running 80 feet and stabbing an armored knight multiple times within six seconds. Imagine him firing arrows at a rate of nearly 1 per second and still reliably hitting targets 100 yards away. That's not just impossible, that's past legolas impossible. That's legend-tier archery. So why is he unable to heal his wounds, even when HP can be considered abstract enough to mean "combat vigor" or "fighting spirit"?
This is the part of your post that doesn't quite work for me. You already acknowledged earlier in your post that our ideal mundane would be able to do the kinds of things that we think of as possible, just way better (at high levels, at least) than anybody in real life can do them. A pouncing barbarian is just another example of that stuff. And that's exactly as it should be.

What I mean by "as it should be" is that the quote you have from Psyren at the beginning of your post isn't a fallacy. He hasn't misunderstood anything about D&D, or mis-applied any logic. He's just saying, essentially, "it's nice to be able to play a character who does realistic-ish stuff but is just a whole lot better at it than normal people, and fixes for mundanes that step outside that framework leave me feeling unsatisfied, because they don't feel mundane anymore." And, of course, the natural extension of that sentiment is, "it would be nice to be able to play a character like that and not suck."

If you want a martial class to be interesting to play, the only real option in D&D as it exists is to give them abilities normally considered under the purview of spells.
This is absolutely true, but it didn't have to be. Game systems, even fantasy combat simulation systems, exist where it isn't true. Mundanes are on par with normals in the Elder Scrolls games, for instance. And (somewhat) in Shadowrun.

So, tl;dr, the sentiment you're arguing against isn't something that I think can properly be dismissed as a fallacy. It's just the wish that you could be The Guy at the Gym without sucking. You're right that 3.5 isn't really a good system for that. But the wish itself isn't fallacious; it's just a wish for how the system could have been different.

Just to Browse

2013-09-13, 01:37 AM

johnsbragg, you're shuffling goalposts a lot and it makes it hard to identify how to argue with you. Could you state your point so we can avoid the landslide of disconnected sound-byte refutes that are bound to start cropping up?

So if those classes fight as well, or almost as well, as fighter-types, while casting like a bard (or maybe better), then those classes are garbage. Like this. By 'those classes', I assume you mean the T5's, which are not 'garbage' by any standard except that they're way worse than the T3's that bekeleven talked about. He explicitly said that those classes underperform relative to T3 classes, not that they're objectively bad (because this is a free form game and objective badness does not exist).

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 01:44 AM

Honestly I'm fine with the idea of being so badass you tap into magic/reality warping, even if it's not the same way that a spellcaster taps into it, so I've never really understood the desire to be a badass on par with Gilgamesh while still being totally mundane.

The idea of any high level character being "mundane" sticks in my craw as it is. That's part of why I like the idea from World of Prime (http://www.worldofprime.com/) where additional class levels are actually a supernatural thing in and of themselves.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 01:47 AM

bekeleven: The problem is that you're either hitting everybody above tier 5 with a really huge nerf stick, or... well, or you're still doing that, and all of your adventures and encounters are extremely painfully contrived.

Well maybe i should have explained myself better. I don´t think that the way to balance D&D is to up the mundanes to tier 1 and 2. I think it´s somewhere in the middle.

Give the mundanes more stuff (but keep it sane, no jumping over a mountain) and nerf the casters so that they meet in the middle (tier 3-4).
By doing this you might end up gimping the gishes so they should propably be looked over to.

bekeleven: I've edited the OP to explain why I assume tier 3 as a balance point (hint: because tier 5 is mechanically boring and can't fight encounters of its own CR). In my response to johnbragg I explain a bit further.

Oh, you must have changed it while i was posting cause i didn´t see that...:smallredface:

It would seem that we are in complete agreement.

I was just reacting to you saying that the only way to balance a party is to give the mundanes superpowers. I think they can become tier 3 by giving them more stuff and then nerfing the casters down to tier 3 also.

But maybe this is just a matter of differing playstyles.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 01:51 AM

johnsbragg, you're shuffling goalposts a lot and it makes it hard to identify how to argue with you. Could you state your point so we can avoid the landslide of disconnected sound-byte refutes that are bound to start cropping up?

OK. I guess my point or points are:
1. I didn't find 3.5 to be broken.
2. I think slapping magic-user-y abilities on fighter-types creates thematic incoherence.
3. A lot of classes have crept in that tried to solve the problem of fighters not being as good as casters by letting casters fight, and those classes suck.
4. The problem is that the high-level casters were and are overpowered.

Like this. By 'those classes', I assume you mean the T5's, which are not 'garbage' by any standard except that they're way worse than the T3's that bekeleven talked about. He explicitly said that those classes underperform relative to T3 classes, not that they're objectively bad (because this is a free form game and objective badness does not exist).

No, I mean the "Tier 3" classes. They're supposed to be on a level with the Bard, who was known for being a mediocre fighter, mediocre magic-user and mediocre thief. But it doesn't seem to have worked out that way.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 01:56 AM

This is the part of your post that doesn't quite work for me. You already acknowledged earlier in your post that our ideal mundane would be able to do the kinds of things that we think of as possible, just way better (at high levels, at least) than anybody in real life can do them. A pouncing barbarian is just another example of that stuff. And that's exactly as it should be.

What I mean by "as it should be" is that the quote you have from Psyren at the beginning of your post isn't a fallacy. He hasn't misunderstood anything about D&D, or mis-applied any logic. He's just saying, essentially, "it's nice to be able to play a character who does realistic-ish stuff but is just a whole lot better at it than normal people, and fixes for mundanes that step outside that framework leave me feeling unsatisfied, because they don't feel mundane anymore." And, of course, the natural extension of that sentiment is, "it would be nice to be able to play a character like that and not suck."

This is absolutely true, but it didn't have to be. Game systems, even fantasy combat simulation systems, exist where it isn't true. Mundanes are on par with normals in the Elder Scrolls games, for instance. And (somewhat) in Shadowrun.

So, tl;dr, the sentiment you're arguing against isn't something that I think can properly be dismissed as a fallacy. It's just the wish that you could be The Guy at the Gym without sucking. You're right that 3.5 isn't really a good system for that. But the wish itself isn't fallacious; it's just a wish for how the system could have been different.

The sentiment that I'm arguing against is people saying that martial/mundane classes can't do interesting things because it doesn't make sense. In the words of hamishspence: Common sense and RAW are not exactly on speaking terms.

In the first part, I note that the people complaining about, say, martial classes with invisibility/fast healing/etc. don't realize that mundane actions already "Strain disbelief" plenty. Why is a rogue with either of those abilities not "doing realistic-ish stuff but a whole lot better"?

In the second part you quote, well... we agree 100%. That's why I was specifically addressing D&D 3.0 and related systems, and not elder scrolls games, D&D4, Shadowrun, Exalted, etc etc etc...

The game is fundamentally poorly designed from the get-go. Tome of Battle is essentially an apology to martial classes for having started them off with fighters and paladins.

Johnbragg, you may want to read why each class is in its tier (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5256.0). And as a high-level overview for all those "stupid classes":

Wizards of the Coast, after publishing the core 3.5 books, could continue to add to the rules and player options through splatbooks. However, it's very hard to directly depower someone or something using another book. If you introduce one saying "all spells fail 20% of the time", then gaming groups (or individual people) that like spells simply won't use it. Therefore the solution was two-fold: first, to introduce options to increase power level of non-casters, and second, to introduce options to decrease power levels of casters.

Behind door number 1 is primarily the Tome of Battle classes. They're classes that act as direct replacements to the fighter, paladin, barbarian, and rogue (with an alternative class feature to replace the monk's role as well). They are significantly more powerful, have many fun abilities that are largely nonmagical (they can dash, parry, flank better, etc.) as well as a few that are magical (short range teleport, fire swords, etc.) that are optional to use.

Behind door number 2 are focused casters such as Dread Necromancers (necromancy), Beguilers (illusion), warmages (evocation), or healers (healing, and they're terrible, I probably shouldn't mention them). They do a few things that (for example) Wizards cannot, and are flavorful and have fun unique powers, but lack the overall world-altering power that comes with tier 1s. Mainly, this power consists of Gate/Planar Ally spells, Save-or-Lose spells (or lose-or-lose spells, which are worse), action economy abuse, and divination abuse.

So inexperienced players say "I want to play the dread necromancer because I can be cooler and be a super undead user person!" A more experienced player might say "I want to play a dread necro because they can do a few fun things that wizards can't, and because I won't throw my party out of balance, which leads to things like player/dm hate, too much responsibility on my shoulders, other players not having fun, DM increasing challenge levels until the other players are useless, etc." So the only situation in which the focused casters don't help is experienced players being munchkin jerks, which is a RL issue that should be solved by talking to the player.

Factotums, Warlocks, and others are mixtures or too complicated for this extremely simple summary.

Incidentally, a core-only bard is a far lower tier 3 (maybe tier 4?), because they get so much power from non-core abilities like Dragonfire Inspiration.

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 01:56 AM

Essentially it's the difference between "casters are OP" and "casters are OP, also fighters suck."

DarkSonic1337

2013-09-13, 02:18 AM

Well maybe i should have explained myself better. I don´t think that the way to balance D&D is to up the mundanes to tier 1 and 2. I think it´s somewhere in the middle.

Give the mundanes more stuff (but keep it sane, no jumping over a mountain) and nerf the casters so that they meet in the middle (tier 3-4).
By doing this you might end up gimping the gishes so they should propably be looked over to.

What's wrong with a Monk jumping over a mountain exactly? Duskblades can still Dimension Door, Beguiler can still Shadow Walk, Swordsage can "BALANCE ON THE SKY," but jumping really high/far is a problem?

This is the problem the OP is trying to illustrate? What's wrong with IMPOSSIBLY TALENTED characters doing impossible things?

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 02:19 AM

What's wrong with a Monk jumping over a mountain exactly? Duskblades can still Dimension Door, Beguiler can still Shadow Walk, Swordsage can "BALANCE ON THE SKY," but jumping really high/far is a problem?

This is the problem the OP is trying to illustrate? What's wrong with IMPOSSIBLY TALENTED characters doing impossible things?

Figuring out the time scale for it might be wonky and working out the trajectory would be a nightmare?

Could definitely use an infusion of awesome in places.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 02:23 AM

Figuring out the time scale for it might be wonky What's so wonky about it? (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0176.html)

Gemini476

2013-09-13, 02:33 AM

It occurs to me that some other examples of this fallacy would be the whole "Tome of Weeaboo Fightan' Magic" argument and also a whole lot of stuff with 4e. It seems to me that Wizards seemed to have realised some part of this fallacy over the years, and that led to the 4e philosophy of "Everyone has a little magic". Whether they succeeded at that or not is arguable, but at least the mundanes have more stuff they can do.

As for the thing I mentioned with "Weeaboo Fightan' Magic", that's because the three big arguments I've seen against the Tome of Battle are:
a)Too Anime!
b)These classes are overpowered and/or replace ones I like!
c)This isn't mundane, this is magic! Mundanes aren't allowed to do these things!

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 02:43 AM

DarkSonic1337: What's wrong with a Monk jumping over a mountain exactly? Duskblades can still Dimension Door, Beguiler can still Shadow Walk, Swordsage can "BALANCE ON THE SKY," but jumping really high/far is a problem?

This is the problem the OP is trying to illustrate? What's wrong with IMPOSSIBLY TALENTED characters doing impossible things?

What´s wrong with it?

Well for me it´s that it shatters my suspension of disbelief. While i do think that monks (and indeed other mundanes) should be able to do cool things i just think that being able to jump a mountain makes it the kind of game i don´t want to participate in.

While i don´t have my books with me right now i can´t be sure, but doesn´t dimension door have a rather limited range... can a duskblade teleport over a mountain??

While i don´t know much about the beguilers abilities i believe i mentioned in my post that i also wanted to nerf the casters. If shadow walk is the kind of spell that can be abused so that the mundanes are useless i think that should be nerfed as well.

Anyway that´s magic and as such should be able to do things that a mundane can´t. But nerf the power of magic and give the mundanes something that the casters can´t do.
But for the love of all that is good... keep it non-magical. I really don´t like the idea that magic is the only way if you want to compete with casters.

And regarding the swordsage... I never said that a monk being able to jump a building mountain in a single bound was the only thing that strained shattered my suspension of disbelief. To balance on the sky is equally dumb IMO and shouldn´t be allowed either.

But if that´s the kind of game you want to play go right on ahead.

Thats why i ended my post by saying that this whole discussion is fundamentally a matter of preference. :smallsmile:

DeltaEmil

2013-09-13, 02:49 AM

The Monkey King, one of the most iconic monk-characters in the whole world, once jumped over a mountain.

Except that it was the hand of the Gautama-Buddha, and the Monkey King ended under a heavy stone.

Then again, it's not clear if the Monkey King really jumped over a mountain, was just hypnotized by the Buddha into believing he did that, or the Buddha manipulated reality to make the mountain into his hand at his whim.

Firechanter

2013-09-13, 03:22 AM

OK. I guess my point or points are:
1. I didn't find 3.5 to be broken.
...
4. The problem is that the high-level casters were and are overpowered.

See, that's a bit of a contradiction there. 3.5 is broken exactly _because_ full casters are OP. As for the "high-level", depends where you begin to count.

No, I mean the "Tier 3" classes. They're supposed to be on a level with the Bard, who was known for being a mediocre fighter, mediocre magic-user and mediocre thief. But it doesn't seem to have worked out that way.

I'm afraid you're "misunderestimating" the Bard a little here. Yeah, a PHB Bard is rather mediocre, but with some splatbook application he becomes a decent fighter, versatile caster and, above all, an excellent buffer (mainly due to Inspire Courage optimization).

Then I guess the previous posts haven't quite made clear what ToB classes do, because most people here have the ToB and know what it's about. Those classes are not OP at all. There are the Crusader, the Swordsage and the Warblade. None of them get spellcasting, but each of them gets access to a number of "martial disciplines", which unlock "maneuvers" that improve your combat abilities. Those maneuvers are tiered in levels just like magic spells, and you need to ready (prepare) them like spells. The difference is that you can switch your readied maneuvers, and they also refresh easily so you can use them multiple times per day. Essentially you never run out for longer than one round.

There are nine disciplines, and only two of them have a decidedly supernatural touch; one of these is fire- and the other shadow-themed, and both of them are available only to the Swordsage.
* The SS has 3/4 BAB and a wide selection of maneuvers that make his fighting style somewhat rogue/monk/ninja-like. Actually, the SS is generally regarded as the better Ninja, which is why on these boards, we don't talk of "ninja-edits/posts" but of being/having "swordsaged" a post. =D
* The Crusader is sort of a replacement to the Paladin, and his disciplines revolve primarily around Defending (preventing enemies from attacking your teammates) and Leading (giving bonuses to your teammates), with a little splash of in-combat healing (you can heal yourself or a teammate _by hitting an enemy_, so you don't even waste actions). He also receives combat bonuses for getting hit. It's this ability to fulfill two combat roles simultaneously that make the Crusader a T3.
* The Warblade finally has the chassis of a Barbarian (i.e. D12 HD etc), but instead of Rage and suchlike he also gets maneuvers. Also, he is not a "dumb brute" but rather an "intelligent warrior" type (he gets some small Int synergies). His disciplines are non-supernatural, but they _are_ extraordinary. For example, he can shake off debuffing statuses imposed on him (By Crom!). His combat roles are Striker and Leader. He does the Leading bit just as well as the Crusader, but he is better at dishing out damage than preventing it. Several of his maneuvers are better than a full Fighter feat chain, but that's fine because those feat chains sucked.

So yes, each of these classes is more powerful than their Monk/Paladin/Fighter counterpart, and when ToB is in play there is little reason to play any of the old classes except for 1-2 level dips. But that's a good thing because the original classes are, for the most part, terrible.
(Note that Paladins _can_ be awesome but you have to pull all kinds of feats and ACFs that replace pretty much everything a Paladin normally does.)

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 03:23 AM

It's a DC 4000 Jump Check to jump over a 1000' tall mountain, apparently. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm)

JaronK

2013-09-13, 03:29 AM

Gemini476

2013-09-13, 03:43 AM

I think the way it should be in D&D is that at low levels casters do impossible things to possible degrees while mundanes should do possible things to possible degrees. At high levels, casters do impossible things to impossible degrees while mundanes should do possible things to impossible degrees.

For example, at low level a caster might do an impossible thing (move objects with their mind, mentally manipulate someone) to a possible degree (unlock a door, charm the person) while a mundane might do a possible thing (use lockpicks, speak well) to a possible degree (unlock a door, charm a person). At high levels, the caster does an impossible thing (creating a summoning magic circle, launching fire from their fingertips) to impossible degrees (ask a god a question, kill an entire battalion of enemies) while mundanes should do possible things (punch really hard, shoot a bow) to impossible degrees (punch through the fabric of reality to grab hold of a god and ask it a question, launch a hundred arrows to kill a battalion of enemies).

JaronK

...Are you aware of the Nasuverse, perchance? It's anime (Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night, also Visual Novels), but it has a magic system that is very similar to what you said. Magecraft can do anything that would be technically possible without it, such as shoot fireballs (lighter+aerosol) or communicate over long distances (shouting, walking over and talking, telephones.) Magic meanwhile does the things that are impossible without it, like time-travel or bringing back the dead, but is "lost" if those things later become possible.

I'm mostly mentioning this because there is certainly some fictional basis for this type of magic, even if it's from Urban Fantasy.

Oh, and for the guy who mentioned the Elder Scrolls? Mundane characters are hardly mundane, what with dodging arrows like Neo, Thu'ums and being the frikkin' Nerevarine. And if you get into the lore it gets even more superhuman.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 03:57 AM

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 04:18 AM

On the ToB classes: it's possible to argue that they're mostly high tier 4 since they don't do much outside of combat (but they do combat really well). Also, the fighter, while considered tier 5, can be pushed to tier 4 with some support (Zhent fighter, dungeoncrasher).

But that's all a crapshoot really, since it doesn't change the fact that the more magic you access the higher on the tier list you find yourself (more or less).

I don't get the fallacy though? It seems to partly hinge on the idea that a class is also a profession. 3.5 is the system where classes mean the least in the game. They are really just vehicles to acheive the hero you want, and in that sense the fighter can be a great class.

eggynack

2013-09-13, 04:25 AM

I don't get the fallacy though? It seems to partly hinge on the idea that a class is also a profession. 3.5 is the system where classes mean the least in the game. They are really just vehicles to acheive the hero you want, and in that sense the fighter can be a great class.
If there's any fallacy, I've always considered it to be the fact that magic is considered to be somehow distinct from reality. If you say certain words, and raise a focus into the air, and make crazy symbols with your hands, and that causes you to fly, you're not breaking the laws of physics. You're merely enacting laws of physics that are different than what we're used to. This is especially true given that magic is perfectly consistent, repeatable, and testable. I don't see why something similar can't be true for a fighter. Maybe his sword can cut into the heart of man to learn the truth of things, or maybe he can smash his hammer against the earth and make earthquakes. These things might not be a component of our mundane physics, but I don't see why it can't be a part of theirs.

Gemini476

2013-09-13, 04:32 AM

physics

Oh, and do note that the physics of 3.5 are clearly extremely different from our own. Even ignoring bad editing like the three different models of physics for falling, you can have two people who jump in the same parabolic trajectory, but they travel through it at different speeds.

Killing catgirls, etc.

Bhaakon

2013-09-13, 04:44 AM

Oh, and do note that the physics of 3.5 are clearly extremely different from our own. Even ignoring bad editing like the three different models of physics for falling, you can have two people who jump in the same parabolic trajectory, but they travel through it at different speeds.

Killing catgirls, etc.

Lots of people like to run games devoid of catgirls, if you catch my meaning.

Drawing a distinct line between mundane and magical is clearly a stylistic preference, not a fallacy, as is the precise flavor of the magical power you prefer in your setting. As long as those are the points at issue, we might as well be arguing over what color dice to roll.

Lord Raziere

2013-09-13, 04:46 AM

this discussion I guess is one of the reasons why Exalted exists: to allow super-powerful "mundane" archetypes to have their ridiculous feats of jumping over mountains and cutting the earth in half and other such incredible stuff through pure physical combat instead of spellcasting.

that and you really don't understand (anime) martial arts if you think its "physical", martial arts isn't about your fist. its not about the physical body.
the fist is merely the package for the true attack, the energy inside. think of the fist like a bullet, the bullet itself is harmless, its the fact that it has the kinetic energy of a focused explosion making it zoom towards you that is the problem.

its the same with all anime martial arts, and some real world martial arts- sure it has a physical aspect, but all of its more about the internal focus of your energy and learning how to manipulate it better. anime martial arts just take this and be a little more literal and fantastic about it….and wuxia as well

so really, the martial stuff being over-the-top and leaping over mountains is more plausible in a fantasy universe- because that worlds energies is permeated with magic. and at some point, everyone is going to have some form of magical energy, and martial artists are obviously going have way to focus that energy to do certain things. its not that they are ridiculously strong or anything, its just that they know how to focus all their energy exactly to make certain things happen.

a martial artist doesn't fight a dragon with strength. they fight knowing how the energy flows through their body and where to strike and how to disrupt that flow or even change the energy within into something else. the reason that they can cause earthquakes is because they know exactly how to focus their energy to achieve that cascade effect throughout the earth.

sort of like someone throwing a pebble into a pond. now imagine that everything is a pond, and that if you throw the pebble right, you can make any kind of ripples you want.

Just to Browse

2013-09-13, 04:52 AM

eggynack

2013-09-13, 04:53 AM

Drawing a distinct line between mundane and magical is clearly a stylistic preference, not a fallacy, as is the precise flavor of the magical power you prefer in your setting. As long as that the point at issue, we might as well be arguing over what color dice to roll.
That's the thing of it though. I don't really understand how a distinct line between magical and mundane makes sense. Magic is pretty clearly physics. My usual example is a real life guy shooting fireballs. Like, let's say some guy popped up with the ability to spontaneously create fireballs. He's really doing this, and he subjects himself to testing, and everyone's really cool about it.

Afterwards, would it make sense to say that the laws of physics are broken? Perhaps as we understand them. However, the real answer is that the laws of physics that we have merely need to be revised to account for this new factor, and then things just kinda settle around that new state of existence. We'd have new scientific laws like, "energy cannot be created or destroyed, unless you accumulate enough bat guano. In that case, go right ahead." Maybe there will be some way to slot this stuff directly into our current understanding of physics, and maybe there'll need to be a hardcore revision of everything we hold true, but the end result won't be "physics, unless magic." It'll be, "magic, because physics."

Firechanter

2013-09-13, 04:54 AM

On the ToB classes: it's possible to argue that they're mostly high tier 4 since they don't do much outside of combat (but they do combat really well).

It's possible to argue the sky is green, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. T3 means you can do multiple things well. Nowhere does it say that these things have to be inside and outside of combat. While Crusader and Warblade do have little out-of-combat utility (but still more than a Fighter), they both fill at least _two_ roles in combat (as I said, Defender+Leader and Striker+Leader, respectively), and fill them not just so-so, but very well; simultaneously if need be. (I'm counting the Crusader's predisposition for Lockdown as Defending, although it could also be classified as small-scale Controlling.) And they can even heal themselves up in combat if they want, without losing their attacks!
And as for Swordsages, they can fight reasonably well and they do have out-of-combat utility (short-range teleport by itself accounts for a lot).
Ergo, all three of them are T3. Maybe low-ish compared to the casters, but they are there nonetheless.

Bhaakon

2013-09-13, 04:56 AM

That's the thing of it though. I don't really understand how a distinct line between magical and mundane makes sense.

Because magic doesn't exist in the real world. Yes, that's imposing baggage from the real world onto a fictional one in a way that might not make sense in the internal logical of that fictional world, but there it is. The whole point of playing a mundane character, for some, is that they're not magical. At all.

eggynack

2013-09-13, 05:03 AM

Because magic doesn't exist in the real world. Yes, that's imposing baggage from the real world onto a fictional one in a way that might not make sense in the internal logical of that fictional world, but there it is. The whole point of playing a mundane character, for some, is that they're not magical. At all.
Perhaps, but that's kinda where we get into fallacy territory, rather than the realm of preferences. Imposing baggage from the real world onto a fictional one in this manner is, as you noted, illogical. That also gets us back to the main point of the thread. You say that mundane folks can't be magical at all, where being magical is defined as doing stuff you can't do in the real world, but the implications of that are problematic. They mean that a guy with a big hammer can't use it to make an earthquake, because no one on earth can do that. The fallacy lies in the idea that we should be able to draw one to one parallels between everything mundane and something in real life, and any expansion of that is viewed as magical. It's a problematic limitation, and I assert that it is an artificial one as well.

Bhaakon

2013-09-13, 05:23 AM

Perhaps, but that's kinda where we get into fallacy territory, rather than the realm of preferences.

Preference are not necessarily logical, so trying to argue against them with logic is itself fallacious.

I'll call it the "trying to account for taste fallacy."

It's a problematic limitation, and I assert that it is an artificial one as well.

Fiction is artifice.

DeltaEmil

2013-09-13, 05:25 AM

He also defeated (or at least fooled) a god (several??).

I wouldn´t enjoy a game in which that was possible.Chinese gods aren't that special compared to D&D 3e spellcasters. They're just immortal slightly better-than-average-human beings, which is why the Monkey King could easily terrorize the gods by flinging celestial horse droppings at them, ruined banquettes, did other toilet-humor things so disgusting that the Celestial Emperor had to call the Gautama-Buddha himself to stop the Monkey King.

Funnily enough, my example becomes an allegory about tier differences that are older than D&D in how a mighty monk (the Monkey King, God of Martial Arts) still got easily owned by a reality-reshaping sage.
The Monkey King then leveled as enlightened one :smalltongue:, because knowledge is greater than martial prowess, even the physical might of the mighty Monkey King. Enlightenment needs to be nerfed.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 05:29 AM

Perhaps, but that's kinda where we get into fallacy territory, rather than the realm of preferences. Imposing baggage from the real world onto a fictional one in this manner is, as you noted, illogical. That also gets us back to the main point of the thread. You say that mundane folks can't be magical at all, where being magical is defined as doing stuff you can't do in the real world, but the implications of that are problematic. They mean that a guy with a big hammer can't use it to make an earthquake, because no one on earth can do that. The fallacy lies in the idea that we should be able to draw one to one parallels between everything mundane and something in real life, and any expansion of that is viewed as magical. It's a problematic limitation, and I assert that it is an artificial one as well.

Nope, still preference :smallsmile:

If you want to play in a world where there are no similarities between real world and fantasy world physics then that´s cool with me.

But i want to play in a world where i can succeed without (what i define as) complete over the top action.

You may not agree, but that´s a matter of preference.

DarkSonic1337

2013-09-13, 05:31 AM

There are still very fundamental limitations to what mundanes can do without it feeling dissonant. When you can shoot a thousand arrows to clear out armies, or one giant arrow that pieces a hundred people, you feel less like an actual vanilla action hero and more like a sorcerer reskinned as a fighter.

Isn't arrow rain like a staple of fantasy archery?

I mean come on, why can't archers be more like Hawkeye? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gSrgtYCw_U#t=1m36s

His super can shoot BACKWARDS to make sure it hits. And he's got poison arrows, net arrows, piercing arrows (as in they pierce through multiple targets) and all kinds of goodies.

BWR

2013-09-13, 05:43 AM

I mean come on, why can't archers be more like Hawkeye? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gSrgtYCw_U#t=1m36s

His super can shoot BACKWARDS to make sure it hits. And he's got poison arrows, net arrows, piercing arrows (as in they pierce through multiple targets) and all kinds of goodies.

Meh, Hawkeye's an inferior rip-off of Green Arrow.

Lo! the pointless derailment begins.

Gemini476

2013-09-13, 05:44 AM

There are still very fundamental limitations to what mundanes can do without it feeling dissonant. When you can shoot a thousand arrows to clear out armies, or one giant arrow that pieces a hundred people, you feel less like an actual vanilla action hero and more like a sorcerer reskinned as a fighter.

High level Fighters shouldn't be action heroes, they should be Epic Heroes, like Herakles, Achilles, Gilgamesh and their like. They should be just about invulnerable death-machines that can kill a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. They should go against armies, and their arrows should blot out the sun.

Actually, (near-) invulnerability to physical damage seems to be somewhat common in legendary heroes (see also: King Arthur and the sheath of Excalibur). Why is the Barbarian the only one with DR or Fast Healing?

The Rose Dragon

2013-09-13, 05:47 AM

But i want to play in a world where i can succeed without (what i define as) complete over the top action.

You may not agree, but that´s a matter of preference.

So you want to play a game without superheroes, while playing a system designed with the prevalence of superheroes in mind.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 06:00 AM

Chinese gods aren't that special compared to D&D 3e spellcasters. They're just immortal slightly better-than-average-human beings, which is why the Monkey King could easily terrorize the gods by flinging celestial horse droppings at them, ruined banquettes, did other toilet-humor things so disgusting that the Celestial Emperor had to call the Gautama-Buddha himself to stop the Monkey King.

Funnily enough, my example becomes an allegory about tier differences that are older than D&D in how a mighty monk (the Monkey King, God of Martial Arts) still got easily owned by a reality-reshaping sage.
The Monkey King then leveled as enlightened one :smalltongue:, because knowledge is greater than martial prowess, even the physical might of the mighty Monkey King. Enlightenment needs to be nerfed.

If the Monkey King jumped Mountains and the Buddha guy defeated him by altering reality it only goes to show that casters are to powerful... Even when faced with a monk that could jump mountains.
Only when the Monkey King got some magic of his own could he prevail.

Conclusion: casters need to be nerfed, and mundanes need to get some shiny new toys :smallcool:

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 06:08 AM

It's possible to argue the sky is green, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. T3 means you can do multiple things well. Nowhere does it say that these things have to be inside and outside of combat. While Crusader and Warblade do have little out-of-combat utility (but still more than a Fighter), they both fill at least _two_ roles in combat (as I said, Defender+Leader and Striker+Leader, respectively), and fill them not just so-so, but very well; simultaneously if need be. (I'm counting the Crusader's predisposition for Lockdown as Defending, although it could also be classified as small-scale Controlling.) And they can even heal themselves up in combat if they want, without losing their attacks!
And as for Swordsages, they can fight reasonably well and they do have out-of-combat utility (short-range teleport by itself accounts for a lot).
Ergo, all three of them are T3. Maybe low-ish compared to the casters, but they are there nonetheless.

Ok, let's restate T3:

Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.

Then, there are the challenges:

Situation 1: A Black Dragon has been plaguing an area, and he lives in a trap filled cave. Deal with him.

Situation 2: You have been tasked by a nearby country with making contact with the leader of the underground slave resistance of an evil tyranical city state, and get him to trust you.

Situation 3: A huge army of Orcs is approaching the city, and should be here in a week or so. Help the city prepare for war.

Crusader: Will have a hard time contributing to the exploratory and trap avoidance phase of the quest of situation 1
May be able to contribute to situation 2 (has diplomacy and intimidate as class skills), but have no to little chance of actually finding the underground slave resistance.
Situation 3: Yup, this is what the crusader does

Warblade: Again, not exactly shining at getting past a trap-filled dungeon. Dragon-slaying though, will contribute.
Situation 2 again can't contribute meaningfully until the resistance leader is found
Situation 3: May be able to kill legions of orcs by himself

The swordsage I'm not going to touch, as it is quite clearly T3. The other two though, can't really see how they are that much different from a barbarian, warlock, or the other T4.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 06:20 AM

Gemini476: High level Fighters shouldn't be action heroes, they should be Epic Heroes, like Herakles, Achilles, Gilgamesh and their like. They should be just about invulnerable death-machines that can kill a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. They should go against armies, and their arrows should blot out the sun.

I disagree strongly... like Hercules strongly.

This sort of over the top action only serves to bore me.

Remember the Disney version of the three musketeers?
At the convent when the 4 heroes are supposed to fight each other they are interrupted by the Cardinals guards. That fight is 7 vs. 4 and is (IMO) very cool.

Then look at the version with the flying ships (can´t remember who's responsible for that travesty). Same scene, only 4 against 300. BORING!!!!!

That sort of battle takes all the tension out of it as the bad guys are so clearly outmatched... The heroes are in no real danger.

The Rose Dragon: So you want to play a game without superheroes, while playing a system designed with the prevalence of superheroes in mind.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: I think their are several grades between the tier 5 classes and the tier 1 classes. While superheroes to you may mean being able to throw planets out of their course by clapping loudly, i´m merely suggesting that hawk eye to is a superhero. Hawk eye can´t alter reality, but he is very good at shooting arrows.
So to me, a high level character of any class should be at hawk eye level, not Dr. Strange.

Firechanter

2013-09-13, 06:31 AM

Tier 3 still is not about being able to do _everything_. You are mixing that up with Tier 1.

How does a Bard do all of these challenges better?

He doesn't have Trapfinding and may easily be stumped at the 1st task, unless he is specifically built towards this.
He'll do the 2nd task much better, if he took the right skills.
And task 3, just like the Melees, he can contribute in battle, by inspiring courage etc., but I don't see what that has to do with _preparing_ for war.

Dread Necro?
He can set off all the traps for cheap with his undead minions (provided they don't reset too fast, and also you can _bet_ that this will alert the dragon).
Finding a rebel leader and getting him to trust you will be... difficult. His very presence may be counter-productive.
Defending a city, well, undead minions, if he's allowed to desecrate the local graveyards / necropolis.

And so on. Tier 3s _aren't_ equally awesome at everything and in every situation.
On the other hand, Crusie and Warbie are _clearly_ much more competent and versatile than, say, the Barbie, who can do exactly one thing in combat (Hulk Smash) and one thing outside combat (getting along in the wilderness).

The Rose Dragon

2013-09-13, 06:38 AM

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: I think their are several grades between the tier 5 classes and the tier 1 classes. While superheroes to you may mean being able to throw planets out of their course by clapping loudly, i´m merely suggesting that hawk eye to is a superhero. Hawk eye can´t alter reality, but he is very good at shooting arrows.
So to me, a high level character of any class should be at hawk eye level, not Dr. Strange.

Well, for one thing, Hawkeye is incredibly over the top. Even in the Avengers movie, where he is toned down quite a bit from his, say, the Ultimates incarnation, he shoots down dozens and dozens of opponents without getting a scratch, at ridiculous ranges and highly suboptimal conditions.

For another, Hawkeye is a pulp hero, in a world with actual superheroes, and he suffers for it. Again, in the movie, throwing Hawkeye at Loki or the carriers would accomplish nothing (hell, the first one actually got him mind controlled). His narrative job was to prevent minor threats from piling up on the actual superheroes and prevent them from solving the real issues.

So to me, there is no problem with what you want (a game where you top at pulp heroes), or what D&D wants to offer (a game where you start as pulp heroes - what it actually offers is problematic in many ways, but that's another thread). The problem is that those two don't match at all, and the ideal solution is not trying to change D&D to fit what you want, but simply playing something else.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 06:47 AM

I'm not mixing things up, please don't assume what I think.

The bard doesn't have to (do better), just contribute in most situations and do one thing quite well.
The bard would excel at 2, contribute meaningfully at 3, and has features allowing him to also help out in 1 (inspire competence?), although not the class strongest suit.

DeltaEmil

2013-09-13, 06:53 AM

If the Monkey King jumped Mountains and the Buddha guy defeated him by altering reality it only goes to show that casters are to powerful... Even when faced with a monk that could jump mountains.
Only when the Monkey King got some magic of his own could he prevail.

Conclusion: casters need to be nerfed, and mundanes need to get some shiny new toys :smallcool:I can easily see the whole story about the Monkey King being a D&D game evening, where a new player comes with his totally twinked out monk class character and starts derailing the GM's campaign by challenging other d00ds, making the GM (as the Celestial Emperor) call an experienced veteran player who arrives with his high level spellcaster to deal with the problem.
Sun Wukong: "Sweet! Monks are the strongest class evar!!!"
Siddhārtha: "Are you that sure? They kinda strike me as rather weak."
Sun Wukong: "What do you know? You're playing a totally lame pacifist dressed in a pansy robe!"
Siddhārtha: "I'm sure monks can't do all those things you claim. They can't even jump that high."
Sun Wukong: "You're such a n00b. Monks are pretty cool guys. Teyh kung fu punch and don't afraid of anything. A pacifist pansy like you that can't even kung fu punch knows nothing."
Siddhārtha: "Meh. According to the rules, monks can't even jump over a tiny anthill. I'm not that impressed."
Sun Wukong: "Pshaw. My character can jump over a mountain even on a roll of 1. That's how awesome monks are."
Siddhārtha: "Really? Can you prove your claim? Could your monk for example jump over... that huge mountain that we never noticed before and seems to have come out of nowhere but of course was always there?"
Sun Wunkong: "Easy" *rolls* "With my modifiers, that's over 4000 feet! See? That's how awesome monks are!"
Siddhārtha: "Psych! That mountain was just my character's hand. Also, he shrunk your monk down without any chance of noticing it at all (also, no saving throw allowed). And now my character puts a heavy rock on your monk that has a magical curse on it which makes it that only someone of pure heart can break the stone!"
Sun Wukong: "HAXX! Spellcasters are OP! I'll play a spellcaster the next time!"

And then John was a Zombie Monkey King was a Buddha.

Equilibria

2013-09-13, 07:02 AM

Well, for one thing, Hawkeye is incredibly over the top. Even in the Avengers movie, where he is toned down quite a bit from his, say, the Ultimates incarnation, he shoots down dozens and dozens of opponents without getting a scratch, at ridiculous ranges and highly suboptimal conditions.

For another, Hawkeye is a pulp hero, in a world with actual superheroes, and he suffers for it. Again, in the movie, throwing Hawkeye at Loki or the carriers would accomplish nothing (hell, the first one actually got him mind controlled). His narrative job was to prevent minor threats from piling up on the actual superheroes and prevent them from solving the real issues.

So to me, there is no problem with what you want (a game where you top at pulp heroes), or what D&D wants to offer (a game where you start as pulp heroes - what it actually offers is problematic in many ways, but that's another thread). The problem is that those two don't match at all, and the ideal solution is not trying to change D&D to fit what you want, but simply playing something else.

The first two paragraph i agree with. While he is powerful he can do nothing to the more powerful heroes and would be foolish to try. But as a 20 lvl character i have no problem with me being at Hawk Eye equivalent power level, just not at level one.

And while Hawk Eye is powerful he still can´t alter reality. The problem comes when Thor and Hulk (the tier 1-2 classes) are their to. Then Hawk Eye (the lower tier classes) becomes almost useless.

The third paragraph however i must disagree with.
You say that D&D is a game that wants you to end up as a reality altering super being that chrushes gods and worlds alike.

I say that is not true.

While the higher tiered classes could lead you to believe that, you can just as easily say that the lower tier classes are proof that D&D want you to play at my prefered power level.

So if the answer for you is to up the power level for the mundanes then you to are changing the game and neither of us should be playing (as per your post). I would instead present the possibility that D&D can accomodate all levels of power, and that neither your nor my prefered playstyle is the right one.

Their is no right and wrong... only preference :smalltongue:

Turion

2013-09-13, 07:04 AM

I'm not mixing things up, please don't assume what I think.

The bard doesn't have to, just contribute in most situations and do one thing quite well.
The bard would excel at 2, contribute meaningfully at 3, and has features allowing him to also help out in 1 (inspire competence?), although not the class strongest suit.

To expand a bit:
Situation one: inspire competence, hide from dragons, summon monster + silence, miscellaneous scrying.
Situation two: invisibility, charm, dominate, images etc..., more scrying, dimension door.
Situation three: ALL the buffs. ALL of them.

No idea how a DN would handle these, honestly, as they're not my thing.

I don't think anybody's saying t3 means "does everything." On the other hand, "always has something to do" sounds pretty accurate to me. That does describe the Bard or Beguiler (or Factotum, much as I hate to admit it). It doesn't describe the Warblade, though.

The Rose Dragon

2013-09-13, 07:06 AM

So if the answer for you is to up the power level for the mundanes then you to are changing the game and neither of us should be playing (as per your post). :

Yes! Exactly! I am so glad you understand me perfectly. :smalltongue:

Anyway, this whole thread gives me an idea, but I'll wait until I can get on my laptop to post it.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 07:12 AM

I don't think anybody's saying t3 means "does everything." On the other hand, "always has something to do" sounds pretty accurate to me. That does describe the Bard or Beguiler (or Factotum, much as I hate to admit it). It doesn't describe the Warblade, though.

No it doesn't, which makes it a bit strange all ToB classes came in as T3. Same for Crusader: sure he can Mountain Hammer his way through a dungeon, but between the clearly non-stealthy approach, and the one sided way of dealing with obstacles, it can hardly be the preferred solution.

KoboldCleric

2013-09-13, 07:18 AM

I may be in the minority, but I've seen enough crazy things happen in D&D that I'm with The Giant on this one (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html).

Amphetryon

2013-09-13, 07:27 AM

I'm not sure if this count as a "fallacy".

Also it seems more like a Conan thing... but The Conan Problem doesn't have nearly as much of a ring to it.

This sums up my position as well.

Gigas Breaker

2013-09-13, 07:29 AM

The Conan Problem sounds like a cheesy thriller.

The Conan Problem by Dan Brown.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 07:30 AM

And while Hawk Eye is powerful he still can´t alter reality. The problem comes when Thor and Hulk (the tier 1-2 classes) are their to. Then Hawk Eye (the lower tier classes) becomes almost useless.Pff, what? tier 1 classes totally party fine with lower tier classes. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw)

The Rose Dragon

2013-09-13, 07:31 AM

The Conan Problem sounds like a cheesy thriller.

The Conan Problem by Dan Brown.

Which Conan? Conan the Barbarian, or Conan O'Brien? Because the latter sounds much more interesting.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 07:47 AM

[Monkey King stuff]Eh... that was less "monk gets defeated by wizard" and more "tri-gestalt wizard//druid//warblade gets defeated by Pun-Pun".

The original concept of magic is "that which exceeds the norm" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana). A barbarian is magic because his strength exceeds the norm. A wizard is magic because his knowledge exceeds the norm. A finely crafted sword is magic because its cutting power exceeds the norm.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 07:48 AM

DeltaEmil

2013-09-13, 07:52 AM

Eh... that was less "monk gets defeated by wizard" and more "tri-gestalt wizard//druid//warblade gets defeated by Pun-Pun".It's more of a "swordsage gets defeated by cloistered cleric" thing.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 07:53 AM

It's not a "fallacy" - the OP is simply playing in the wrong genre. The fact that he felt the need to kick this thread off with a manga scan is telling; Fighters that can jump continents without any kind of magical assistance belong in shonen.D&D covers multiple genres depending on what level range you're playing at.

It's more of a "swordsage gets defeated by cloistered cleric" thing.Nah, Wukong could use almost every kind of magic in addition to his fighting powers (most famously shapeshifting and turning his hairs into copies of himself), and was fighting someone who was pretty much omnipotent.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 08:04 AM

D&D covers multiple genres depending on what level range you're playing at.

Right, and shonen play is aimed at epic/mythic/etc. Mundanes can credibly do certain supernormal things without magic, like smash through stone or recover from debilitating injuries, but if I'm reading the OP right he wants purely mundane versions of things like long-distance flight, healing others, invisibility and teleportation. And that just isn't believable for me.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 08:10 AM

They do get HiPS...

But yes, I agree it doesn't make much sense.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 08:12 AM

Psyren

2013-09-13, 08:17 AM

Of course "mundane" teleportation isn't believable. But high level is by definition not mundane.

"Non-magical" then. I'm okay with a high-level character who, without magical training, begins tapping into the forces present in the world around him (consciously or unconsciously) - but accessing those forces should still be subject to the magical rules of the world, i.e. they should be supernatural or at the very least spell-like.

For example, I'm okay with a very high-level rogue who starts picking up Shadowdancer/Assassin abilities; I might even be convinced to, in a high-power campaign, grant those kinds of abilities to rogues for free without the PrC. But I'm not on board with Ex or Na teleportation.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 08:23 AM

Right, and shonen play is aimed at epic/mythic/etc. Mundanes can credibly do certain supernormal things without magic, like smash through stone or recover from debilitating injuries, but if I'm reading the OP right he wants purely mundane versions of things like long-distance flight, healing others, invisibility and teleportation. And that just isn't believable for me.

The Guy at the Gym fallacy addresses the idea that all "mundane"/"nonmagical" classes must be able to do things that we can conceive ourselves (or a guy at the gym) being able to do, because we're nonmagical too of course! whereas wizards need no shackling to reality because magic!

I think this fallacy is one that partially led to the horrific imbalance in core classes.

You're free to prefer the PHB core class balance so long as you either expect nobody to take mundane classes, or you are fine with those that do having at most one and a half effective tricks.

I never said anything about mundane classes having long-distance flight, or healing others (I did design a class that could do so, but never referred to this ability in the post). Somebody on page one did use invisibility as an example of something a high-level rogue could do, and I agreed - it's a natural extension of their powers carried over into legendary power. Similarly, I've teleportation as an example of what the Tome of Battle "Martial" classes do already and as an example of why Tier 3s always tend to have some supernatural element (and defending ToB supernatural powers was one reason I made the post). I've also mentioned Shadowdancer teleportation as an explicitly supernatural ability that's picked up in a generally mundane build.

For reference, I consider the jump between a level 1 person with +15 hide to a level 20 person who's invisible to be smaller than the difference between a level 1 person who can summon canola oil to a level 20 person who can literally concentrate for 3 and a half seconds and move 20 people across the galaxy instantaneously.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 08:25 AM

"Non-magical" then. I'm okay with a high-level character who, without magical training, begins tapping into the forces present in the world around him (consciously or unconsciously) - but accessing those forces should still be subject to the magical rules of the world, i.e. they should be supernatural or at the very least spell-like.

For example, I'm okay with a very high-level rogue who starts picking up Shadowdancer/Assassin abilities; I might even be convinced to, in a high-power campaign, grant those kinds of abilities to rogues for free without the PrC. But I'm not on board with Ex or Na teleportation.D&D has a weird definition of magic.

Really, wizards are supposed to be scholars. Scientists if you prefer. High-level applications of knowledge cross the line into the supernatural, the same way high-level rogues turn into shadowdancers. Wizards act as advisors to kings not because their magic makes them wise, but because being wise makes them magic.

There shouldn't be any distinction between extraordinary and supernatural abilities, especially not to the point where you can have an antimagic field shut down one and not the other. They all come from competence, and people in ancient times having a poorer idea of what's possible and what isn't. I mean, to anyone nowadays The Turk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk) seems obviously impossible, but people back then thought you really could make an AI from 18th-century clockwork.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 08:36 AM

The Guy at the Gym fallacy addresses the idea that all "mundane"/"nonmagical" classes must be able to do things that we can conceive ourselves (or a guy at the gym) being able to do, because we're nonmagical too of course! whereas wizards need no shackling to reality because magic!

I think this fallacy is one that partially led to the horrific imbalance in core classes.

You're free to prefer the PHB core class balance so long as you either expect nobody to take mundane classes, or you are fine with those that do having at most one and a half effective tricks.

You do realize that dozens if not hundreds of groups around the world play with fighters/wizards/rogues/clerics/druids in the same party without issue, don't you? :smallconfused:

Yep, a party containing T1, T4 and T5 classes could never actually play together. It's impossible, I tell you. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html)

Your premise is faulty - people will still take mundane classes because they want to, and because it's simply easier. For groups where power matters, they simply won't. Expecting them to not have fun or to feel marginalized simply because potential power is different is now how the game works.

There shouldn't be any distinction between extraordinary and supernatural abilities, especially not to the point where you can have an antimagic field shut down one and not the other.

There absolutely should, because one set draws on the magical energy of the setting while the other is largely a physical quality of the creature. Effects capable of disrupting that energy, such as dead magic/antimagic, should be able to interfere with abilities that rely on it, and effects capable of detecting magic should be able to notice its flow.

Segev

2013-09-13, 08:36 AM

I think the OP's point is less that "Fighters should have teleportation as an (Ex) ability," and more that "Fighters should be able to learn things on par with teleportation, as (Su) abilities if needs be."

Of course, the question becomes where one draws the line. Nobody is complaining that a dragon can fly even in an AMF, for example, but outside of the smallest of the Wyrmlings, the logic that says "mundanes can't fly as an extraordinary ability; it has to be supernatural" also says "dragons are too big and heavy to fly."

"(Ex)" is called "extraordinary" precisely because it's well beyond the realm of real-world physiological capability.

In aiming for T3, the OP isn't even really aiming for shonen action. He's aiming for action hero, maybe low-end comic superhero. Shonen action is up in the T2 and T1 region. More commonly T2, because it maintains party "balance" by having each member contribute one overpowered trick they do really well to the mix.

A "T1 fighter" would be closer to a shonen action hero: he would have a mundane ability to fly by kicking the air so hard that he can air-walk he could teleport in high-energy bursts of movement that effectively take no time and may or may not ignore obstacles ("flash step") he could spend a standard action to get a "second wind" and heal a lot of hit points, and possibly share that with his Charisma mod in allies as he inspires them to dig deep and try harder, too he could substitute his BAB for his Linguistics, Sense Motive, or other communication skills when interacting with another high-level warrior, because his ever movement speaks volumes to those likewise trained in the arts of battle his battle aura can be so intense and powerful that he counts as a much larger creature in a grapple, or he can move so fast that his effective reach is that of a much larger creature he can jump and land so hard that he takes out creatures with sonic damage in a radius as if he'd had a sonic-subbed fireball centered on himself his spirit and body are so in tune that he can touch incorporeal things he can use Intimidate on inanimate objects, for instance causing a lock to unlatch itself in fear of what he'll do to it if it doesn't.

These could be (Su), but there is room, in a world where having wings can let you fly even if you're a Colossal creature, for them to be very (Ex), instead.

Would such a game be for everybody? No, but it's as believable in the end as having a mage enchant your sword to hit that ghost. If you're so trained in combat that you can "hit anything," even the incorporeal might have reason to fear you, even without spells (or possibly even without magic).

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 08:40 AM

Prime32

2013-09-13, 08:42 AM

There absolutely should, because one set draws on the magical energy of the setting while the other is largely a physical quality of the creature. Effects capable of disrupting that energy, such as dead magic/antimagic, should be able to interfere with abilities that rely on it, and effects capable of detecting magic should be able to notice its flow.In many D&D settings yes, but that's not how it works in general.

Magic, whether you call it mana, chi, or whatever, normally is a physical quality of a creature; it's the ability to influence the world in any way. The most basic magic anyone performs is "being alive", and high-level characters are more alive. So an antimagic field should just kill everything in the area.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 08:44 AM

In many D&D settings yes, but that's not how it works in general.

That IS how it works in general. In every D&D setting, Supernatural abilities fail in a dead magic/antimagic area, and that's because it's a core rule. This is true no matter how intrinsic they are to the creature - dragons can't breathe fire, vampires can't use their dominate/shapeshifting etc.

Magic, whether you call it mana, chi, or whatever, normally is a physical quality of a creature. The most basic magic anyone performs is "being alive", and high-level characters are more alive. So an antimagic field should just kill everything in the area.

How is merely being alive magical? That makes no sense.

(Unless you mean like "the miracle of birth" or something, which is just an expression.)

Prime32

2013-09-13, 08:49 AM

That IS how it works in general. In every D&D setting, Supernatural abilities fail in a dead magic/antimagic area, and that's because it's a core rule. This is true no matter how intrinsic they are to the creature - dragons can't breathe fire, vampires can't use their dominate/shapeshifting etc.D&D is not the sum-total of fantasy and myth. The very start of my point was "D&D handles this weird".

How is merely being alive magical? That makes no sense.Go on then, tell a rock to walk. Or paint. Or dream. Because we're alive we can do things that would normally be completely impossible.
EDIT: Try reading this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ve/mundane_magic/)

Amphetryon

2013-09-13, 08:49 AM

That IS how it works in general. In every D&D setting, Supernatural abilities fail in a dead magic/antimagic area, and that's because it's a core rule. This is true no matter how intrinsic they are to the creature - dragons can't breathe fire, vampires can't use their dominate/shapeshifting etc.

How is merely being alive magical? That makes no sense.

(Unless you mean like "the miracle of birth" or something, which is just an expression.)

When every person born in a given D&D setting has a chance, via Class choice (including multiclassing), to access the magic of the universe, then being alive does qualify as being magical/touching the Weave/accessing the Divine/whatever.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 08:50 AM

In many D&D settings yes, but that's not how it works in general.

I think we can safely state discussions in this forum relate to D&D 3e/3.5/d20 and not extraordinary and supernatural abilities in general, whatever that means.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 08:50 AM

people will still take mundane classes because they want to, and because it's simply easier. For groups where power matters, they simply won't.I agree! limiting mundanes only matters in games where balance matters. I'm glad we can see eye-to-eye on that. (as a side note, Varsuuvius is terribly optimized.)

Expecting them to not have fun or to feel marginalized simply because potential power is different is now how the game works.
I mean, you can have a tier 1 stand back or maybe just play support (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw), but he's still the one with all of the power. Gentleman's agreements are great, and I agree that a party with wildly varying levels of potential power can work as long as the higher tiers build (intentionally?) badly or simply stand back instead of flexing their encounter-ending might. But that doesn't mean it's not an issue with the game that some classes get those options and others don't. In fact, it's an issue with that game that some classes get any options while others don't.

I'm not saying that you can't have fun playing core D&D. Instead I am saying that if giving mechanically underpowered classes options consists of (Su) or even "unbelievable" (Ex), then I am fine with that.

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 08:53 AM

I offer my rebuttal.

"Old school melee are boring, therefore they suck."

Seriously, my attention span is so short there is only so long I can sit in combat with a vanilla barbarian.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:00 AM

D&D is not the sum-total of fantasy and myth. The very start of my point was "D&D handles this weird".

It's not, but this thread is about D&D. That other systems handle it differently doesn't make D&D's approach "weird" either.

Ninja'd by Gwendol

Go on then, tell a rock to walk. Or paint. Or dream. Because we're alive we can do things that would normally be completely impossible.

You need a baseline for this sort of thing. "Birds can fly and we can't, they must be magical" or "rats can't vomit, they must be magical" does not help us define what magic is. There is a standard for normalcy that applies to each creature and object, and magic is simply what lets you go beyond that. A rock that can paint is certainly out of the ordinary for rocks, but a rock that can sit around being hard or roll downhill is not.

But that doesn't mean it's not an issue with the game that some classes get those options and others don't. In fact, it's an issue with that game that some classes get any options while others don't.

Well this is another point entirely. Yes, I agree that imbalance is a thing that exists. No, I don't believe it needs to be "fixed." I don't find a universe where Hogwarts is equal with Smeltings or where Caramon can alter reality on the same scale as Raistlin to be particularly interesting, and if the success of systems (like D&D and PF) where magic > "not-magic" are any indication, neither do many people.

If you do want such a game system, there are plenty out there for you, including 4e.

Instead I am saying that if giving mechanically underpowered classes options consists of (Su) or even "unbelievable" (Ex), then I am fine with that.

Right, but that should be a table-by-table choice, not something baked into the book rules from the get-go.

Segev

2013-09-13, 09:06 AM

You need a baseline for this sort of thing. "Birds can fly and we can't, they must be magical" or "rats can't vomit, they must be magical" does not help us define what magic is. There is a standard for normalcy that applies to each creature and object, and magic is simply what lets you go beyond that. A rock that can paint is certainly out of the ordinary for rocks, but a rock that can sit around being hard or roll downhill is not.So where does "dragons can fly" fall in this? Birds can generally fly and we generally can't in both the real world and in D&D. Dragons, if they existed, could not fly in the real world. They can in D&D. Are dragons using magic to fly, or is some combination of the laws of physics in D&D allowing dragons to fly as a non-magical, natural/extraordinary ability?

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:08 AM

"Dragons can fly" is a normal (in this case natural) quality for dragons. "Humans can fly" isn't normal for humans. I'm not sure how much clearer it can really be put than that.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 09:09 AM

So where does "dragons can fly" fall in this? Birds can generally fly and we generally can't in both the real world and in D&D. Dragons, if they existed, could not fly in the real world. They can in D&D. Are dragons using magic to fly, or is some combination of the laws of physics in D&D allowing dragons to fly as a non-magical, natural/extraordinary ability?

It is whatever the D&D rules says it is. Don't mix up the fantasy world of D&D with reality.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 09:11 AM

You need a baseline for this sort of thing. "Birds can fly and we can't, they must be magical" or "rats can't vomit, they must be magical" does not help us define what magic is. There is a standard for normalcy that applies to each creature and object, and magic is simply what lets you go beyond that. A rock that can paint is certainly out of the ordinary for rocks, but a rock that can sit around being hard or roll downhill is not.Birds are definitely magical. There's plenty of myths where they learned how to fly, and can teach it to humans. Likewise, there's stories that jaguars used to have houses and tools, but humans stole that knowledge from them.

EDIT:

"Dragons can fly" is a normal (in this case natural) quality for dragons. "Humans can fly" isn't normal for humans. I'm not sure how much clearer it can really be put than that.Culture. "Humans can play the violin" isn't normal for humans either. "Humans can speak French" isn't normal where I come from, but is in other places.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:12 AM

Birds are definitely magical. There's plenty of myths where they learned how to fly, and can teach it to humans. Likewise, there's stories that jaguars used to have houses and tools, but humans stole that knowledge from them.

And which D&D setting is that?

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 09:12 AM

"Dragons can fly" is a normal (in this case natural) quality for dragons. "Humans can fly" isn't normal for humans. I'm not sure how much clearer it can really be put than that.

So because one has a real-world analogue, it is disallowed from being able to do the interesting things that others can do without complaint.

Dragons flying is actually a really good rephrasing I wouldn't have thought of.

Note that although I think this springs from the same mindset, I don't consider the mindset itself an issue except for in cases where it meaningfully affects game balance, because poor game balance can lead to worse play experiences.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 09:16 AM

And which D&D setting is that?The point is whether these things can be justified in D&D.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 09:17 AM

So because one has a real-world analogue, it is disallowed from being able to do the interesting things that others can do without complaint.

Dragons flying is actually a really good rephrasing I wouldn't have thought of.

Note that although I think this springs from the same mindset, I don't consider the mindset itself an issue except for in cases where it meaningfully affects game balance, because poor game balance can lead to worse play experiences.

That has nothing to do with a real world analogue. There are no dragons, remember. It has everything to do with the game played however, and in D&D, core rules, humans can't fly while dragons can.

DeltaEmil

2013-09-13, 09:17 AM

Nah, Wukong could use almost every kind of magic in addition to his fighting powers (most famously shapeshifting and turning his hairs into copies of himself), and was fighting someone who was pretty much omnipotent.Hmm. Seems you're right. Wikipedia says that he also has elemental magic and knows demon-warding stuff. That shows that watching chinese tv shows about the voyage to the west is not enough.

bekeleven

2013-09-13, 09:22 AM

That has nothing to do with a real world analogue. There are no dragons, remember. It has everything to do with the game played however, and in D&D, core rules, humans can't fly while dragons can.

And in the core rules, fighters can't X, where X is anything except possibly archery. Supplements brought power to the class and eventually replaced it as well.

There are no wizards either. But in D&D, wizards can turn into dragons, fly and breathe fire. Wizards can shoot energy from their hands that deals more than the fighter's arrow and has less of a chance of missing. Wizards can X, where X is anything.

It's not a perfect analogue, but consider that people complain about epic balance letting a person balance on the clouds, but don't complain that a wizard can fly at level 5. "Well, people in real life can balance on things but they can't fly."

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:26 AM

Note that although I think this springs from the same mindset, I don't consider the mindset itself an issue except for in cases where it meaningfully affects game balance, because poor game balance can lead to worse play experiences.

It certainly can. And if you have the kind of group where it repeatedly does, your best off either houseruling, or playing something else entirely. Altering the printed game for the dozens upon dozens of groups where it does not is unreasonable.

The point is whether these things can be justified in D&D.

Stories like that tend to be the province of primitive tribes who don't actually know how the world works. One of the hallmarks of all D&D settings is a "magic as technology" undercurrent, which is flavor you need if magic items can be commonly created and prices exist for spellcasting services. So no, I don't see "magical non-magical birds" as being compatible with D&D at all except in primitive myths.

Agrippa

2013-09-13, 09:26 AM

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:32 AM

Apparently in older editions it was intentional (http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/2013/07/stop-your-endless-bitching-about-magic.html). Be warned, there is some strong language here.

This is hilarious :smallbiggrin:

Though he did fail to address Druids, who are pretty much safe and powerful all the way up. (PF at least smacked them down a bit.)

Segev

2013-09-13, 09:33 AM

"Dragons can fly" is a normal (in this case natural) quality for dragons. "Humans can fly" isn't normal for humans. I'm not sure how much clearer it can really be put than that.

So the line is totally arbitrary?

What if "humans can fly with enough effort" is a normal (in this case extraordinary) quality for humans?

It is whatever the D&D rules says it is. Don't mix up the fantasy world of D&D with reality.That's the whole point. This is fantasy. If you're going to argue that dragons can fly because fantasy, then I can argue that humans can learn to fly because fantasy.

Icarus and Daedalus flew with nothing but artificial, non-magical wings. Yes, it ended poorly for Icarus because "flew too high," but...still. Why is "humans are limited in this way in the real world" a good argument when "dragons would be limited the same way if they were in the real world" is a bad one?

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 09:37 AM

There is no fallacy. The non-magical classes are just that. The imbalance comes partly from WoTC completely doing away with everything that made casters difficult to play (and survive) the first levels.

I'd add "without particularly balancing it by removing or limiting high-level power."

A "T1 fighter" would be closer to a shonen action hero:

Most of these would be good level 10+ feats, actually. So you could effectively build Chuck Norris.

DM: "There is an inscription in a strange, ancient language..."
CN: "I roundhouse kick the inscription to translate itself into Common and read itself aloud."
DM: "Ok, roll."

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 09:39 AM

You can, but it's not supported by the rules for humans in D&D. To fly in D&D a human must either grow wings, or apply magic, or use an item that allows them to fly.

What are we discussing again?

Prime32

2013-09-13, 09:39 AM

Stories like that tend to be the province of primitive tribes who don't actually know how the world works. One of the hallmarks of all D&D settings is a "magic as technology" undercurrent, which is flavor you need if magic items can be commonly created and prices exist for spellcasting services. So no, I don't see "magical non-magical birds" as being compatible with D&D at all except in primitive myths.So... a skill that can be learned and replicated isn't technology, but a non-transferrable ability that only some people can use is? :smallconfused: I'm saying more people should be able to create magic items - how does that equal "magic items can't be commonly created"?

In Lord of the Rings, elves can make ropes that untie themselves and swords that warn you of enemies just because they're that good at making rope and swords.
For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe: though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:43 AM

So the line is totally arbitrary?

The line is driven by fantasy tropes and suspension of disbelief. We expect dragons to fly, so they can, physics be damned. We don't expect humans to fly, so magic is needed to bridge that gap and make the concept believable.

Yes, magic is an arbitrary line - one that separates "this makes sense" from "this seems weird/off-putting."

What if "humans can fly with enough effort" is a normal (in this case extraordinary) quality for humans?

What counts as "enough effort?" Flapping your arms really hard? Blowing on the ground?

There is nothing we can do to achieve lift under our own power; that is why magic is needed to bridge that gap. Jumping hella high (http://nonadventures.com/2006/09/09/the-torment-of-a-thousand-yesterdays/) is more believable, thus it is within reach of mundanes without magical assistance.

That's the whole point. This is fantasy. If you're going to argue that dragons can fly because fantasy, then I can argue that humans can learn to fly because fantasy.

There's still that matter of SoD/reasonableness.

Icarus and Daedalus flew with nothing but artificial, non-magical wings.

See, that's fine, because they still needed to build something. It wasn't an inherent quality of them, and it was subject to external forces (the sun's heat melting the glue.)

In Lord of the Rings, elves can make ropes that untie themselves and swords that warn you of enemies just because they're that good at making rope and swords.

You can do both of those in Pathfinder too. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-craftsman---final) I'm perfectly fine with that.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 09:49 AM

You can do both of those in Pathfinder too. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-craftsman---final) I'm perfectly fine with that.In Pathfinder magic is still unrelated to your crafting ability. A guy with 200 ranks in Craft (weaponsmithing) can never craft even a +1 sword, he has to learn "magical crafting" separately.

The whole point in LotR is that there is no difference. Magic is just what people call things they don't understand.

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 09:50 AM

In Lord of the Rings, elves can make ropes that untie themselves and swords that warn you of enemies just because they're that good at making rope and swords.

Ropes that untie themselves? I would say that's a sign of a really bad rope maker. :smalltongue:

Psyren

2013-09-13, 09:52 AM

In Pathfinder magic is still unrelated to your crafting ability. A guy with 200 ranks in Craft (weaponsmithing) can never craft even a +1 sword, he has to learn "magical crafting" separately.

Because two feats are such an insurmountable barrier? :smallconfused:

(When you're level 200 no less, and have apparently dedicated your life to smithing.)

The whole point in LotR is that there is no difference. Magic is just what people call things they don't understand.

So magic doesn't actually exist in LotR? The Rings are wholly mundane items? The Palantir?

Prime32

2013-09-13, 09:57 AM

So magic doesn't actually exist in LotR? The Rings are wholly mundane items? The Palantir?Yep. They even lament that there aren't any smiths better than Sauron around, since they could just dismantle the ring.
EDIT: Sorry, no. The rings are by no means mundane. The word "magic" just has no meaning in the setting.

Because two feats are such an insurmountable barrier? :smallconfused:

(When you're level 200 no less, and have apparently dedicated your life to smithing.)A level 200 character who dedicates his life to smithing... is worse at smithing than a random 3rd-level wizard using scraps of junk.

The skill for making swords does not actually make you better at making swords.

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-13, 09:58 AM

Firechanter

2013-09-13, 09:59 AM

The bard doesn't have to (do better), just contribute in most situations and do one thing quite well.
The bard would excel at 2, contribute meaningfully at 3, and has features allowing him to also help out in 1 (inspire competence?), although not the class strongest suit.

In those situations that you described. You can just as easily contrive (combat) situations where Bards, Necros and regular T4 warrior classes are getting shut down (or reduced to Monk levels of efficiency), but Crusie and Warbie can still do stuff, simply because they can switch between combat roles.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 10:00 AM

Yep. They even lament that there aren't any smiths better than Sauron around, since they could just dismantle the ring.

I think you're reading too much into a poetic statement by Galadriel. Her quote seems to imply that "we do this stuff all the time" - not that it is mundane or nonmagical, but that the techniques they use are beyond humans and come naturally to elves. It's no different than many other otherworldly/fey tropes.

I agree with your edit.

"Magic can do anything" is not thematic.

"Sufficiently powerful magic can do anything" is. It may be out of reach of the current actors in a given setting, but it is still part of myth and legend.

Prime32

2013-09-13, 10:07 AM

I think you're reading too much into a poetic statement by Galadriel. Her quote seems to imply that "we do this stuff all the time" - not that it is mundane or nonmagical, but that the techniques they use are beyond humans and come naturally to elves. It's no different than many other otherworldly/fey tropes.
Everyone does this. Apart from the Balrog fight Gandalf is only allowed to use knowledge gained in the mortal world, and everything he does is an application of swordplay, medicine, fireworks, animal rearing and so on. The hobbits are described as magic because they're good at hiding. The entire party in The Hobbit is capable of casting wards on their troll loot. There are random guys who learned how to talk to birds.

And again, I never said it was mundane. I said there is not a separate force called magic, that has its own rules and does not interact with your other skills.

"Sufficiently powerful magic can do anything" is. It may be out of reach of the current actors in a given setting, but it is still part of myth and legendThe problem is when "magic" originally just meant "sufficiently powerful", and it's looked at through a different lens. If you're good enough at stealing then you can steal the sun, or peoples' souls. Impossible to a normal person, but in the same way as rocket science.

Segev

2013-09-13, 10:26 AM

You can, but it's not supported by the rules for humans in D&D. To fly in D&D a human must either grow wings, or apply magic, or use an item that allows them to fly.

Says who?

No, seriously.

Actually, there're RAW that contradict you: It's a DC 90 balance check to walk on water; DC 120 to walk on clouds. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#balance) This is not magical. It's "epic," but all "epic" skill usages can be achieved pre-epic as long as you can make the check.

You're basing your claim that "humans can't do that without magic" on the fact that little was printed to allow it. But that's not a blanket statement about D&D; that's a negative space that has never been addressed in D&D.

Basically, to say "humans can't fly without magic in D&D" is circular when the debate is over whether it's appropriate to add (Ex) abilities to do just that. Unless there is a rule somewhere that explicitly says, "humans cannot fly without magic or wings," the absence of rules that allow them to do so does not contradict some "setting truth" or even a "system truth" when you try to introduce such rules.

Essentially, your argument is, "you can't discuss adding anything because anything not already there isn't D&D."

Psyren

2013-09-13, 10:27 AM

Apart from the Balrog fight, Gandalf is only allowed to do things which normal men could learn to do.

Oh really? So normal men can create pinecone grenades? Or light without a fuel source? Or call lightning? Or tame an untameable half-celestial horse by talking to it?

And that's just the books, never mind the stuff they added to the movies like the TK breakdance battle at Orthanc.

If you're good enough at stealing then you can steal the sun, or peoples' souls. Impossible to a normal person, but in the same way as rocket science.

Abilities like that tend to belong to very specific individuals though - descendants of deities for instance. Even in stories where they exist, it's not like even exceptional thieves can practice long enough until they can steal the sun.

Actually, there're RAW that contradict you: It's a DC 90 balance check to walk on water; DC 120 to walk on clouds. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#balance) This is not magical. It's "epic," but all "epic" skill usages can be achieved pre-epic as long as you can make the check.

Getting to those levels of skill does require magic though. Even if it means simply surviving to those levels.

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 10:35 AM

Real quick question, guys. If (EX) abilities break the laws of physics, but are not magic, what in the Nine Hells are they?:smallconfused:

Maybe they are just a really advanced form of math...

Lord_Gareth

2013-09-13, 10:40 AM

Psyren, have you ever considered that maybe you're the one with the perception bias on this subject?

Psyren

2013-09-13, 10:41 AM

Real quick question, guys. If (EX) abilities break the laws of physics, but are not magic, what in the Nine Hells are they?:smallconfused:

Anything that can be above normal, but not so much above normal that it would need magic to be believable.

For example, Ex self-healing makes sense - we can normally heal injuries on our own, and even control the severity of certain injuries through muscular action. So a more powerful version of those two abilities could reasonably be Ex, someone capable of controlling their muscles to such an extent that they can recover from even more serious injuries without outside help.

But healing someone else, or raising the dead, go too far beyond that standard; magic should be involved there, whether a spell or supernatural ability. At the very least, something external (even technology) should play a role.

Psyren, have you ever considered that maybe you're the one with the perception bias on this subject?

Of course I do. We're all biased towards our own beliefs and preferences, so I don't see the problem.

And as I repeatedly point out in these threads - if "balance" was so important to purveyors of escapist fantasy everywhere, wouldn't 4e have been much more successful? Wouldn't RPGs that don't let you use magic of some kind, or that don't treat it as anything special, have wider appeal? Would Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Ultima, Final Fantasy etc. have been as well-received with an all-mundane player cast?

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 10:50 AM

I am not sure believability has anything to do with (Ex). It straight up tells you that it can break physics.

I am also unsure about what other (Ex) abilities actually push the line. Fast healing is one thing, since we do heal as you've pointed out.

Segev

2013-09-13, 10:54 AM

Oh really? So normal men can create pinecone grenades?That does, in fact, sound like magic to me. PRobably even a spell. "Pinecone Grenade, Sor/Wiz 3, Druid 3."

However, editing this in as I think about it, I could see a way to do something similar. "I throw it that hard" as an example.

Or light without a fuel source? Or call lightning?Both likely spells, though depending on the nature of the world, arguably mundane people do the former every time they use flint and steel.

Or tame an untameable half-celestial horse by talking to it? Why not? Why couldn't a mythically skilled Handler of Animals do something like this? Or Diplomat, or what-have-you? Why must this be magic?

Abilities like that tend to belong to very specific individuals though - descendants of deities for instance. Even in stories where they exist, it's not like even exceptional thieves can practice long enough until they can steal the sun.Maybe not "the sun," but Carmen Sandiego certainly steals some pretty remarkable stuff. It's portrayed as ludicrous skill in her setting, which has no magic (to my knowledge).

Again, you're drawing an arbitrary line and saying, "THIS requires magic." But why does it? What is your criteria for drawing that line? What is it about "a human with wings" and "a dragon" that says "that can fly," but "a human using incredible strength and skill to kick off of the air itself" that says "impossible without magic?"

Getting to those levels of skill does require magic though. Even if it means simply surviving to those levels.

One could argue that about getting so far as level 2. Without healing magic, you almost certainly won't. Are you now arguing that the fighter and rogue are magical because they reached level 2 and had a cleric in the party?

"You'll need magic items to survive" is part of the assumptions about gear. This actually is one of the areas where "magic is required to gain stronger effect" is hard-coded. MW stuff is a +1 to hit or a +2 circumstance bonus to a skill check. Anything else is magic. Except for a few odd material properties.

But why do you accept that a dragon's damage reduction is not (Su) (as, note, it is not shut down in an AMF), and then have trouble with the idea that a human could learn to cut through it with the right skill? (Actually, I think there might even be a feat for that. Why do you have no issue with that feat, but would have issue with a feat that let you air walk?)

"It takes magic to get there" is a specious argument. The actual ability to walk on a cloud with a DC 120 balance check is not magical. If a human managed to reach level 116, he could do it on his own with no magic at all and even with a dex of 10 or 11.

That no epic human of so ludicrous a level will have so low a Dex, nor would he likely be without magic items (so great would be his wealth), is irrelevant.

It is possible for a sufficiently skilled human to walk on a cloud in an AMF. Per the RAW.

The ability is, in fact, extraordinary.

But we still seem to be getting lost in the weeds: if, as you say, high level characters "need magic" to get to high level, what is wrong with giving every class, even the "mundane" ones, (Su) and super-(Ex) abilities?

Why can't there be a mundane MW item of Daedalus Wings that lets people make Strength (or whatever) checks to be able to fly? Why can't a 10th level fighter, rogue, or monk pick up a feat that lets him take a -20 penalty to his Jump check to jump off of thin air as an (Ex) ability? Why couldn't a gunslinger cowboy lasso a cloud and tame it as a mobile platform to close to one range increment with a dragon?

Where do you draw the line of "this must be magic," and why? If it's, "any real-world thing can't do anything too spiffy without it being magic, but things that don't exist in the real world can do lots of spiffy stuff without magic," you are, in fact, falling prey to the OP's named fallacy.

And "they can't do it without it ceasing to be D&D, because they currently can't in D&D" is the argument, then any alteration to the rules at all is sufficient to make it "not D&D."

You need criteria for the line you wish to draw, and they need to be clear. Otherwise, it's entirely subjective.

Psyren

2013-09-13, 11:03 AM

You need criteria for the line you wish to draw, and they need to be clear. Otherwise, it's entirely subjective.

That's kind of the point, it IS subjective/arbitrary. But it's subjective for enough people that the few who disagree are better off playing something else or houseruling, rather than changing what is in print to fit their beliefs of what is magical and what is not.

I am not sure believability has anything to do with (Ex). It straight up tells you that it can break physics.

So can magic, but believability constrains that too. Yeah, it can do anything eventually, but doing anything at level 1 wouldn't just be harmful to the game, it would be unbelievable in a narrative sense too.

I am also unsure about what other (Ex) abilities actually push the line.

There are plenty of examples; here's a few:

A Black Pudding's Acid - plenty of real creatures use acid to dissolve their food. So producing an acid so caustic that it can break down metal would be Extraordinary - supernormal, but not so unbelievable that it would be infeasible without magic.

A Vampire's Blood Drain - it's possible for many creatures to bite someone and suck their blood out through the wound. Gaining sustenance and even healing from doing so however is not normal - but also not necessarily magical, hence Ex.

A Cleric's Aura - normal creatures have an alignment that can be detected or otherwise interact with various parts of the world. A cleric's is so strong that they are measured in the same way that an outsider - a literal representation of that alignment - would be.

A Druid's Trackless Step - it's possible, with training and familiarity with the environment, for a given woodsman to hide all traces of his passing. The ability to do this anywhere, even in woods that the person is unfamiliar with, is above normal - but not impossible, and thus it is Ex.

This is not to say that I think every Su/Ex ability in 3.5 or PF is categorized appropriately. But I do think most of them are, in other words overall I agree with the designers' rationale with only a few specific dissents.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 11:04 AM

I'm amused by the notion that it's "unthematic" for a "mundane" class to possess certain powers that don't "fit" its abilities, but that there is no such thing as unthematic magic.

"Magic can do anything" is not thematic.

In one way, this is a good point and the core of the issue.

In another way, it's not true. Magic is unthematic if breaks Terry Pratchett's Law of Conservation of Effort.

1. Yes, magic can do anything.
2. But to get good at it, magic-users have to learn to do particular things.
3. So a 10th level Wizard shouldn't be able to cast a spell or a couple of spells that makes him as good a fighter as a 10th level fighter, or as good a thief as a 10th level thief. (Unless they've built and limited their spell selection in such a focused way that they can't do much of anything else.)

To me, it's unthematic if Mercurio the Mage decides to fight the ogres by casting a spell to turn himself temporarily into a hill giant and whomping them with his greatclub in melee.

The problem is that the mechanics often make that the optimal build and optimal tactic. (Although I'm seeing that some of the stupid has been nerfed in the online SRD--Mercurio would have to be 12th level to be a hill giant, at which point ogres are an almost trivial threat unless led by some Tucker kobolds.)

Segev

2013-09-13, 11:11 AM

As long as the argument isn't, "Nothing in D&D should allow fighters to have nice things, because fighters don't do magic and under no circumstances can nice things be non-magic," there's little issue. this isn't about "play a different game." It's about the same thing the game's always been: play the parts of it that interest you.

By the same token that people start to restrict the "Tier 1" classes, they could restrict the "over the top" abilities. The goal in designing for D&D should be creating options that allow people to avoid traps, and find their way out of them if they stumbled in. I'm no advocate for 4e; every mechanic shouldn't feel the same, and I like sub-systems with distinct flavors. But that doesn't mean balance is to be shunned at all costs, either.

If a pudding's acid and a dragon's flight are extraordinary, so too should be a fighter or rogue wearing "Daedalus Wings" to fly without magic.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 11:15 AM

That does, in fact, sound like magic to me.

Taming the wild celestial horseWhy not? Why couldn't a mythically skilled Handler of Animals do something like this? Or Diplomat, or what-have-you? Why must this be magic?

I agree. DC 50? 70? 90? Maybe it's magic in the sense that in a magic-based world, the world bends and shifts to accomodate powerful beings. But it's not arcane magic or divine magic.

Again, you're drawing an arbitrary line and saying, "THIS requires magic." But why does it? What is your criteria for drawing that line? What is it about "a human with wings" and "a dragon" that says "that can fly," but "a human using incredible strength and skill to kick off of the air itself" that says "impossible without magic?"

I'd rule that a character with a DC 50 Run check could run on air, or a DC 50 Balance check to just tell gravity to go away for a while.

One could argue that about getting so far as level 2. Without healing magic, you almost certainly won't.

That's because the setting assumes healing magic, and (practically) everyone else has access to healing magic. Remove that element, and people still get to level 2--just with a lot more XP points given out for successfully running away.

Are you now arguing that the fighter and rogue are magical because they reached level 2 and had a cleric in the party?

I agree with your point here.

But why do you accept that a dragon's damage reduction is not (Su) (as, note, it is not shut down in an AMF), and then have trouble with the idea that a human could learn to cut through it with the right skill? (Actually, I think there might even be a feat for that. Why do you have no issue with that feat, but would have issue with a feat that let you air walk?)

I don't. The air walk feat is an extreme feat, and should have extreme prerequisites, but seems like something that a level-15 fighter could do if that was his thing.

But we still seem to be getting lost in the weeds: if, as you say, high level characters "need magic" to get to high level, what is wrong with giving every class, even the "mundane" ones, (Su) and super-(Ex) abilities?

I'd rather give high-level fighter-types Extraordinary and/or Supernatural abilities that fit thematically then make them second-rate casters to try to keep up with the Tier 1 casters.

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-13, 01:00 PM

In one way, this is a good point and the core of the issue.

In another way, it's not true. Magic is unthematic if breaks Terry Pratchett's Law of Conservation of Effort.

1. Yes, magic can do anything.
2. But to get good at it, magic-users have to learn to do particular things.
3. So a 10th level Wizard shouldn't be able to cast a spell or a couple of spells that makes him as good a fighter as a 10th level fighter, or as good a thief as a 10th level thief. (Unless they've built and limited their spell selection in such a focused way that they can't do much of anything else.)

To me, it's unthematic if Mercurio the Mage decides to fight the ogres by casting a spell to turn himself temporarily into a hill giant and whomping them with his greatclub in melee.

The problem is that the mechanics often make that the optimal build and optimal tactic. (Although I'm seeing that some of the stupid has been nerfed in the online SRD--Mercurio would have to be 12th level to be a hill giant, at which point ogres are an almost trivial threat unless led by some Tucker kobolds.)
I think "magic can do anything" is unthematic because it makes magic into a very nebulous thing. :smallsmile:

You've got very specific concepts of what fighter-ness is, and what rogue-ness is, etc. But if you're defining them very specifically, wizard-ness shouldn't be "I am not defined".

This points to one of the problems in 3.5 D&D: casters get everything. Being the Swiss Army God isn't thematic. :smallwink: (And in the end, that's what the "theme" of casters seems to be: goddishness. You expect a high-level fighter to be able to sunder things with their blade that couldn't normally be sundered. You expect a high-level rogue to be able to squeeze through places that can't be squeezed through. You expect a high-level wizard to do whatever they want to do.)

I'd rather there were expectations like "This character is a Scryer. I expect high-level Scryers to see things far beyond the pale, to sense what cannot be normally sensed, to know what has not been known yet." or "This character is an Illusionist. I expect high-level Illusionists to be able to create a reality that others believe in."

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 01:02 PM

That's kind of the point, it IS subjective/arbitrary. But it's subjective for enough people that the few who disagree are better off playing something else or houseruling, rather than changing what is in print to fit their beliefs of what is magical and what is not.

This is not to say that I think every Su/Ex ability in 3.5 or PF is categorized appropriately. But I do think most of them are, in other words overall I agree with the designers' rationale with only a few specific dissents.

I agree with this. Trackless step doesn't sound particularly extraordinary. :smalltongue:

Psyren

2013-09-13, 01:05 PM

I agree with this. Trackless step doesn't sound particularly extraordinary. :smalltongue:

It is in a way - being able to perfectly cover your tracks in any form of natural terrain from any form of native life, whether you've ever been there before or not, is certainly doable, but doing so with no chance of failure at all is pretty extraordinary. Consider that a Druid 3 who has lived her entire life in the jungle can choose to be untrackable even in the snow or desert - again, pretty extraordinary.

Gemini476

2013-09-13, 01:32 PM

I just remembered this thread (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10832) - it's a bit relevant, I think.

As for the whole "kick off air and flash step" thing, isn't that basically a Swordsage with Balance on the Sky and Shadow Blink? Plus he can use his Five-Shadow Ice Creeping Enervation Strike when he wants to be even more anime!

And as for the whole LotR magic thing, I'm fairly certain that the only spell Gandalf cast was to light the fire on Orodruin. Which instantly alerted Saruman to his position. Oh, and the fight with Durin's Bane as well, I suppose. The flaming pine-cone is debatable, but may have to do with his fireworks expertise.

Do you know why they seldom use magic in the Lord of the Rings? Magic is finite. When you use magic, you pour your power into it - incidentally what XP costs was modeled after - and once the spell is cast, mountain raised or ring crafted, the power is no longer invested in you. During the beginning of Ea Melkor did all kinds of magical things like filling in valleys, crushing mountains and causing havoc in general. By the end of the First Age, however, he managed to get stabbed by Fingolfin and walked with a limp for ever after.

The elves are pretty awesome, actually. You know Glorfindel, the guy who escorts Frodo to Rivendell? He was (probably) Glorfindel of Gondolin who died doing pretty much the same thing Gandalf did. Oh, and Elves have completely non-magical immortality/reincarnation. And at least one star is a guy in a boat, while some others are embers from a forge. Yeah.

Oh, and Ancalagon the Black was a big dragon.

"Before the rising of the sun Earendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin."
Thangorodrim was the largest mountain in Middle-Earth, by the way. It also doubled as Morgoth's fortress.
It's debatable as to whether or not the description is literal, by the way. But still.

Oh, and his flight is still not magic. Despite being possibly kilometers long. Because Lord of the Rings does not use physics as we know it.

EDIT: For a better version of the link at the start, go to here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6574.0).

Psyren

2013-09-13, 01:39 PM

LotR elves aren't D&D elves though. So the standards of normalcy between the two are different, and as Galadriel pointed out so succinctly, what is considered "magic" for the normal people wasn't so for them. LotR elves are closer to celestials than humanoids. And the First Men were closer to Aasimars than humans.

What's more, LotR may have been a big inspiration for D&D, but it was far from the only one.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 01:52 PM

In those situations that you described. You can just as easily contrive (combat) situations where Bards, Necros and regular T4 warrior classes are getting shut down (or reduced to Monk levels of efficiency), but Crusie and Warbie can still do stuff, simply because they can switch between combat roles.

These situations are what have been used to classify classes in Tiers. I did not invent them, nor are they particularly contrived. Finding situations where T3 and T4 can't contribute meaningfully isn't supposed to be that hard, it's in the description of the tiers after all.

BRC

2013-09-13, 01:55 PM

I would argue that this is less about "Reality", and more about Archtype.

You say "We shouldn't limit the capabilities of non-martial classes by what the guy at the gym can do". That's great.
However, the real limiting factor is not Reality, but Archtype.

A Wizard can throw lightning bolts, summon monstrous allies, fly or coat the ground in a slippery grease, among other things.
The Wizard is very versitile, and as you push out of the realm of things defined by The Guy At The Gym, you also push out of the archetypical idea of the Fighter, AKA what people are signing up for when they decided to play one. Let's look at the things I mentioned above.

A Wizard can throw lightning bolts. This one is pretty easy actually. Lightning bolts are just another type of damage, so you could have a Fighter shoot arrows that deal equivalent damage.

Summon Allies: Well you could have the Fighter Shout really loud and some friendly mercenaries show up to help. However, having a set of friendly sellswords conveniently within shouting distance strains credibility in certain situations (like in a deep dungeon). Still, I suppose it's doable.
Fly: "Walk on Air" or "Jump really high" works, but they don't exactly fit the feel most people are going for with a fighter. When I play a fighter, I'm picturing somthing closer to Lord of the Rings then Naruto.
Grease: This one you could call the fighter throwing some sort of grease bomb, but that's an item, it's somthing anybody could do if they had one, not an ingrained skill, so it dosn't make sense. "You are so good with swords that people are giving you grease bombs".

If you give a fighter clearly supernatural or superhuman capabilities (like walking on air), then the fact that you put EX in front of the ability name won't change the fact that you've moved the fighter away from the sword-swinging hero that people want to play.

Magic is a convienient explanation. Carmen Sandiego dosn't steal the Statue of Liberty because she's mastered picking pockets, she uses minions and fleets of helicopters. A Wizard could teleport it away, because magic, but unless you want to give each sufficiently high-level rogue minions and a fleet of helicopters, you're going to have trouble.

Segev

2013-09-13, 02:02 PM

Mostly a fair assessment.

I'm not even advocating that a fighter should do "everything" a wizard or cleric should do. I'm advocating for bumping him up with capacity to deal with situations as well as a wizard or cleric could, even if he has to do it with a smaller bag of tricks. In a way, fighters have a lot in common with warlocks: their big thing is consistency, not running out of their ability to dish it out as the day goes by.

I'm not utterly opposed to sticking (Su) tags on things mundanes can do as they get higher up.

I suppose the question is: is this hypothetical player who "signed up" to play a sword-swinging fighter and "not Naruto" going to be offended when the wizard can do so very much more than he can? If so, what is it he wants to be able to do in order to "catch up?"

One answer is to bring the wizard down. Some DMs do this by banning T1 classes overall. But by the same token that D&D provides options to play at many different tiers, it would be nice if there were "mundane" options for playing at the high tier.

As you put it, BRC, it's about archetype. IF you want to play the archetype of "the fighter" or "the rogue" in a high-powered D&D game that is going to include reasonably well-optimized T1 casters, should there not be options to do so? Even ToB is "T3" by most standards. And it also is much closer to playing like a wizard or sorcerer than even the Warlock, due to its depleting resources over the course of a fight.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 02:03 PM

Says who?

No, seriously.

Actually, there're RAW that contradict you: It's a DC 90 balance check to walk on water; DC 120 to walk on clouds. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#balance) This is not magical. It's "epic," but all "epic" skill usages can be achieved pre-epic as long as you can make the check.

You're basing your claim that "humans can't do that without magic" on the fact that little was printed to allow it. But that's not a blanket statement about D&D; that's a negative space that has never been addressed in D&D.

Basically, to say "humans can't fly without magic in D&D" is circular when the debate is over whether it's appropriate to add (Ex) abilities to do just that. Unless there is a rule somewhere that explicitly says, "humans cannot fly without magic or wings," the absence of rules that allow them to do so does not contradict some "setting truth" or even a "system truth" when you try to introduce such rules.

Essentially, your argument is, "you can't discuss adding anything because anything not already there isn't D&D."

I based that on this:

Humans
Medium: As Medium creatures, humans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Human base land speed is 30 feet.
1 extra feat at 1st level.
4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level.
Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic). See the Speak Language skill.
Favored Class: Any. When determining whether a multiclass human takes an experience point penalty, his or her highest-level class does not count.

Humans don't fly, they don't have a flying speed. That characters may be able to succeed at epic level skill checks have nothing (or little) to do with racial abilities, but with class levels/HD, feats, class abilities, etc.

I have no trouble accepting all manner of (Ex) and (Su) abilities given classes as they level. It's cool, and why we strive to level, right?
What I don't see is the necessity to cram down magic or (Su) abilities in every class, just to achieve "balance". Screw balance! If I want to play Farmboy, let me! If you want to add spells to your fighter, just add whatever class suits your fancy: druid or cleric is what I would recommend.

Segev

2013-09-13, 02:08 PM

"I want to be so strong that I can shove off the air" is a valid archetype for high-level play, I think.

But I don't think we have a disagreement, Gwendol. If you've no problem with "fighter-types" or even the fighter class itself gaining options to add such abilities, then there's no disagreement.

JaronK

2013-09-13, 02:08 PM

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-13, 02:16 PM

A Wizard can throw lightning bolts, summon monstrous allies, fly or coat the ground in a slippery grease, among other things.

Point of fact: where does this archetype derive from?

The only justification I'm aware of for a wizard being able to do all of the above is, in fact, D&D 3.5, where the wizard is essentially defined by "I do anything I want".

Most fictional magicians prior to that edition (or prior to D&D in particular) either have some sort of specialization or else just plain reshape reality (at which point specific abilities and spells are nothing more than manifestations of their raw power). D&D magic-users are actually several archetypes all mashed together; the non-casters are the ones who tend to be more specialized.

In terms of actual archetype, a caster (as contrasted with a non-caster) is defined by a supernatural idiom which gives them bizarre abilities. Casters are defined by The Strange. That would be a version of the Wizard I could get behind.

Gwendol

2013-09-13, 02:17 PM

If you want to play a farm boy, then you should probably stay below certain levels (about 5 or so). Being able to do things that are completely physically impossible is what high levels are defined by.

JaronK

Well, yeah that's exactly my point. Or, one may want to consider heroes such as Robin Hood, Lancelot, Fafhrd, who are exceptional, but not magical and really stick with that. The nice thing about D&D 3.X is that whatever the hero you have in mind, there is a great chance you will be able to put together the pieces to achieve your vision. I don't mind sprinkling in some spellcasting in martial builds (and the opposite) to reach the desired effect.

So what if the fighter can't deal with magic? Either play that out fully, or give him the means to do it by picking another class (it's not like you lose out on cool abilities anyway)!

Psyren

2013-09-13, 02:25 PM

I suppose the question is: is this hypothetical player who "signed up" to play a sword-swinging fighter and "not Naruto" going to be offended when the wizard can do so very much more than he can? If so, what is it he wants to be able to do in order to "catch up?"

Reroll/Retrain.

Point of fact: where does this archetype derive from?

The only justification I'm aware of for a wizard being able to do all of the above is, in fact, D&D 3.5, where the wizard is essentially defined by "I do anything I want".

Most fictional magicians prior to that edition (or prior to D&D in particular) either have some sort of specialization or else just plain reshape reality (at which point specific abilities and spells are nothing more than manifestations of their raw power). D&D magic-users are actually several archetypes all mashed together; the non-casters are the ones who tend to be more specialized.

In terms of actual archetype, a caster (as contrasted with a non-caster) is defined by a supernatural idiom which gives them bizarre abilities. Casters are defined by The Strange. That would be a version of the Wizard I could get behind.

I couldn't tell you exactly where it came from (though Vance's novels are obviously a good place to start looking.) What I can point out is that it definitely has been an assumption of D&D from the very beginning as that blog post's profanity-laden quotes pointed out.

BRC

2013-09-13, 02:31 PM

Reroll/Retrain.

I couldn't tell you exactly where it came from (though Vance's novels are obviously a good place to start looking.) What I can point out is that it definitely has been an assumption of D&D from the very beginning as that blog post's profanity-laden quotes pointed out.

That blog post also assumes that all games begin at level 1 and end at level 20, so the spellcasters have earned their power by being very limited for the first few levels.

As for the origin of the archetype, I couldn't say, but its nigh omnipresent now. If somebody signs up to play a wizard, even if they have never played DnD before, they're probably thinking of some wizard inspired by a DnD Wizard who can do everything because magic, rather than a specialist with a very limited skillset.

Venom3053000

2013-09-13, 02:34 PM

Daedalus Wings sound like they should be a item :smallbiggrin:

Barstro

2013-09-13, 02:44 PM

So what if the fighter can't deal with magic? Either play that out fully, or give him the means to do it by picking another class (it's not like you lose out on cool abilities anyway)!

Not sure if it was discussed;

I've always been bothered by people using powers, but forgetting weaknesses. A Paladin is just a fighter who is a bit more powerful, but has many restrictions. However, if you never give a damn about following a Paladin's restrictions, then there is no reason to play a Fighter instead of a Paladin. I give that conjecture just to explain my upcoming thought.

The issue with magic users is that they are all strength, but no weaknesses are built in. To my mind, magic users should be much more susceptible to magic's weaknesses; if you are so in tune with the forces of magic that you can bend reality, then another magic user should be able to use that same force to affect you, whereas a mundane would only sort of feel a minor effect*. It makes more sense to why it's "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table", and not "Merlin, Overlord of the World".

*I think older versions used this for psychic powers.

Segev

2013-09-13, 02:45 PM

Daedalus Wings (2000 gp)
This masterwork of engineering fastens as a complete harness over the torso and arms. Both hands and arms are occupied while wearing this item; it does not interfere with magic item slots, but it is impossible to hold items in hand nor wear shields or the like on arms while this harness is in place, nor is it possible to wear any sort of backpack or the like without interfering with their function. It takes 1 minute to don or doff it properly.

While wearing this device, a character can fly at a speed of 30 ft. with poor maneuverability. It requires tremendous strength to use them properly. He cannot fly while bearing more than a light load, and his own personal weight counts as part of his load while using the Daedalus Wings to fly. To take off requires a full round of running or leaping off of at least a thirty foot fall.

While carrying a Medium or lighter load, the character falls at half rate. A Heavy load renders the Wings useless, as the character simply cannot manage the weight.

If the character fails a saving throw against any sort of fire damage, the wings begin to fall apart as their feathers catch fire. He treats a Light load as a Medium one for purposes of this device for 1d4 rounds, after which they are destroyed. With no other means of aerial support, he falls.

johnbragg

2013-09-13, 02:47 PM

In terms of actual archetype, a caster (as contrasted with a non-caster) is defined by a supernatural idiom which gives them bizarre abilities. Casters are defined by The Strange. That would be a version of the Wizard I could get behind.

...but over time, wizards have developed consistent spells and rituals that produce consistent effects. A high enough level wizard could take that raw power and shape it in a new way, but that's a lot riskier than casting a known spell in a known way.

Maybe the reason that there are so many different spells is that wizards operate sort of like academics with PhDs--creating something unique and original is a guild requirement.

You could limit this setting-by-setting, with different groups and factions of casters having different, limited spell lists, maybe 12-20 per faction plus a dozen general cantrips and first-level spells in the most widely circulated book of magic. An Aquarian who finds and brings back a Pyronomicon has achieved something, even if it will take the Aquarians years of dedicated study to get the Pyronomicon spells and formulae to work with what the Aquarians are familiar with.

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-13, 03:06 PM

...but over time, wizards have developed consistent spells and rituals that produce consistent effects. A high enough level wizard could take that raw power and shape it in a new way, but that's a lot riskier than casting a known spell in a known way.

Well, if you do go this route (the wizard has the ability to reshape reality and is simply applying specific techniques to do so), the route for other classes is much clearer.

The wizard's schtick here is "shaping reality". They warp it to produce various effects.

The fighter's schtick becomes "defeating reality". They break barriers, boundaries, and limits through SPIRAL POWER persistence and will.

The rogue's schtick becomes "evading reality". Laws like gravity, sound, and light begin to apply less and less. Because the rogue is sneaky enough to avoid reality.

The cleric's schtick becomes "enforcing reality". They are the lawbringers, the servants of the gods who belong to the architecture of the world, and it is their job to make sure the world remains real. They bolster reality and keep it stable.

And actually...that strikes me as an interesting balance of archetypes. All of them are being viewed on roughly even ground, and let your minds spin as to the implications of each archetype so defined.

Frick. I actually want to see this in a fantasy RPG now.

BRC

2013-09-13, 03:09 PM

Not sure if it was discussed;

I've always been bothered by people using powers, but forgetting weaknesses. A Paladin is just a fighter who is a bit more powerful, but has many restrictions. However, if you never give a damn about following a Paladin's restrictions, then there is no reason to play a Fighter instead of a Paladin. I give that conjecture just to explain my upcoming thought.

The issue with magic users is that they are all strength, but no weaknesses are built in. To my mind, magic users should be much more susceptible to magic's weaknesses; if you are so in tune with the forces of magic that you can bend reality, then another magic user should be able to use that same force to affect you, whereas a mundane would only sort of feel a minor effect*. It makes more sense to why it's "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table", and not "Merlin, Overlord of the World".

*I think older versions used this for psychic powers.

That is a really interesting concept.
It wouldn't work in DnD without a considerable rewrite, but consider this.
The more Magical/Supernatural you are, the more vulnerable you become to things of supernatural origin, the less grounded you are. Magic exists on a slightly seperate plane of reality, and so it's ability to affect you is limited by how much you embrace it.

So, for example, a DnD Style Omni-Wizard has considerable utility, he can fly, freeze enemies, throw fireballs, transform into powerful beasts, ect. However in doing so he becomes increasingly vulnerable to anything of supernatural origin. A Dragon's flame will burn him to a crisp, or a skeleton's claws can tear him to shreds.

On the other end of the spectrum, a Knight, equipped with well-made nonmagical equipment stands firmly outside the realm of the supernatural. Yes, all he can do is ride horses, swing a sword, and fire a bow, but as his nature is less Magical, Magic affects him less. The Wizard would need to conjure his strongest shield to stop the dragon's flame, meanwhile that Knight could grit his teeth and weather the attack with a simple kite shield or a handy bit of rock. Even if the wizard conjured up mystical armor, the skeletons would still be a threat. However, for the Knight they're less dangerous than a mundane foe with similar equipment.

That said, the more you embrace magic, the more vulnerable to it you become. Wielding magical equipment, allowing a cleric to heal your wounds magically, being raised from the dead, all these things increase your magical nature and in doing so render you more vulernable to magic.

For example, the Wizard conjures up a mystic shield. For a Spell, the shield is as hard as steel. A magical sword might be able to break through it given enough effort. A mundane sword wielded by a mundane warrior could cut right through it.

Thus a Sword-swinging Fighter can exist alongside a Powerful Wizard, with room for "I can balance on air and run up walls" style characters as well.

This also focuses spellcasters more on utility than power. Yes you can fire a massive blast of arcane energy, but it will only be fully effective against other spellcasters. If you're up against a mundane foe he's going to shrug off your magical attacks while you have no special protection against being impaled by a lance. Your arcane blasts are going to hurt him, but no more than blows from a mace, and he can hit you with his mace more often and with more accuracy than you can fire your blasts. Magic vs Mundane becomes a battle of utility vs Power. Magic vs Magic and Mundane vs Mundane are Power vs Power.

And then there are people who exist in the middle. Not full spellcasters, but people who borrow just enough magic to make whatever cool-but-impractical concept they want work. A Knife fighter clad only in everyday clothing with supernatural speed and an endless supply of throwing knives that travel farther and more accurately than they should for example.

Segev

2013-09-13, 03:14 PM

Well, if you do go this route (the wizard has the ability to reshape reality and is simply applying specific techniques to do so), the route for other classes is much clearer.

The wizard's schtick here is "shaping reality". They warp it to produce various effects.

The fighter's schtick becomes "defeating reality". They break barriers, boundaries, and limits through SPIRAL POWER persistence and will.

The rogue's schtick becomes "evading reality". Laws like gravity, sound, and light begin to apply less and less. Because the rogue is sneaky enough to avoid reality.

The cleric's schtick becomes "enforcing reality". They are the lawbringers, the servants of the gods who belong to the architecture of the world, and it is their job to make sure the world remains real. They bolster reality and keep it stable.

And actually...that strikes me as an interesting balance of archetypes. All of them are being viewed on roughly even ground, and let your minds spin as to the implications of each archetype so defined.

Frick. I actually want to see this in a fantasy RPG now.

That's...actually very interesting. It would allow the same achievement to be performed by each archetype in a distinctly flavorful way. Personally, I would want to see something of a variant subsystem for each method. But at the least, I'd like the Warpers and Enforcers to use one subsystem (at opposing sides of the coin), and Defeaters and Evaders either use distinct ones or use the same one but to different ends. I don't quite see them as opposed so much as just using differing methods.

If we go with a Rock/Scissors/Paper cycle, I'd say Warpers beat Defeaters, Defeaters beat Enforcers, Enforcers beat Evaders, and Evaders beat Warpers.

This is because Warpers change the rules of the game on the Defeaters, who can't beat moving goal posts easily. Those who defeat and conquer reality are masters of its rules and thus the Enforcers have little they can do to them. Enforcers ensure that the rules do, in fact, apply, and thus those who evade them have a harder time slipping around them. Evaders of reality, however, don't particularly care what rules they're evading, so they handle Warpers easily by simply ignoring the changes to the rules the Warpers make.

BRC

2013-09-13, 03:23 PM

That's...actually very interesting. It would allow the same achievement to be performed by each archetype in a distinctly flavorful way. Personally, I would want to see something of a variant subsystem for each method. But at the least, I'd like the Warpers and Enforcers to use one subsystem (at opposing sides of the coin), and Defeaters and Evaders either use distinct ones or use the same one but to different ends. I don't quite see them as opposed so much as just using differing methods.

If we go with a Rock/Scissors/Paper cycle, I'd say Warpers beat Defeaters, Defeaters beat Enforcers, Enforcers beat Evaders, and Evaders beat Warpers.

This is because Warpers change the rules of the game on the Defeaters, who can't beat moving goal posts easily. Those who defeat and conquer reality are masters of its rules and thus the Enforcers have little they can do to them. Enforcers ensure that the rules do, in fact, apply, and thus those who evade them have a harder time slipping around them. Evaders of reality, however, don't particularly care what rules they're evading, so they handle Warpers easily by simply ignoring the changes to the rules the Warpers make.

This is really cool.

So

A Wizard (Warper) Shoots a lightning bolt. By doing so they are warping reality such that shooting a lightning bolt from your hands is a thing that can happen.

A Fighter (Breaker) Takes the brunt of it. The rules say Lightning Bolts are a thing now, sucks to be you.

A Cleric (Enforcer, so maybe a title like "Inquisistor" or "Witchhunter" works better) Speaks a word and reasserts reality. The bolt weakens as its impossibility is reasserted.

A Rogue (Evader) has decided that sure, the Wizard can make rules about lightning bolts being a thing, however the ROGUE isn't even listening to the laws of physics anymore. A few seconds ago they switched to personally operating according to the laws of cinematic Swashbucklery, so while he's too slow to just duck the lightning bolt, he's fast enough to backflip out of the way, throwing a dagger while he does so. It's less that they're fast enough to dodge a lightning bolt, you can't dodge lightning, and more that they're operating under the rules of "whatever looks cool" now.

Edit: I really like the idea of combining Rogues and Bards into one style that works by switching which rules it's following.
Do you want to ambush somebody? Guess what, you're now operating according to the rules of Horror. You're the escaped lunatic in the woods, and HE'S the dumb jock who just wandered away from the campfire to go get some more beer from the car. You're not so much sneaking up on them as operating according to the rules that even when you've been perfectly aware of your surroundings, enemies can get right behind you (However, the Rogue can't actually act until their target turns around and screams).

Psyren

2013-09-13, 03:31 PM

I've always been bothered by people using powers, but forgetting weaknesses. A Paladin is just a fighter who is a bit more powerful, but has many restrictions. However, if you never give a damn about following a Paladin's restrictions, then there is no reason to play a Fighter instead of a Paladin. I give that conjecture just to explain my upcoming thought.

It's more complicated than that - Fighters get access to combat techniques (via bonus and fighter-only feats) that Paladins don't. And while the Paladin's abilities are well suited to taking on evil foes, plenty of dangerous enemies like animals/plants/constructs/oozes are not.

The issue with magic users is that they are all strength, but no weaknesses are built in.

Magic has plenty of weaknesses. Sure for many of them you need access to magic of your own, but past a certain level just about every monster does.

It makes more sense to why it's "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table", and not "Merlin, Overlord of the World".

Have you tried ruling the world? It's a very boring job. Crown the fighter and let him bang his hot and possibly half-elven girlfriend while you go live on your demiplane of awesome.

Ekul

2013-09-13, 03:58 PM

Huh.

I had been frustrated with this recently, so I've been working on a homebrew martial artist class which has about 180 different class features to choose from, all that treat levels 10+ as having abilities nigh to actually impossible for a real human to have, but based on mythical abilities of martial artistry. Well, and there's one branch of abilities that's flat out impossible all around, but it's the exception and not the rule.

What a coincidence!

(It's really far from being done/balanced though. I don't know when it'll be possible to even subject it for review with all the work I still have to do.)

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-13, 04:15 PM

Psyren

2013-09-13, 04:23 PM

The 4-way RPS match does seem interesting.

I wish you the best of luck pulling it off :smalltongue:

navar100

2013-09-13, 06:10 PM

Coidzor

2013-09-13, 08:41 PM

Nope, still preference :smallsmile:

If you want to play in a world where there are no similarities between real world and fantasy world physics then that´s cool with me.

But i want to play in a world where i can succeed without (what i define as) complete over the top action.

You may not agree, but that´s a matter of preference.

Part of the problem lies in defining what constitutes over the top action and what's the bare minimum of required effects when you're fighting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NV5IbT0g-8)Godzilla (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm).

Bhaakon

2013-09-13, 09:26 PM

Part of the problem lies in defining what constitutes over the top action and what's the bare minimum of required effects when you're fighting Godzilla.

I believe mechagodzilla is the answer to both questions.

Snowbluff

2013-09-13, 09:30 PM

Part of the problem lies in defining what constitutes over the top action and what's the bare minimum of required effects when you're fighting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NV5IbT0g-8)Godzilla (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm).

Tarrasque and Godzilla are from other sides of the planet. Don't we have something from closer to Godzilla?

Segev

2013-09-13, 10:19 PM

Tarrasque and Godzilla are from other sides of the planet. Don't we have something from closer to Godzilla?

2e Gold Dragons looked like chinese dragons. Does that count?

TuggyNE

2013-09-13, 11:20 PM

2e Gold Dragons looked like chinese dragons. Does that count?

Don't they still kinda slightly, what with their whiskered and sagacious faces?

Just to Browse

2013-09-14, 12:19 AM

It's fine to give warriors Nice Things. They should have Nice Things. To deny them Nice Things because of reality is stupid. However, the Nice Things they get should satisfy verisimilitude.

A barbarian should not be able to raise the dead just because a cleric can. Raising the dead is a Cleric Thing. That's theirs. What the barbarian should get is Something Cool on his own. He can have a rage ability such as:

"Once per encounter while raging after you are dropped to below 0 hit points, regardless of amount, you aren't truly dead. Your rage ends but are not fatigued, you heal hit points equal to half your max, and are prone. If you are suspected as not being dead, the creature must make an opposed Sense Motive roll vs your Bluff to know the truth. As a full round action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity, you can stand up, move up to your speed, and make a single attack at your highest attack bonus against any opponent who thought you were dead. The target is flat-footed against this attack, and it is automatically a critical threat if you hit regardless of roll. After this attack you are fatigued if you would normally be fatigued when your rage ends.

If you are killed by a death attack, petrification, disintegration, or otherwise without a functioning body, you cannot use this ability and are truly dead."

This sort of thing fails for two reasons:
It offers no utility. The cleric is still better than you because he can pull up meatshields and he can spring traps, construct town defenses, and all you can do is be strong.
As you showed in the ability, barbaric powers are strictly limited by our inherent human desire to keep things "mundane", which just fails outright. Petrification stops the barbarian, disintegration stops him, but would a cleric with the Divine Protection of his God get that? Probably not. It's our nature to limit "mundane" things to "mundane" actions, even when it would be balanced for the barbarian to shake off molecular realignment our gut instinct is to not allow it.

Psyren

2013-09-14, 12:44 AM

Err, the Barbarian CAN shake off "molecular realignment." It's called a fortitude save, and they're pretty good at it. Same with petrification.

Just to Browse

2013-09-14, 12:47 AM

No, that's called making a fortitude save. Just like getting hit with a fireball but making the reflex save doesn't mean you "shook off" being lit on fire (you dodged it), making the fortitude save against a disintegrate doesn't mean you "shook off" the disintegration.

georgie_leech

2013-09-14, 12:51 AM

Something that always bothered me about Magic in D&D Is that it doesn't require anything from the caster beyond expenditure of resources. The Fighter needs to roll to hit AC, or he misses; the default state is no hit. The Rogue picks a lock, but only if he hits the DC required. The Wizard? He decides to cast fireball, and everyone else needs to make the save. When a wizard casts a spell, it is mechanically effortless and everyone else needs to compensate. To me, this contributes to feeling like Magic is just more powerful; the default state of a spell is "success," unlike most other things in the game.

EDIT:

No, that's called making a fortitude save. Just like getting hit with a fireball but making the reflex save doesn't mean you "shook off" being lit on fire (you dodged it), making the fortitude save against a disintegrate doesn't mean you "shook off" the disintegration.

Well, that is shaking off the rearrangement, but that's kind of what I'm talking about. The Disintegrate spell is an automatic molecular rearrangement, unless the defender does some ill-defined tough thing that let's him resist. In other systems and myths, it can be reflected in the caster struggling to overcome the innate resistance of the Barbarian, but in D&D, it's mechanically all on the Barbarian to respond to the Wizard that dictated the new reality of molecules in odd places.

Psyren

2013-09-14, 01:14 AM

Something that always bothered me about Magic in D&D Is that it doesn't require anything from the caster beyond expenditure of resources. The Fighter needs to roll to hit AC, or he misses; the default state is no hit. The Rogue picks a lock, but only if he hits the DC required. The Wizard? He decides to cast fireball, and everyone else needs to make the save. When a wizard casts a spell, it is mechanically effortless and everyone else needs to compensate. To me, this contributes to feeling like Magic is just more powerful; the default state of a spell is "success," unlike most other things in the game.

Making the Wizard roll is hard to do well. 3d6 Dragon Age for instance has a system whereby each spell has a "target number" (DC) that the caster has to roll for and add his magic stat t see if he makes it.

The problem is that the target numbers are static - so mages just optimize their check (and most of the ways of doing so e.g. pumping the Magic stat have ancillary benefits). But when the numbers aren't static, it feels like shifting goalposts at best, and at worse you end up with a Truenamer situation where the math just fails after awhile.

No, that's called making a fortitude save. Just like getting hit with a fireball but making the reflex save doesn't mean you "shook off" being lit on fire (you dodged it), making the fortitude save against a disintegrate doesn't mean you "shook off" the disintegration.

That's... literally what making a fort save means. How do you interpret it?

Just to Browse

2013-09-14, 01:28 AM

That's... literally what making a fort save means. How do you interpret it?

Why are you deciding what a fortitude save means for other people based on your perceptions of what it's flavor should be (versus examples from other saves than can easily be extrapolated)?

Let me redefine "shrug off" for you, since that appears to be our source of confusion. Since I brought it up, I get to say that [Shrug Off] means "An action taken when you are subjected to an abnormal debilitating condition after your initial defenses have been overcome--including but not limited to failing your fortitude save, having spell resistance penetrated, and not supplying immunities or having such immunities circumvented. In the course of this action you remove the debilitating condition through sheer virtue of toughness alone, in a way not reflected by any other statuses relevant to your person such--including but not limited to fortitude saves, spell resistance, and immunities."

georgie_leech

2013-09-14, 01:32 AM

Making the Wizard roll is hard to do well. 3d6 Dragon Age for instance has a system whereby each spell has a "target number" (DC) that the caster has to roll for and add his magic stat t see if he makes it.

The problem is that the target numbers are static - so mages just optimize their check (and most of the ways of doing so e.g. pumping the Magic stat have ancillary benefits). But when the numbers aren't static, it feels like shifting goalposts at best, and at worse you end up with a Truenamer situation where the math just fails after awhile.

If we assume the current numbers are balanced, just changing it from making a Save against a DC = 10 + Int Mod + Spell level into "Roll 1d20 + Int Mod + Spell level to see if you can overcome their innate resistance/hit the target properly" where the DC is equal to 10 + the regular save bonus. This change shifts spells from being successful by default, mechanics-wise, while changing nothing about the balance of any given spell. It's a simple and painless change, but the fact that it is a change for the Wizard's default state to be "Try to make it work" rather than "Do, and see if they can resist" is what I'm talking about.

Incidentally, as long as we're pulling examples from other games, Shadowrun used a system similar to this with some of the Transformation spells; you had to roll a number of successes based on the Body (toughness) of the target to, say, turn them into stone. The tougher the target was, the harder it was to make the spell stick, as oppose to being easier for the target to shake off.

Just to Browse

2013-09-14, 01:34 AM

Alternatively, for very backwards-compatible 3.x rules, roll your save DCs and make Saves static like AC.

georgie_leech

2013-09-14, 01:40 AM

Alternatively, for very backwards-compatible 3.x rules, roll your save DCs and make Saves static like AC.

That's more or less what I said, yeah, though a lot more succinctly.:smallredface:

Although, something about that wording, possibly the fact that Saves are still involved, still feels like casting a spell is entirely about forcing the world to react to your choice, rather than working to enact the change you want.

Lord Raziere

2013-09-14, 02:47 AM

Barbarian Mountain Leap:
When the Barbarian is raging, no feat is impossible. Their rage is enough to leap over gravity itself. This ability allows you to leap 100 miles per rage point spent.

Savage Speed Overwhelming:
The Barbarian in his fury runs so fast that even water does not stop him. When he spends a rage point in combat, he doubles his movement rate for the duration of the fight and runs across water effortlessly without needing a check.
during travel, he can instead spend a rage point to run at a speed of 50 miles per hour, even over water

Protective Fury Velocity:
The Barbarian in his rage is so fast that he can defend all his friends at once. The Barbarian spends a rage point and thus all his allies gain a +4 bonus to AC for the duration of the fight, blurred images of the barbarian appearing all around them.

Raging Against Death:
The Barbarian spends a rage point to become immune to effects such as disintegrate, finger of death or anything other effect that would cause him to die instantly one hit for the duration of the fight. Mere Death is nothing against the wrath of a barbarian.

A wizard tells physics to shut up and sit down.

A barbarian just punches physics until its knocked out cold.

Raven777

2013-09-14, 06:56 AM

Equilibria

2013-09-14, 08:52 AM

Part of the problem lies in defining what constitutes over the top action and what's the bare minimum of required effects when you're fighting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NV5IbT0g-8)Godzilla (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm).

That´s true, but that would be the norm when any big changes are made to an existing set of rules.

Lets cross our fingers for the 5e D&D :smallsmile:

Psyren

2013-09-14, 09:13 AM

An action taken when you are subjected to an abnormal debilitating condition after your initial defenses have been overcome

Okay, I see the issue. Yeah, that's not how I define it at all. To me, "shrug off" means the initial attempt to do X failed, not that it succeeded and then retroactively didn't succeed because muscles or whatever.

If we assume the current numbers are balanced, just changing it from making a Save against a DC = 10 + Int Mod + Spell level into "Roll 1d20 + Int Mod + Spell level to see if you can overcome their innate resistance/hit the target properly" where the DC is equal to 10 + the regular save bonus. This change shifts spells from being successful by default, mechanics-wise, while changing nothing about the balance of any given spell. It's a simple and painless change, but the fact that it is a change for the Wizard's default state to be "Try to make it work" rather than "Do, and see if they can resist" is what I'm talking about.

It still only applies to targeted spells though. What about summons, or buffing allies, or causing real changes to the environment (such as raising up walls or opening pits) that have no save? Those obviously would have no "innate resistance" to overcome, just like no-save spells do now.

A wizard tells physics to shut up and sit down.

A barbarian just punches physics until its knocked out cold.

I'm not totally against this, but ToB was controversial enough. The "anime" backlash against this sort of thing would be 10x that.

Lord Raziere

2013-09-14, 10:04 AM

I'm not totally against this, but ToB was controversial enough. The "anime" backlash against this sort of thing would be 10x that.

BACKLASH? I care not for backlashes!

I am not a coward to shy away because people will dislike it! I am not afraid of any unpopularity or controversy! I care only if its fun to play! I care only if its interesting!

Does a "attack until dead, move to next enemy, attack until dead" sound interesting of fun to you? It does not, to me! What does, is being so awesome I can run across water with pure rage and cleave through giant monsters in one hit, then run back to my allies just in time to protect them from the falling corpse, then free my other rally from mind control by slapping them upside the head!

Why is one way of screwing over reality so much more acceptable than another? A wizard is just screwing reality by making certain handsigns and saying certain words, which is in a way, physical. so why can't I screw reality by being furious at it? or y'know, being well trained enough to screw with it in the case of a fighter, or so clever, sneaky and deceptive in the case of a rogue your lies are so good reality starts believing them?

and in my opinion people are too critical and intolerant of anime as it is, they need to become more accepting. all fiction is ridiculous in one way or another, I don't get why you can accept one ridiculousness over another, as if one form of ridiculous fantasy is superior to another ridiculous fantasy. its all ridiculous and fantasy and I don't see they contradict each other, or why they cannot coexist.

but really, there is probably no examples of western media having ridiculous physical feats-

OH WAIT.

power rangers, the western sentai of america. but surely thats the only…

OH WAIT.

transformers are western giant mecha. hm, thats a weird coincidence….

OH WAIT.

teenage mutant ninja turtles, frack and here I thought western stuff was LESS ridiculous than anime, but surely these are all exceptions-

OH WAIT.

Hulk's power is gaining power through rage, and superheroes are practically full of amazing physical feats worthy of an anime.

so really, people have no right to point any fingers at anime. I just listed four long-running western franchises that have similarities to anime. and thats not pointing out that the powerpuff girls are basically western magical girls, or that
superman has done things far more ridiculous than any anime character. there are more similarities than people think.

Snowbluff

2013-09-14, 10:21 AM

That escalated quickly, I don't think that's a fair comparison.

Mostly due to the fact anime has been influenced by western animation as vice versa.

I think the problem is that people think martial arts are strictly an 'eastern' thing.

Emmerask

2013-09-14, 10:31 AM

Anime in that case does not mean ANIME...

Its just use to illustrate the point that they do not want over the top kind of gameplay, animes are just the best known ""offenders"" in that regard and by that illustrate the point very well.

So your ranting was rather pointless really :smallwink:

Now granted d&d most likely is just not the best system to do anything else but over the top gameplay that has pretty much nothing in common with reality, though my question would be why actually fix the lower tier classes?
Just play a tob character and you have all that, who cares that your fighter now has a different classname ?

Anyway if I had to point my finger at the main problem(s) it would be
a) spell are to versatile
b) spellusers learn spells without any drawback

Rolemaster in that regard had a much better approach (except for casters being useless the first few levels)
In general the mundane characters are the ones who have any points left to train skills so while they have very limited options in combat they shine at pretty much everything else.
While in d&d especially wizards shine in combat and outside, they have spells to do pretty much everything and then to add insult to injury they also get all the skillpoints they want due to int to skillpoints

Psyren

2013-09-14, 11:12 AM

but really, there is probably no examples of western media having ridiculous physical feats-

OH WAIT.

power rangers, the western sentai of america. but surely thats the only…

OH WAIT.

transformers are western giant mecha. hm, thats a weird coincidence….

OH WAIT.

teenage mutant ninja turtles, frack and here I thought western stuff was LESS ridiculous than anime, but surely these are all exceptions-

OH WAIT.

Hulk's power is gaining power through rage, and superheroes are practically full of amazing physical feats worthy of an anime.

You... may want to rethink your examples.

- Power rangers: Uh.... you are aware that the american show by that name is simply a dubbed over export of the Japanese Super Sentai series, right? With some random footage of american teenagers in a watered-down Saved By the Bell teen high school comedy pastiche in between combats.
- Transformers: Uh... as you point out, this has its roots in Japan too, with various giant mecha shows like Voltron. So this is a lot closer to "anime" than you might think.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Uh... the word "ninja" should also be a clue to you as to the show's influence. Although honestly, this is probably the least over-the-top one on your list,
- Incredible Hulk: This is the only truly western example on your list, since Hulk's roots stem from Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, Hulk's original powerset/capabilities became more influenced by shonen as his series and cartoons wore on, such as his ability to destroy planets.

so really, people have no right to point any fingers at anime.

I'm not the one who came up with the comparison between ToB and "anime" (and yes, I'm aware that "anime" isn't a genre - I mentally insert "shonen" whenever I see it in this context) - rather, I use the comparison because WotC themselves did. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/frcc/20070911) You can love or hate it, but what you can't deny is that it was, and continues to be, controversial - doubling down on it by granting those kind of disbelief-shattering abilities to the base classes, and even expanding them (Warblades certainly can't leap 100 miles) will only alienate more players.

The Rose Dragon

2013-09-14, 11:15 AM

Shōnen is also not a genre. It is a target demographic, that covers everything from mon series to action series to romance and harem series.

Eulalios

2013-09-14, 11:15 AM

This thread explains every reason why I detest playing D&D 3e+.

Munchkin, munchking, munchikemperor.

Psyren

2013-09-14, 11:17 AM

Shōnen is also not a genre. It is a target demographic, that covers everything from mon series to action series to romance and harem series.

Battle manga then. Basically anything in the NBOP space.

Coidzor

2013-09-14, 11:18 AM

Tarrasque and Godzilla are from other sides of the planet. Don't we have something from closer to Godzilla?

No, not really. The Tarrasque is Godzilla reinterpreted for D&D and renamed for legal reasons.

You're a level 16-20-or-so character and you're fighting Godzilla. What the hell is supposed to be over the top by that point when you consider the things you're fighting, the plots you're expected by convention to be caught up in, and the things the spellcasters are capable of?

You... may want to rethink your examples.

- Power rangers: Uh.... you are aware that the american show by that name is simply a dubbed over export of the Japanese Super Sentai series, right? With some random footage of american teenagers in a watered-down Saved By the Bell teen high school comedy pastiche in between combats.
- Transformers: Uh... as you point out, this has its roots in Japan too, with various giant mecha shows like Voltron. So this is a lot closer to "anime" than you might think.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Uh... the word "ninja" should also be a clue to you as to the show's influence. Although honestly, this is probably the least over-the-top one on your list,

Exactly. There's so many things in our pop culture and in our D&D that are already stolen shamelessly from Hong Kong flicks, knock-off Taiwanese toys, and Japanese culture... and we generally have to stop and think for a moment to remember that they're not western by breeding but merely adopted.

Gemini476

2013-09-14, 11:33 AM

For everyone who wrote about replacing who rolls the dice with saves and such, you are aware that that's pretty much what 4e did, right? Of course, they also gave the Martial classes some ways to target things other than just AC, but that's a whole different beast.

Oh yeah, a thing: You know how Gandalf would supposedly be a 4th-level Magic User, should he be in D&D? Another thing to show why high-level D&D really doesn't fit with the people who want to "play Lord of the Rings" is that you are actually expected to be able to fight and kill Balrogs. Or Balors, Type-VI Demon, whatever you want to call it.
When you play D&D you start close to the running-from-Nazgûl level, and end up close to the "Steal the Silmarils from the brow of the sleeping Morgoth, who is basically unto Sauron as Sauron is unto us" level. Except more awesome, since you actually have magic.

Snowbluff

2013-09-14, 11:38 AM

No, not really. The Tarrasque is Godzilla reinterpreted for D&D and renamed for legal reasons.
:smallannoyed:

You know that the Tarrasque is a member of western mythology, right? That's like saying the dragons in DnD are Godzilla.

Speaking of which, where is the breath weapon?

This thread explains every reason why I detest playing D&D 3e+.

Munchkin, munchking, munchikemperor.
Why are you here, then?

Even better, why is talking about game balance munchkining?

CarpeGuitarrem

2013-09-14, 11:53 AM

:smallannoyed:

You know that the Tarrasque is a member of western mythology, right? That's like saying the dragons in DnD are Godzilla.

Erm. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque)

The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting. It had a lion's head.

The D&D tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm) is a giant dinosaur-like creature with horns, claws, and a tail slap attack.

They rebranded Godzilla by taking the name of another fantastical creature.

Snowbluff

2013-09-14, 12:11 PM

Erm. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque)

The D&D tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm) is a giant dinosaur-like creature with horns, claws, and a tail slap attack.

They rebranded Godzilla by taking the name of another fantastical creature.
This scaly biped seems about as tall as a five-story building. It carries itself like a bird of prey, leaning well forward and using its powerful, lashing tail for balance. It has two horns on its head and a thick, reflective carapace on its back.

From the 3.5 monster manual.

It's clearly got a turtle shell, guys. If you say it's missing the scorpion tail, it's also missing the atomic breath.

Gemini476

2013-09-14, 12:14 PM

:smallannoyed:

You know that the Tarrasque is a member of western mythology, right? That's like saying the dragons in DnD are Godzilla.

Speaking of which, where is the breath weapon?

Why are you here, then?

Even better, why is talking about game balance munchkining?

Erm. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque)

The D&D tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm) is a giant dinosaur-like creature with horns, claws, and a tail slap attack.

They rebranded Godzilla by taking the name of another fantastical creature.

The Tarrasque
http://i.imgur.com/8uQw8JA.gif
has changed a lot
http://i.imgur.com/N5GkImj.jpg
over the years.
http://i.imgur.com/4QDARXS.jpg

While he does not really look like Godzilla, the newer versions seem to have some taken some inspiration from the design of the American Godzilla.
Or at least more than it has taken from the Tarasque. The only things the Tarrasque and Tarasque have in common are spiked shells and being a dragon. And the Tarrasque still looks more like Bowser than it does the Tarasque.

Psyren

2013-09-14, 12:14 PM

Snowbluff

2013-09-14, 12:19 PM

While he does not really look like Godzilla, the newer versions seem to have some taken some inspiration from the design of the American Godzilla.
Or at least more than it has taken from the Tarasque. The only things the Tarrasque and Tarasque have in common are spiked shells and being a dragon. And the Tarrasque still looks more like Bowser than it does the Tarasque.
American Godzilla has little to do with Godzilla, nor does it look like it.

I am seriously wondering how you can rip off Godzilla and not give the result Godzilla's signature move. I don't think AG used it in the movie, but at least it happened in the TV show, right?

Deophaun

2013-09-14, 12:32 PM

I am seriously wondering how you can rip off Godzilla and not give the result Godzilla's signature move. I don't think AG used it in the movie, but at least it happened in the TV show, right?
Obviously the French ripped off Godzilla first, and D&D is ripping it off by proxy.

Gemini476

2013-09-14, 12:42 PM

There is actually a problem with making the player roll to hit the monster - it makes it less possible for the DM to fudge the roll. Say you have a monster that is creaming the PCs because you misjudged the strength of the encounter - then the wizard (or bard!) throws out a last, desperate SoD - you can simply have it "roll" a natural 1 (or some other failure( and save them without exposing the man behind the curtain. Similarly, for a cinematic or climactic boss fight, you can keep the Witch from putting the BBEG to sleep in round 1.

Rolling saves rather than attacks increases tension for the players too. If you say "the dread creature extends a pale, scabrous hand. As its hand gently caresses your sword arm, you feel numbing cold shoot up all the way from your wrist to your shoulder. Make a fortitude save." Suddenly the player has a "oh ****" moment as they fumble for their "lucky" d20, blow on it and give you fearful doe-eyes.

Oh yeah, that's another thing that nerfs mundanes. Using the "Players roll all the dice" variant for simplicity, the warmage can kill something instantly if he beats it's Fort, but a mundane character is rarely, if ever, allowed to do so by beating it's AC. Exceptions like Massive Damage and Death Attack exist, but those both require an additional Fort save. Yaaaaay.
Do note that while mundanes can rack up enough damage to kill anything in one hit (even if they only hit on a 20), that is not exactly what the developers intended. The Warmage being able to instantly kill anything that rolls a 1 was.

I suppose that this could be an example of the mundane being limited to, well, the mundane, seeing how the only martial class I know of who gets a save-or-die is the Monk. And the monk is straddling that weird mundane-but-not border.

georgie_leech

2013-09-14, 12:53 PM

It still only applies to targeted spells though. What about summons, or buffing allies, or causing real changes to the environment (such as raising up walls or opening pits) that have no save? Those obviously would have no "innate resistance" to overcome, just like no-save spells do now.

I didn't say it was a perfect solution for balance, nor was it trying to be. I was trying to illustrate how it irked me that Saving Throw mechanic reinforced mechanically the idea that Wizards succeed by default, unlike most other actions in the game. It was less about power and more the perception of power. Attack? Try to succeed. Skill? Try to succeed. Spells? Succeed, with the caveat that the target has a chance to respond. It's one of the reasons I find playing spellcasters to be mechanically unsatisfying.

No-save spells and terraforming may be a balance concern, in the "spellcasters can do things mundanes can't!" way, but it's not what I was talking about.

EDIT:

For everyone who wrote about replacing who rolls the dice with saves and such, you are aware that that's pretty much what 4e did, right? Of course, they also gave the Martial classes some ways to target things other than just AC, but that's a whole different beast.

Yes, and I think those are two of the things 4e did right. I appreciate that every Class has unique abilities that generally fit thematically, I appreciate that every Class has access to abilities that do more than just HP Damage, and relevant to what I said above, I appreciate that everything that directly tries to do damage or cause a status effect Needs to roll to hit to achieve full effect. I actually enjoy playing casters in 4e, because I prefer feeling like I struggled and overcame rather than being a reality warper who auto-succeeds on everything he attempts.

Coidzor

2013-09-14, 02:39 PM

:smallannoyed:

OK, so you don't believe it rather than having been ignorant of that. Could've just said as much to begin with.

Psyren

2013-09-14, 02:45 PM

I didn't say it was a perfect solution for balance, nor was it trying to be. I was trying to illustrate how it irked me that Saving Throw mechanic reinforced mechanically the idea that Wizards succeed by default, unlike most other actions in the game. It was less about power and more the perception of power. Attack? Try to succeed. Skill? Try to succeed. Spells? Succeed, with the caveat that the target has a chance to respond. It's one of the reasons I find playing spellcasters to be mechanically unsatisfying.

No-save spells and terraforming may be a balance concern, in the "spellcasters can do things mundanes can't!" way, but it's not what I was talking about.

My later post pointed out the other problem with a "players do all the rolls" approach; vs. a PC spellcaster, it makes it nearly impossible for the DM to fudge anything.

DR27

2013-09-14, 05:22 PM

My later post pointed out the other problem with a "players do all the rolls" approach; vs. a PC spellcaster, it makes it nearly impossible for the DM to fudge anything.Unrelated, but I know that there are people that are proponents of the idea that the DM shouldn't be fudging rolls (http://angrydm.com/2010/07/winning-dd/). PCs kinda need both the option to win, and to lose.

Threadnaught

2013-09-14, 05:50 PM

The only things the Tarrasque and Tarasque have in common are spiked shells and being a dragon.

Angry unkillable creature that destroys everything around it. Able to resist all mortal weapons.

Yeah, the only thing a Tarrasque has in common with the Tarasque is being some sort of dragon turtle thing.

While he does not really look like Godzilla, the newer versions seem to have some taken some inspiration from the design of the American Godzilla.

I disagree, but that's the thing about opinions. To me, the oldest version of the Tarrasque you showed, is the most Godzilla-like, while the latest is the most Tarasque-like. The one in the middle looks like Giga Bowser. :smallamused:

TuggyNE

2013-09-14, 06:06 PM

From the 3.5 monster manual.

It's clearly got a turtle shell, guys. If you say it's missing the scorpion tail, it's also missing the atomic breath.

It has the carapace, yes. But it's a biped instead of a six-legged creature, the scale is all wrong, it has horns and scales where the Tarasque had neither... etc.

Abaddona

2013-09-14, 08:24 PM

Little off-topic:
It's rather clear that something is not ok when one of best ways to make melee more competent is to dip in some sort of caster (cloistered cleric) but absolutely worst thing you could do for your wizard is to lose caster level. And when we talk about archetypes and anime - what if I simply want to play a guy like Fairy Tail mage or Jack Rackan from Negima - guys who were basically gishes who used magic to directly attack enemies (for example summoning gigantic blades and throwing them), hell some of them even used magic only to create a handy weapon from thin air and then fighted in completely mundane ways. When you say "fighter" most people will think about Heracles, Conan, Geralt of Rivia or mentioned above Jack Rakan - simply an awesome tough guy with a big weapon who is capable of doing extraordinary things through sheer physical prowess. So what exactly extraordinary feat can 20 level fighter do?

Also - saying that mundane can smash effortlessly through objects is a little understatement considering that some items have 500+ hit points - yes, you can smash through them, but it will take quite a few swings (or low level wizard spell slot) - for example simple punching someone through the door (or grappling him) requires to be able to do 25 damage - and it's not a value you could easily obtain without charging, especially on low levels.

And one more thing about magic and life - if I remember correctly in DnD living beings are powered through positive energy. You can take dead body and through specific ritual (spell) start powering them by negative energy thus creating some sort of undead creature. Of course first process is natural where other is against nature but yes - basically being alive is some kind of magic - exactly like being undead is.

Coidzor

2013-09-14, 09:26 PM

Angry unkillable creature that destroys everything around it. Able to resist all mortal weapons.

Also an apt descriptor of most incarnations of Godzilla. :smalltongue:

navar100

2013-09-14, 10:40 PM

This sort of thing fails for two reasons:
It offers no utility. The cleric is still better than you because he can pull up meatshields and he can spring traps, construct town defenses, and all you can do is be strong.
As you showed in the ability, barbaric powers are strictly limited by our inherent human desire to keep things "mundane", which just fails outright. Petrification stops the barbarian, disintegration stops him, but would a cleric with the Divine Protection of his God get that? Probably not. It's our nature to limit "mundane" things to "mundane" actions, even when it would be balanced for the barbarian to shake off molecular realignment our gut instinct is to not allow it.

Gee willikers.

Some people just can't be satisfied unless every warrior gets the following ability:

"You make every saving throw. You can always attack any opponent regardless of distance or direction. You can always move whatever distance you want to move and make a full attack with no penalty for any reason. You never provoke an attack of opportunity. If there's some ability you want to do not listed here, you can do it anyway."

Meanwhile, for spellcasters:

"You may only cast one spell per day. It takes you 5 hours to prepare this spell. You do not start the game knowing this spell."

This is the spell

Fine, If You Must Cast Something
School: Universal
Level: 1
Components: V, S, M, XP
Range: see text
Casting Time: 1 full round
Duration: Concentration, see text
Saving Throw: see text SR: see text

Upon casting this spell, some effect happens. What this effect is up to the DM. You always provoke an attack of opportunity for casting this spell. You can never cast if defensively. If the effect would target a creature or creatures, the creature rolls his saving throw for whatever his highest saving throw is, fortitude, reflex, or will. If the target has spell resistance, you automatically fail to bypass it and the spell fails. If the DM actually allows for some effect to happen, in order to maintain it you must spend a full round action concentrating on the spell, doing absolutely nothing else.