Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm [Archive] - Page 5

RazorChain

2017-12-15, 11:26 PM

That wasn't the point. The point was that all of your solutions were focused on solving things towards the mundane's side.

Not quite, I said that to achieve balance at higher levels you either have to nerf the wizard or make the mundane supernatural. In fact I think it's rather reasonable to assume that when you have arrived at the point that you are fighting gods that the mundane should have evolved from the guy at the gym.

Then why is he playing a system that assumes advancement? D&D makes it quite explicit that you are expected to level up. The correct mental model is stories like Wheel of Time or various Xianxias where the protagonists grow more powerful as they adventure and eventually reach a point where they could easily crush their lower level selves. If the Conan player wanted to keep on playing the same Barbarian who is "pretty strong" and "kinda cunning", he should have either played a system that doesn't have baked in advancement or houseruled out some or all of the advancement D&D has.

So what is D&D promising it's player;

.

Dungeons & Dragons,
Book 1:
Men & Magic, 1974
"These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin"

Dungeon Masters Guide 1979
"The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt."
Gygax
16 May 1979

That's why I didn't say "low fantasy". D&D is kitchen sink fantasy (witness, for example, the six different kinds of core-only aquatic humanoid). What's more, it's kitchen sink fantasy that has consistently claimed (or at least paid lip service to) the idea of playing characters who challenge the gods and conquer planes. The I in BCEMI stands for "Immortal", and that tradition has carried forward to every edition but 5e.

In D&D what you define is low fantasy or everything below level 10 is almost 90% of the fantasy literature genre or even mythical tales or folk tales in the western world. As PhoenixPhyre said D&D has become sui generis....unique, a genre of it's own. If you invite newbies to the game and explain that they are heroes in a fantasy world and then give them a level 20 character you can bet that it's not not what they were expecting. They were not expecting a fighter that can kill 100+ men in 6 seconds or a wizard that can drop a mountain on his foes. In fact when I started playing as a kid and power fantasy was right up my alley I did not expect to play fantasy superheroes in D&D.

Almost all system assume advancement in some form. So is it unreasonable that the Conan player just wants to play Conan? The game promises advancement via levels but doesn't explain exactly what that entitles because for the Conan player he'll mostly likely just become a little bit more Conan unless he's minmaxing like hell. He'll get some more HP, more attacks etc but his good friend Thulsa Doom is in a league of his own compared to Conan. The thing is most people don't want their character to stop advancing, advancement means progress.

So D&D should rather put something like this in it's foreword

Dungeons & Dragons,
Book 1:
Men & Magic, 1974
"These rules are strictly fantasy. In this game you'll start as a dirty peasant and advance until you'll challenge the gods themselves. If you want to emulate any kind of fantasy fiction please stay away, we only serve power fantasy.
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin"

Again, you're trying to prove an absolute from an inequality. I absolutely agree that the Wizard is better than the Monk. Qualitatively different even. The question is whether that means the Wizard is overpowered or the Monk is underpowered. And that question can't be answered until you define what the expected power level is.

Neither is underpowered nor overpowered. The expected power level is what the GM dictates, what kind of adventures he's running etc and this might fluctuate between GM or modules. We can only ascertain that there is power disparity between the classes

2D8HP

2017-12-16, 12:15 AM

....In D&D what you define is low fantasy or everything below level 10 is almost 90% of the fantasy literature genre or even mythical tales or folk tales in the western world. As PhoenixPhyre said D&D has become sui generis....unique, a genre of it's own. If you invite newbies to the game and explain that they are heroes in a fantasy world and then give them a level 20 character you can bet that it's not not what they were expecting....

And originally players would retire their characters at around 10th level, read the words of TSR's first employee here (http://kaskoid.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-i-helped-to-pull-rope-that-tolled.html?), or listen to them:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY

(and for the record 10th level is about where the game loses it's luster for me).

Cluedrew

2017-12-16, 09:55 AM

While I did buy and play other games, I stopped buying TSR when they came out with Unearthed Arcana in 1985,That's right everybody, D&D has been broken for 30 years and they still haven't fixed it.

Honestly, 5e is just not a very good game. It has (or had at release) gaping holes in things like the stealth subsystem, and Bounded Accuracy means that even high level experts only beat low level amateurs a decent chunk of the time.First on accuracy: as we live in a world where garbage men have better predictions of the economic future than bankers. It doesn't seem to be unreasonable to me.

Second you say that like EVERY edition of D&D didn't have similar problems. The old versions where weird hybrid games that didn't get the idea across. 3.5 is filled with balance issues and trap options. 4e might actually be the best built game in the series, but in a way that no one wanted. I'd say every edition has been both great and terrible, just along different lines.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-16, 10:13 AM

The biggest takeaway of that video from my PoV is that their attitude toward their characters.

Knaight

2017-12-16, 10:32 AM

The biggest takeaway of that video from my PoV is that their attitude toward their characters.

I think the second half of this sentence is just missing.

Tanarii

2017-12-16, 11:07 AM

Talakeal

2017-12-16, 12:27 PM

The first part is argument ad populum. The second part isn't disputing my position. I've never said all versatile casters are better than all mundanes. I've said that because "mundane" is a power cap, mundane characters are necessarily going to be unable to compete in a game that advances past whatever that cap happens to be, and further that the cap mundane characters are operating under is dramatically below many different characters people could reasonably want to play.

Agreed.

I just don't think that the cap for a fantastic but still mundane hero is necessarily below the point where they can tangle with and win against monsters with CRs in the high teens.

As for fallacies, I am not sure how else you would go about setting up a world view; if my personal experience says one thing and the majority opinion backs it up I am not sure that it is fallacious to not restructure my world view every time I hear a different opinion unless said opinion has some incredible revelation or strong evidence attached.

Cluedrew

2017-12-16, 10:31 PM

Had a moment earlier today that hammers home the whole caster issue. We had a spell caster bound and gagged after beating him in a fight, watched him the whole night where he did not get any sleep, but eventually we had to talk to him. Put him in the bottom of the prison underneath the guardhouse, had him surrounded, tired up and blindfolded him. Take the gag off:

DM: "He says no and disappears."
Player: "What?"
DM: "Sorry he says no, and then utters some arcane syllables. Roll for reaction."
Player: "...1"
DM: "Yeah he is gone."

We swept the area with everything we had, had guards search the surrounding areas. Nothing. And people wonder why I feel D&D magic should be scaled back.

RazorChain

2017-12-16, 10:50 PM

And originally players would retire their characters at around 10th level, read the words of TSR's first employee here (http://kaskoid.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-i-helped-to-pull-rope-that-tolled.html?), or listen to them:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY

(and for the record 10th level is about where the game loses it's luster for me).

The biggest takeaway of that video from my PoV is that their attitude toward their characters.

What this only tells me is D&D was only planned up to level 10....the rest they did for the money. So if Gygax hated the wizard why did he become the most powerful class? If they didn't intend the power creep why publish those books (like deities and demigods) and stat the gods so badly that they could be killed by epic level "heroes"? If he's scoffing and they were laughing at players slaughtering both the Æsir and the Vanir, roflstomping both Thor and Odin where did they then go wrong in their design principles?

I find funny that White Wolf with their World of Darkness has often been accused of roleplaying snobbery about how their game is meant to be played but after reading the article by Tim Kask the same can be said about the grognards at TSR.

"We played 6 or 7 times a month for at least six months before any of the dozen or so players felt like buying a set of their own. It was two months before anyone else bought dice. The point? You did not need a bookbag full of books to play Old School. You did not have to familiarize yourself with dozens of charts and tables to be able to play. All you needed was dice, pencil and paper and imagination"

"So why do I continue to play OD&D when I mid-wifed AD&D? Because it is all the things 1st Edition AD&D (1E) is not. It is not slaved to charts and tables, although it has some. It is not arguable; it works that way on my world because I say so. It is about gathering information, not relying on Skills and Abilities to do the work for you. It is about playing well, having fun and living to fight another day."

"I see a dearth of those skills and abilities in newer versions. I think that in some ways OS required a higher caliber player as well as requiring trust at the table; I see the art of running a great table being less respected (and practiced). I actually had a young man in a game at GaryCon tell me I was doing it wrong one time and that I was not being fair; the table stared in open-mouthed amazement all the while. I told him that I was sorry he wasn’t having any fun and that he was free to leave the game"

"Old School-style was more difficult and much more nuanced than what later editions engendered. It required more roleplaying, it required asking lots of questions"

"The caller’s day is done; charts and tables and skills and abilities have all superseded that role; thinking creatively has been stifled; if it isn’t on a chart or table, it can’t be done. In one of my games at GaryCon one time, I had a dwarf PC kill two huge polar bears single-handed. That was not on any chart, but in OS, it could happen. It’s all fantasy, after all."

It seems that the old school grognards valued player skill the most, that coupled with the attitude towards their PC they were most certainly gamers and not so much roleplayers. Ah and yes the mountains were higher in those days, the players were better, the tables were greater and the oceans were deeper.

Tanarii

2017-12-16, 10:51 PM

What editin of D&D, out of curiosity. (That sounds like Teleport, which is a level 7 spell in 5e.)

What I find interesting is you captured wizard with a spare spell for Teleport or some similar spell/effect, and he waited to use it until you had him bound and blindfolded. I mean, that seems like shaving the barn doors a little too close. Something like that.

comk59

2017-12-16, 10:53 PM

Tanarii

2017-12-16, 10:59 PM

It seems that the old school grognards valued player skill the most, that coupled with the attitude towards their PC they were most certainly gamers and not so much roleplayers.While I don't think much of his attitude, this is totally false. Role playing is making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment. Given that the decisions made in oD&D & classic tend to have more immediate consequences for your character than many later editions, they were definitely roleplayers. For example, there is no end of extremely meaningful decisions to make for your character in a deadly dungeon.

Otoh if you think role playing is talky-time and funny voices, like many people do, it'd be easy to see where you'd come to the false conclusion you did.

Of course, negotiating a treaty to save an entire kingdom would be both role playing AND talky-time. It's possible for them to overlap.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-16, 11:07 PM

I think the second half of this sentence is just missing.

Second this. :smallamused:

...

That they viewed their characters as disposable and interchangable game pieces, and nothing more.

For all their talk about "roleplaying" and doing it "better" than those who came after them, what they're describing is really just a more freeform boardgame / small scale wargame in a shared mental space.

RazorChain

2017-12-16, 11:13 PM

While I don't think much of his attitude, this is totally false. Role playing is making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment. Given that the decisions made in oD&D & classic tend to have more immediate consequences for your character than many later editions, they were definitely roleplayers. For example, there is no end of extremely meaningful decisions to make for your character in a deadly dungeon.

Otoh if you think role playing is talky-time and funny voices, like many people do, it'd be easy to see where you'd come to the false conclusion you did.

Of course, negotiating a treaty to save an entire kingdom would be both role playing AND talky-time. It's possible for them to overlap.

I consider roleplaying to be making a character then taking the role of said character and making decisions based on that character and acting out that character during the game.

As Kask says himself that when your character croaks you just bring his brother Bob instead seems putting little emphasis on things like character concepts, traits and personality. So what I'm saying seems they were more interested in the gaming aspect rather than the roleplaying aspect of the game.

2D8HP

2017-12-16, 11:28 PM

What this only tells me is D&D was only planned up to level 10....the rest they did for the money... .
"For the money" is the best explanation for '85's Unearthed Arcana, which really set a precedent for subsequent balance destroying "splat books".

...It seems that the old school grognards valued player skill the most, that coupled with the attitude towards their PC they were most certainly gamers and not so much roleplayers..
That's a fair cop, D&D was originally called a "wargame", and you may remember my old post/rant on why

It's games of "Let's pretend", but with rulebook's.
Cluedrew, you may recognize some of this

This book is dedicated to Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, who first opened Pandora's box,
and to Ken St. Andre who found it could be opened again.(Arneson & Gygax were the creators of D&D, Andre of T&T).

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS A FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME?
A role-playing game is a game of character
development, simulating the process of personal development commonly called "life". The player acts a role in a fantasy environment, just as he might act a role in s play. In fact, when played with just paper and pencil on the game board of the player's imagination, it has been called "improvisational radio theatre. " If played with metal and plastic figurines, it becomes improvisational puppet theatre. However it is played, the primary purpose is to have fun. OK that's from the game that mostly replaced (over my objections) D&D at the tables I played at years ago.The part I agree most with is of course "However it is played, the primary purpose is to have fun." Which I hope we don't lose sight of.

Frankly I'd be happy if the "R" was removed, and we called them something like "table top Adventure games (when I was young, I saw the acronym "FRP" more than "RPG").
I believe the first published of the term was by Flying Buffalo in a Tunnels and Trolls supplement that said it was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", i.e Dungeons & Dragons (please someone check this).

I have mixed feelings about Runequest, while I found the rules more intuitive than D&D, and I absolutely preferred it to the other non D&D RPG's we played, it was never quite as fun for me as D&D, but I often think when some list what they don't like about D&D, that Runequest is what their looking for.

The first version of what became D&D was the rules system inside Dave Arneson's mind.

The rules are there because players want some idea of what the odds are first, and it's easier to choose from a catalog than write on a blank page.

When D&D started there was no mention of role-playing on the box!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/SfSTvUzCu4I/AAAAAAAAA9A/9bUyti9YmUk/s320/box1st.jpg
While the 1977 Basic set did indeed say "FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME"
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_basic_set_1stedition_origi nal_box_holmes_edition.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C386
The phrase "role-playing" was not part of the 1974 rules.
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/original_dungeons_and_dragons_dd_men_and_magic_cov er.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C494
Notice that the cover says "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames", not role-playing!
As I said before, I believe the first use of the term "role-playing game" was in a Tunnels & Trolls supplement that was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", but early D&D didn't seem any more or less combat focused than the later RPG's I've played, (in fact considering how fragile PC''s were avoiding combat was often the goal!) so I wouldn't say it was anymore of a "Wargame". I would however say it was more an exploration game, and was less character focused.

Frankly while role-playing is alright, it's the 'enjoying a "world" where the fantastic is fact' part that is much more interesting to me.

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs'
Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last
bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

While I'm ever grateful to Holmes for his work translating the game rules into English, perhaps he (an academic psychologist) is to be blamed for mis-labelling D&D with the abominable slander of "role-playing" (a psychological treatment technique).
It's too late now to correct the misnomer, but D&D is, was, and should be a fantasy adventure game, not role-playing, a label no good has come from!

“If I want to do that,” he said, “I’ll join an amateur theater group.” (see here (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge)).
While Dave Arneson later had the innovation of having his players "roll up" characters, for his "homebrew" of Chainmail:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/the-original-dungeon-masters/

At first the players played themselves in a Fantastic medievalish world:
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2016/10/in-celebrate-of-dave-arnesons-birthday.html?m=1

So a wargame was made into a setting exploration game, and then was later labelled a "role-playing" game.
While it's still possible to play D&D as the wargame it once was, I'm glad that the game escaped the "wargame" appellation, which makes the game more attractive to those of us with 'less of an interest in tactics, however I argue (to beat a dead horse), that the labeling of D&D as a role-playing game is hurtful ("Your not role-playing, your roll-playing! etc.).
Just label D&D an adventure game, and people can be spared all the hand-wringing, and insults when acting and writing talents don't measure up to "role-playing" standards, and instead we can have fun exploring a fantastic world together.
Please?

Tanarii

2017-12-17, 12:43 AM

I consider roleplaying to be making a character then taking the role of said character and making decisions based on that character and acting out that character during the game.

As Kask says himself that when your character croaks you just bring his brother Bob instead seems putting little emphasis on things like character concepts, traits and personality. So what I'm saying seems they were more interested in the gaming aspect rather than the roleplaying aspect of the game.
Not really. Everything you're saying happens in an old school dungeon crawl.

What 'bring his brother Bob instead' does imply is they didn't get overly attached to / invested in a given character. That doesn't imply roleplaying (making decisions for the character in the fantasy environment) any less while you're playing either Bob's brother or Bob. In fact, old-school requires quite a lot of focus on making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, because those decisions are often life or death.

It may also imply less characterization, but that's only a subset of roleplaying. It's not required for it.

RazorChain

2017-12-17, 12:52 AM

Not really. Everything you're saying happens in an old school dungeon crawl.

What 'bring his brother Bob instead' does imply is they didn't get overly attached to / invested in a given character. That doesn't imply roleplaying (making decisions for the character in the fantasy environment) any less while you're playing either Bob's brother or Bob. In fact, old-school requires quite a lot of focus on making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, because those decisions are often life or death.

It may also imply less characterization, but that's only a subset of roleplaying. It's not required for it.

So does that make HeroQuest an rpg?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cd/93/aa/cd93aae4e6b6c46233afdfaeaa547489.jpg

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 01:10 AM

.
"For the money" is the best explanation for '85's Unearthed Arcana, which really set a precedent for subsequent balance destroying "splat books".

.
That's a fair cop, D&D was originally called a "wargame", and you may remember my old post/rant on why

The term "roleplaying game" didn't exist until D&D. It was the original. To expect it to call itself a term that hadn't even been created is a tad silly no?

RazorChain

2017-12-17, 02:04 AM

Cluedrew

2017-12-17, 08:23 AM

What editin of D&D, out of curiosity. (That sounds like Teleport, which is a level 7 spell in 5e.) [...] What I find interesting is you captured wizard with a spare spell for Teleport or some similar spell/effect, and he waited to use it until you had him bound and blindfolded. I mean, that seems like shaving the barn doors a little too close. Something like that.
Ah, dimension door. Why the designers thought a single-action teleport that requires only verbal components would be a good idea I'll never know.Yup. Anyways it was D&D 5e. I'm pretty sure it was not a standard wizard, probably some NPC "class" that represented a more unusual spell-casting tradition. Because if we were fighting a wizard with 7th level spells (or whatever level Dimension Door is unless it is MUCH lower) we would have been dead. So maybe he was a prepared spell caster that did not need materials to prepare spells. Maybe I'll ask once we catch and defeat him.

I'm pretty sure that 2D8HP will be along shortly to school you in RPG history but IIRC it was Ken St. Andre the maker of Tunnels and Trolls that first named his product a roleplaying game.And I'm sure the old man from the mountains of old will speak about the days of D&D as a "Fantasy Adventure Game". I think that is what it was called, seems like a more accurate name some times.

Darth Ultron

2017-12-17, 11:24 AM

DM: "Yeah he is gone."

We swept the area with everything we had, had guards search the surrounding areas. Nothing. And people wonder why I feel D&D magic should be scaled back.

Except this is not an example of a magic problem, this is a DM problem. A bad DM problem. It is he DM just have stuff happen.

Though note it also is a power problem. Once a game gets past a set level, you must play the game at that level. If your playing the game with a sharp stick and dirt vs epic magic, then you will loose every time. The same way if you play ''like a kidz'', then you will loose to an ''adult'' every time. And the same way if you play ''random stuff'' vs ''common sense'' you will loose every time.

So, like in your example, if a) teleport magic exists that can be use with a couple said words, b) it is possible the captured wizard has this magic and c) your character removes the gag and then stands their and waits for the wizard to escape......well, then you did all that to yourself.

I consider roleplaying to be making a character then taking the role of said character and making decisions based on that character and acting out that character during the game.

So what I'm saying seems they were more interested in the gaming aspect rather than the roleplaying aspect of the game.

Depends on the player. A lot of Old School players were all about role playing. And Old School players had the amazing ability, lost on more modern players, to role play no matter what the rules said.

Of example they could role play being a funny gnome that laughs in the face of danger...no matter what the rules said or what was on their character sheet. In short, an old school gamer could role play with no mechanical support.

Old School: The player would just have their gnome character tell a joke.
Modern: The player would roll a joke skill funny check vs the targets humor defense.

AND this goes right back to the Caster and Mundane problem. A modern player is stuck roll playing the mechanics of the game and playing by the almighty rules. The old school player is role playing all the time.

Just take the classic stuck door problem:

Old School gamer: Tries to figure out a way through or past the door, without obsessing over the handful of game suggestions in the book.

Modern gamer: The player looks over their character sheet, as they must play by the almighty rules every second of the game. If the character sheet does not have an explicit ability that says ''open door'', then the player just shuts down and does nothing.

Of course the spellcasting modern player does have an ability on thier character sheet explicitly to open a door: the spell knock. So they happily say ''I use the spell knock to open the door''.

And the poor modern player of a mundane character just sits over in the corner and sighs and wishes that they had an ''open door'' ability on their character sheet.

2D8HP

2017-12-17, 11:38 AM

The term "roleplaying game" didn't exist until D&D. It was the original. To expect it to call itself a term that hadn't even been created is a tad silly no?

I'm pretty sure that 2D8HP will be along shortly to school you in RPG history but IIRC it was Ken St. Andre the maker of Tunnels and Trolls that first named his product a roleplaying game.

.

And I'm sure the old man from the mountains of old will speak about the days of D&D as a "Fantasy Adventure Game". I think that is what it was called, seems like a more accurate name some times.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpnhA6GfrR-_AfSeGN2Sp644hMIIsj1L3TVQ1Nz-_QUL-33bwa

Does no one unspoiler anything?

Once again:

This book is dedicated to Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, who first opened Pandora's box,
and to Ken St. Andre who found it could be opened again.(Arneson & Gygax were the creators of D&D, Andre of T&T).

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS A FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME?
A role-playing game is a game of character
development, simulating the process of personal development commonly called "life". The player acts a role in a fantasy environment, just as he might act a role in s play. In fact, when played with just paper and pencil on the game board of the player's imagination, it has been called "improvisational radio theatre. " If played with metal and plastic figurines, it becomes improvisational puppet theatre. However it is played, the primary purpose is to have fun. OK that's from the game that mostly replaced (over my objections) D&D at the tables I played at years ago.The part I agree most with is of course "However it is played, the primary purpose is to have fun." Which I hope we don't lose sight of.

Frankly I'd be happy if the "R" was removed, and we called them something like "table top Adventure games (when I was young, I saw the acronym "FRP" more than "RPG").
I believe the first published of the term was by Flying Buffalo in a Tunnels and Trolls supplement that said it was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", i.e Dungeons & Dragons (please someone check this).

I have mixed feelings about Runequest, while I found the rules more intuitive than D&D, and I absolutely preferred it to the other non D&D RPG's we played, it was never quite as fun for me as D&D, but I often think when some list what they don't like about D&D, that Runequest is what their looking for.

The first version of what became D&D was the rules system inside Dave Arneson's mind.

The rules are there because players want some idea of what the odds are first, and it's easier to choose from a catalog than write on a blank page.

When D&D started there was no mention of role-playing on the box!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/SfSTvUzCu4I/AAAAAAAAA9A/9bUyti9YmUk/s320/box1st.jpg
While the 1977 Basic set did indeed say "FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME"
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_basic_set_1stedition_origi nal_box_holmes_edition.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C386
The phrase "role-playing" was not part of the 1974 rules.
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/original_dungeons_and_dragons_dd_men_and_magic_cov er.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C494
Notice that the cover says "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames", not role-playing!
As I said before, I believe the first use of the term "role-playing game" was in a Tunnels & Trolls supplement that was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", but early D&D didn't seem any more or less combat focused than the later RPG's I've played, (in fact considering how fragile PC''s were avoiding combat was often the goal!) so I wouldn't say it was anymore of a "Wargame". I would however say it was more an exploration game, and was less character focused.

Frankly while role-playing is alright, it's the 'enjoying a "world" where the fantastic is fact' part that is much more interesting to me.

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs'
Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last
bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

While I'm ever grateful to Holmes for his work translating the game rules into English, perhaps he (an academic psychologist) is to be blamed for mis-labelling D&D with the abominable slander of "role-playing" (a psychological treatment technique).
It's too late now to correct the misnomer, but D&D is, was, and should be a fantasy adventure game, not role-playing, a label no good has come from!

“If I want to do that,” he said, “I’ll join an amateur theater group.” (see here (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge)).
While Dave Arneson later had the innovation of having his players "roll up" characters, for his "homebrew" of Chainmail:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/the-original-dungeon-masters/

At first the players played themselves in a Fantastic medievalish world:
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2016/10/in-celebrate-of-dave-arnesons-birthday.html?m=1

So a wargame was made into a setting exploration game, and then was later labelled a "role-playing" game.
While it's still possible to play D&D as the wargame it once was, I'm glad that the game escaped the "wargame" appellation, which makes the game more attractive to those of us with 'less of an interest in tactics, however I argue (to beat a dead horse), that the labeling of D&D as a role-playing game is hurtful ("Your not role-playing, your roll-playing! etc.).
Just label D&D an adventure game, and people can be spared all the hand-wringing, and insults when acting and writing talents don't measure up to "role-playing" standards, and instead we can have fun exploring a fantastic world together.
Please?

But.... maybe that's just my memory, as I can't find the citation of St.Andre using the phrase first, but that is how I remember it.

Cosi

2017-12-17, 02:06 PM

I won't dispute the rest of your argument, but I like 5e's "Bounded Accuracy", it makes play more suspenseful, and I don't like any mortals being "undefeatable".

Sure. I still don't see why this is a problem that should be solved at the system level. If you want a narrow power band that makes it impossible to be truly "invincible", it is quite possible to achieve that without bounded accuracy -- simply play in a range of levels where bonuses progress by amounts smaller than what is required for the RNG to "turn over".

That's a list strong in Swords & Sorcery!

And that's the first edition of the game. Maybe it started out Swords and Sorcery, but by the time they rolled out Immortals, I think it was pretty clear that the game was serving a somewhat broader audience than that.

True, but personally I don't want to play at the "Doctor Strange" level. "Captain America" is quite enough for me!

Again, fine, but isn't it pretty profoundly selfish to say that the game shouldn't serve the people who want to do Doctor Strange on that basis?

In D&D what you define is low fantasy or everything below level 10 is almost 90% of the fantasy literature genre or even mythical tales or folk tales in the western world.

I don't know that you're right about that. If we look at this list of the top ten fantasy books (http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/top-100-fantasy-books/) (I have no idea how good that list is, but it was the first one to offer me a "top ten" on google), there are at least three different series (Mistborn, Malazan, and Way of Kings) that fall solidly into the "mundane need not apply" range of power. I could probably name a dozen other novels that fall in that range, although there's some obvious sampling bias there. Still, there are entire genres (like Chinese Xianxia) that are pretty exactly "people advance from mundane origins to world-shattering power".

So is it unreasonable that the Conan player just wants to play Conan?

If the group expects to keep leveling up and gaining in power, yes it is unreasonable for your character concept to be a character at a fixed power level. For what it's worth, it would also be in appropriate for your character concept to be Spiderman, even though he's more powerful than Conan. If you want to play a game where you increase in power dramatically over the course of the campaign, your concept needs to be amenable to that. Just like if you want to play a campaign where the party engages in courtly intrigue, your concept needs to be amenable to that.

The game promises advancement via levels but doesn't explain exactly what that entitles because for the Conan player he'll mostly likely just become a little bit more Conan unless he's minmaxing like hell.

Isn't that just a failure state of the advancement system? Saying "the game doesn't give Conan a path to advance" doesn't imply "therefore the game shouldn't advance past Conan", it implies "therefore the game should give Conan a path to advance".

The thing is most people don't want their character to stop advancing, advancement means progress.

You cannot simultaneous have "want to advance forever" and "want to remain recognizably at a fixed power level" as goals. At least, not rationally. Those goals are not compatible.

Neither is underpowered nor overpowered. The expected power level is what the GM dictates, what kind of adventures he's running etc and this might fluctuate between GM or modules. We can only ascertain that there is power disparity between the classes

This sounds nice, but is ultimately unhelpful. If you just throw up your hands and say "well, it's different in different games, so it can't be fixed", you can't improve the product.

That's right everybody, D&D has been broken for 30 years and they still haven't fixed it.

"Broken" is harsh language, but I don't think it's at all unreasonable to expect that a product might still have real, serious improvements to be made 30 years after initial release. Modern cars have lots of valuable features they didn't have even 50 years after the Model T.

First on accuracy: as we live in a world where garbage men have better predictions of the economic future than bankers. It doesn't seem to be unreasonable to me.

Setting aside the accuracy of this claim (frankly, dubious), that's cherry picking. If you had me run a thousand races against Usain Bolt, I wouldn't win even one of them. If you asked me to play a thousand matches of tennis with Serena Williams, I wouldn't win even one of them. There are any number of fields where experts do consistently outperform amateurs in the real world, and even if there are some cases where that's not the case, it would be a mistake to lock that in for the whole system.

3.5 is filled with balance issues and trap options.

Sure, but if the harshest criticism you can level is "it contains both good options and bad options", that would seem to speak fairly well of the system, wouldn't it?

4e might actually be the best built game in the series, but in a way that no one wanted.

I don't think this is remotely true. 4e launched with two major systems -- combat and skill challenges. Combat was a boring grindfest, and skill challenges didn't work.

As for fallacies, I am not sure how else you would go about setting up a world view; if my personal experience says one thing and the majority opinion backs it up I am not sure that it is fallacious to not restructure my world view every time I hear a different opinion unless said opinion has some incredible revelation or strong evidence attached.

It's not an opinion. It's just a mathematical property. If mundanes can't be stronger than X and casters can, it is mathematically impossible for mundanes and casters to be balanced in the long term. It's entirely possible you don't care, or play games at low power levels. But this is not a matter where there can be a debate about the facts on the ground -- you cannot have balance between groups with power level restrictions and groups without them, except in the trivial case where the system produces an implicit constraint.

We swept the area with everything we had, had guards search the surrounding areas. Nothing. And people wonder why I feel D&D magic should be scaled back.

It sounds more like your DM railroading you, to be honest. And insofar as it is a fair encounter (e.g. you faced a caster who could have legitimately prepared dimension door), it seems to me that the game should have given you tools to deal with that. If you decide to employ a calvary charge against tanks, I don't think anyone could reasonably claim your failure was a result of tanks being overpowered.

Ah, dimension door. Why the designers thought a single-action teleport that requires only verbal components would be a good idea I'll never know.

Because high-level abilities should trivialize low level challenges. You should not be able to contain a 10th level character with the same security measures that contain a 1st level one. Otherwise, why have the intervening levels? If I can't do different things at high level than I could at low level, I'm not meaningfully high level.

Except this is not an example of a magic problem, this is a DM problem. A bad DM problem. It is he DM just have stuff happen.

Wow, it's almost like "the DM just makes stuff up" is a bad paradigm for the game, and we should instead have rules that constrain both the players and the DM with a shared set of expectations. Wait, no, it must just be that every time the game fails because we give the DM arbitrary powers it's because we picked the wrong DM, not because the paradigm is bad.

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 02:25 PM

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpnhA6GfrR-_AfSeGN2Sp644hMIIsj1L3TVQ1Nz-_QUL-33bwa

Does no one unspoiler anything?

Once again:

But.... maybe that's just my memory, as I can't find the citation of St.Andre using the phrase first, but that is how I remember it.

Again, that information, just proves my point. D&D started the rpg genre, but the term wasn't around at the time. But this discussion branch is both silly and off topic.

Insomuch as the original topic is concerned, I stick by my original assertion that balance is completely unneeded, and really only exists in a few systems. Granted those systems are by far the most popular, but eh...?

Those crying for balance try systems that have it. I'll stick with pf and shadowrun.

Darth Ultron

2017-12-17, 02:44 PM

Wow, it's almost like "the DM just makes stuff up" is a bad paradigm for the game, and we should instead have rules that constrain both the players and the DM with a shared set of expectations. Wait, no, it must just be that every time the game fails because we give the DM arbitrary powers it's because we picked the wrong DM, not because the paradigm is bad.

Well, no. It is that good DM's can make up stuff just fine, it is just the bad DM's you must watch out for in the game. No game can have rules for everything or even 99% of everything.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-17, 02:47 PM

Again, that information, just proves my point. D&D started the rpg genre,

D&D didn't create the genre, it was just one of the first to coalesce elements. Check the history of Chainmail, Blackmoor, etc, or go back to HG Wells "Little Wars" or the board game Diplomacy.

Insomuch as the original topic is concerned, I stick by my original assertion that balance is completely unneeded, and really only exists in a few systems. Granted those systems are by far the most popular, but eh...?

Those crying for balance try systems that have it. I'll stick with pf and shadowrun.

Your need to characterize the positions of others as "crying" tells us more about your position, than theirs.

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 02:52 PM

D&D didn't create the genre, it was just one of the first to coalesce elements. Check the history of Chainmail, Blackmoor, etc, or go back to HG Wells "Little Wars" or the board game Diplomacy.

Your need to characterize the positions of others as "crying" tells us more about your position, than theirs.

Ummm...

Crying is in fact the correct term. It is not insulting or demeaning to call them cries for balance... or do you also think battle cries are demeaning too? I suggest you look up the meaning of crying and apply the correct context.

Cluedrew

2017-12-17, 03:16 PM

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpnhA6GfrR-_AfSeGN2Sp644hMIIsj1L3TVQ1Nz-_QUL-33bwa

Does no one unspoiler anything?We do, but experience tells me you will come along and repost one of your speeches. Actually do you update these, I read them until I realized until I was starting to memorize them and then I switched to reading just enough to know which one it is.

Except this is not an example of a magic problem, this is a DM problem. A bad DM problem. It is he DM just have stuff happen.

Though note it also is a power problem. Once a game gets past a set level, you must play the game at that level. If your playing the game with a sharp stick and dirt vs epic magic, then you will loose every time.
It sounds more like your DM railroading you, to be honest. And insofar as it is a fair encounter (e.g. you faced a caster who could have legitimately prepared dimension door), it seems to me that the game should have given you tools to deal with that. If you decide to employ a calvary charge against tanks, I don't think anyone could reasonably claim your failure was a result of tanks being overpowered.Well it is hard to tell the difference between railroading, an innocent mistake and bad luck with one example. So I will skip over that.

As for preparation, the thing is we had run out of spells (spells again) that let us read the prisoner's mind. Which we had been using to get information up to that point. We also wanted to feed him at some point as a non-evil party. Now I ask: what else should we, a low level party with every variety of spell caster, a monk and a fighter, have done?

Again, fine, but isn't it pretty profoundly selfish to say that the game shouldn't serve the people who want to do Doctor Strange on that basis?When the majority of people don't want Doctor Strange, the game was never supposed to be about Doctor Strange and supporting Doctor Strange makes the game less fun for that majority; Not at all.

And you can disagree with the first premises of that statement if you want, I'm not going to debate them here. My point is, Doctor Strange/the high-level-wizard's existence is not isolated. It bleeds into the other characters and has affects on the world, that can hurt the experience of other players.

"Broken" is harsh language,And a joke. I respect 2D8HP's opinion but I'm not going to declare it broken just because he stopped playing the game at around that time. As for the other points, they are mere details to the main point to the general idea that no edition is strictly better than the others. If I had time I could probably sit down with the rule books and create a list of things that each edition does better than the others. And if I can't get someone with different tastes than me to fill out the rest.

Cosi

2017-12-17, 03:43 PM

Those crying for balance try systems that have it. I'll stick with pf and shadowrun.

You understand that PF was marketed as being a balance improvement to 3e, right? This is like saying "screw the people who want action-comedies, I'll stick with the Marvel movies!".

Well, no. It is that good DM's can make up stuff just fine, it is just the bad DM's you must watch out for in the game. No game can have rules for everything or even 99% of everything.

Of course, DMing skill is totally independent of system. Encouraging DMs to make things up would never result in Bad DMs being worse than they would otherwise.

As for preparation, the thing is we had run out of spells (spells again) that let us read the prisoner's mind. Which we had been using to get information up to that point. We also wanted to feed him at some point as a non-evil party. Now I ask: what else should we, a low level party with every variety of spell caster, a monk and a fighter, have done?

I can't say specifically, because I don't know what abilities 5e gives out in this vein. That said, I would say the obvious solution would be to wait until tomorrow (when you regain your spells), set up appropriate defenses, and then interrogate. It hardly seems Evil to not feed a prisoner (particularly one who was, presumably, just trying to kill you) for something around twelve hours, most of which is going to be when they're asleep.For example, in 3e a 7th level party (the same level as dimension door comes online) could have dimensional anchor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalAnchor.htm) to stop it. Also, dimension door is not terribly long ranged. If your target is secured, simply being several hundred feet away from you isn't all that effective of an escape.

When the majority of people don't want Doctor Strange

I don't think you can say that. There hasn't been a good implementation of Doctor Strange yet, so it seems premature to say that people are rejecting it on the basis of the concept being uninteresting. There are bad cyberpunk games. That doesn't suggest that people wouldn't like Shadowrun.

the game was never supposed to be about Doctor Strange

Again, this is false. From as early as BECMI, there have been attempts to include rules for characters at least as strong as Doctor Strange. Yes, those rules have been inadequate, but that's not the same as absent.

supporting Doctor Strange makes the game less fun for that majority

There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case. The editions that pivoted the hardest away from Doctor Strange type characters (4e and 5e) have been the least successful.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-17, 04:11 PM

Ummm...

Crying is in fact the correct term. It is not insulting or demeaning to call them cries for balance... or do you also think battle cries are demeaning too? I suggest you look up the meaning of crying and apply the correct context.

Don't even try that game. It was clearly intended to belittle and demean those who don't agree with you -- to depict them as shedding tears because they don't get their way and to paint their preferences as infantile.

Cluedrew

2017-12-17, 04:48 PM

That said, I would say the obvious solution would be to wait until tomorrow (when you regain your spells), set up appropriate defenses, and then interrogate. It hardly seems Evil to not feed a prisoner (particularly one who was, presumably, just trying to kill you) for something around twelve hours, most of which is going to be when they're asleep.For example, in 3e a 7th level party (the same level as dimension door comes online) could have dimensional anchor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalAnchor.htm) to stop it. Also, dimension door is not terribly long ranged. If your target is secured, simply being several hundred feet away from you isn't all that effective of an escape.We already waited for the next (we captured him yesterday), so we would have been heading towards 48hours without food or water. Will look into Dimensional Anchor, but because it was party vs. this one guy and he was a more specialized caster he had access higher level spells than we did. Finally I think he could of chain cast it. There is nothing preventing him from filling a bunch of slots with it.

Or maybe it was a stronger spell, our GM doesn't have a great intuition for balance.

There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case. The editions that pivoted the hardest away from Doctor Strange type characters (4e and 5e) have been the least successful.Not even the evidence I have experienced first hand?

Also I doubt there will ever be an edition of D&D that will be as popular again, regardless of quality. So many more good RPGs are out there now.

Talakeal

2017-12-17, 07:38 PM

It's not an opinion. It's just a mathematical property. If mundanes can't be stronger than X and casters can, it is mathematically impossible for mundanes and casters to be balanced in the long term. It's entirely possible you don't care, or play games at low power levels. But this is not a matter where there can be a debate about the facts on the ground -- you cannot have balance between groups with power level restrictions and groups without them, except in the trivial case where the system produces an implicit constraint.

Sure, but that point is a theoretical limit rather than something people will bump up against in actual play.

D&D 3.5 and basic are the only versions of the game that even attempt to claim to model games at that level, and the ELH is so poorly thought out that at that point wanting to keep your character "mundane" is going to be the least of your problems.

RazorChain

2017-12-17, 08:08 PM

Sure, but that point is a theoretical limit rather than something people will bump up against in actual play.

D&D 3.5 and basic are the only versions of the game that even attempt to claim to model games at that level, and the ELH is so poorly thought out that at that point wanting to keep your character "mundane" is going to be the least of your problems.

From the Epic level handbook

Introduction
The rules in the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® core rulebooks
are not enough for you. Your game promises more than
what the rules can contain. Your plots run deeper and
your imagination burns stronger. Twenty levels of power
are too few, character options are too limited, and the
monsters are too weak. Until now.
Welcome to the next level of power.

WHAT IS AN EPIC CHARACTER?
Put plainly, an epic character is one who has achieved
21st character level. Though the Player’s Handbook
describes character progression up to 20th level, legend
and literature are replete with heroes and villains who
have gone beyond normal limits. Now your character
gets to join them and assume a role in legend.

This is just my case, here the system is selling that you aren't epic or a legend until you've surpassed 20th level and the poor Conan player doesn't understand why the Wizard is the Badass and he isn't and they haven't even reached epicness.

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 08:10 PM

Don't even try that game. It was clearly intended to belittle and demean those who don't agree with you -- to depict them as shedding tears because they don't get their way and to paint their preferences as infantile.

Seriously, look up the word. Crying for something means to demand attention and action. That was EXACTLY how I used it: "those crying for balance."

I don't understand where you get "infantile" from this. I DID denegrate those calling for this so called balance within 3.5 and PF... changing a system 20 years old that is the most popular system of all time to fit THEIR idea of what it should be is beyond absurd. But calling for A system where balance/imbalance exists? Fine by me. I've even given suggestions on how to explain such in game.

I am just stating it simply isn't needed to make a good and fun role playing game, as evidenced by 2e and 3e d&d, pf, shadowrun and many others where casters outshine... and yet they are both fun and successful.

You are seeing something that isn't there.

Talakeal

2017-12-17, 08:16 PM

From the Epic level handbook

Introduction
The rules in the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® core rulebooks
are not enough for you. Your game promises more than
what the rules can contain. Your plots run deeper and
your imagination burns stronger. Twenty levels of power
are too few, character options are too limited, and the
monsters are too weak. Until now.
Welcome to the next level of power.

WHAT IS AN EPIC CHARACTER?
Put plainly, an epic character is one who has achieved
21st character level. Though the Player’s Handbook
describes character progression up to 20th level, legend
and literature are replete with heroes and villains who
have gone beyond normal limits. Now your character
gets to join them and assume a role in legend.

This is just my case, here the system is selling that you aren't epic or a legend until you've surpassed 20th level and the poor Conan player doesn't understand why the Wizard is the Badass and he isn't and they haven't even reached epicness.

Also from the Epic level handbook:

"Baba Yaga. Conan the Barbarian. Chu Chalain. Elminster of Shadowdale. Elric of Melibone. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Gandalf. Gilgamesh. Hiawatha. Odysseus.
These are names of power. Names of glory. Epic names.
These characters are examples of epic characters; heroes who have gone beyond the normal limits of skill, battle prowess, and magical might. While still mortal beings these individuals, and those like them, wield powers that other characters (even 20th level ones) can only dream about."

So yeah, its no wonder the poor Conan player is confused when the book explicitly calls him out by name as an example of an epic character and then he comes to the table and finds that not only is he not epic, he stops being relevant by mid level.

Darth Ultron

2017-12-17, 08:29 PM

As for preparation, the thing is we had run out of spells (spells again) that let us read the prisoner's mind. Which we had been using to get information up to that point. We also wanted to feed him at some point as a non-evil party. Now I ask: what else should we, a low level party with every variety of spell caster, a monk and a fighter, have done?

This is why I say it was a bad DM: I don't think you could have done anything.

1.The power level. If your a low level group vs a higher level foe, then going just by the book rules your helpless and doomed.

2.Anything beyond the Rules. If the DM does not add anything to the game...anything a character can do other then follow the game rules, then your character can't do anything.

You take either or both of them, and you get a bad DM.

Having a teleporting foe with the characters have sharp sticks and dirt is bad. And having no other way to do anything, other then is what in the rules, is bad.

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 08:36 PM

This is why I say it was a bad DM: I don't think you could have done anything.

1.The power level. If your a low level group vs a higher level foe, then going just by the book rules your helpless and doomed.

2.Anything beyond the Rules. If the DM does not add anything to the game...anything a character can do other then follow the game rules, then your character can't do anything.

You take either or both of them, and you get a bad DM.

Having a teleporting foe with the characters have sharp sticks and dirt is bad. And having no other way to do anything, other then is what in the rules, is bad.

Having a teleporting recurring villian is not bad dming. In fact, I have no problem with a villian who was knocked out, bound and gagged using the first opportunity to use his memorized teleport.

The proper defense was to have someone with a readied action to replace the gag the instant any arcane syllable left his mouth interrupting the spell and ruining it. Alternatively placing him in an antimagic field would also work.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-17, 08:57 PM

Seriously, look up the word. Crying for something means to demand attention and action. That was EXACTLY how I used it: "those crying for balance."

I don't understand where you get "infantile" from this. I DID denegrate those calling for this so called balance within 3.5 and PF... changing a system 20 years old that is the most popular system of all time to fit THEIR idea of what it should be is beyond absurd. But calling for A system where balance/imbalance exists? Fine by me. I've even given suggestions on how to explain such in game.

I am just stating it simply isn't needed to make a good and fun role playing game, as evidenced by 2e and 3e d&d, pf, shadowrun and many others where casters outshine... and yet they are both fun and successful.

You are seeing something that isn't there.

Crying, verb:

1. to utter inarticulate sounds, especially of lamentation, grief, or suffering, usually with tears.

2. to weep; shed tears, with or without sound.

You didn't say "cry out for", you said "crying for".

Cluedrew

2017-12-17, 09:09 PM

This is why I say it was a bad DM: I don't think you could have done anything.Wait, you are saying the GM's mistake was not giving us enough tools? If so, maybe. Maybe his is trying to set something up for later. Maybe he didn't expect us to try and take the caster prisoner (we had to pull some real tricks to do that, I wouldn't be surprised if it caught him of guard).

Calthropstu

2017-12-17, 09:28 PM

Crying, verb:

1. to utter inarticulate sounds, especially of lamentation, grief, or suffering, usually with tears.

2. to weep; shed tears, with or without sound.

You didn't say "cry out for", you said "crying for".

Dictionary.com crying:

cry·ing (krī′ĭng)
adj.
1. Demanding or requiring action or attention: a crying need.
2. Abominable; reprehensible: a crying shame.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Mechalich

2017-12-17, 09:40 PM

Also from the Epic level handbook:

"Baba Yaga. Conan the Barbarian. Chu Chalain. Elminster of Shadowdale. Elric of Melibone. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Gandalf. Gilgamesh. Hiawatha. Odysseus.
These are names of power. Names of glory. Epic names.
These characters are examples of epic characters; heroes who have gone beyond the normal limits of skill, battle prowess, and magical might. While still mortal beings these individuals, and those like them, wield powers that other characters (even 20th level ones) can only dream about.

So yeah, its no wonder the poor Conan player is confused when the book explicitly calls him out by name as an example of an epic character and then he comes to the table and finds that not only is he not epic, he stops being relevant by mid level.

It's also an example of the 3e design team fundamentally misunderstanding what their system is capable of producing and just how low-optimization the initial testing really was. Out of all of the characters on that list only Elminster and possibly Elric (I'm not big into Moorcock's work, my understanding as it depends on how you quantify his abilities and his relationship with Stormbringer) legitimately exist at epic level.

Baba Yaga - a mid to high level Tier I caster, possibly multi-class.
Chu Chalain - a high-level fighter
Conan the Barbarian - a mid-level barbarian/fighter/rogue
Fafhrd - a mid-level fighter/ranger
Gray Mouser - a mid-level fighter/rogue
Gandalf - a high-HD celestial (like a Planetar or Trumpet Archon) underneath a permanent polymorph-type effect pretending to be a low-level wizard
Gilgamesh - either a high-level martial character (with several classes) or an actual mythic demigod
Hiawatha - (presumably the character in the Longfellow poem and not the actual person), a half-celestial who's probably maps best to druid or shaman, mid-level
Odysseus - a mid-level fighter/aristocrat, has an unusually high Int score

Now, somewhat amusingly several of these characters can be considered epic if you approach them as portrayed in the Nasuverse (FATE/ stay night and affiliated series) rather than in their actual source material. Even then though, Nasuverse martials still generally wouldn't match up well with even medium-optimization high-level D&D 3.X casters.

A setting can hit 'mundanes need not apply' at shockingly low-levels of magical power when that magical power (or whatever power, DBZ fighters aren't technically magical but they sure aren't mundane) is incorporated into the world-building properly - it often isn't, even in extremely popular settings - and the technology level is low (a random militia member with a pitchfork versus the same NPC with an AK-47 is a very different calculation).

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-17, 10:23 PM

Dictionary.com crying:

cry·ing (krī′ĭng)
adj.
1. Demanding or requiring action or attention: a crying need.
2. Abominable; reprehensible: a crying shame.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

* make insulting comment about people who don't agree with you "crying".
* get called out on it.
* hide behind weasel-wording that you clearly didn't originally mean.

You're not fooling anyone, it was just another instance of the standard internet ad hominem "people who don't agree with me are crybabies (https://www.google.com/search?q=people+who+don%27t+agree+with+me+are+cryb abies&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi98b2kzpLYAhXr8YMKHbciAPMQvwUIJCgA&biw=1920&bih=896)".

And even if you really didn't mean it that way... stop and consider that that is usually how it's meant and that a lot of people are going to take it exactly that way.

Knaight

2017-12-17, 10:58 PM

Seriously, look up the word. Crying for something means to demand attention and action. That was EXACTLY how I used it: "those crying for balance."

As you're so fond of dictionary quotes:
Dictionary.com

connotation
noun
1.
the associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning: A possible connotation of “home” is “a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.”.
the act of connoting; the suggesting of an additional meaning for a word or expression, apart from its explicit meaning.
2.
something suggested or implied by a word or thing, rather than being explicitly named or described:
“Religion” has always had a negative connotation for me.
3.
Logic. the set of attributes constituting the meaning of a term and thus determining the range of objects to which that term may be applied; comprehension; intension.

Notice that the dictionary definition only has a denotation, and that implication generally operates at the level of connotation. "The denotation says nothing about this so how can you say I implied it" is thus disingenuous at best.

Calthropstu

2017-12-18, 12:30 AM

* make insulting comment about people who don't agree with you "crying".
* get called out on it.
* hide behind weasel-wording that you clearly didn't originally mean.

You're not fooling anyone, it was just another instance of the standard internet ad hominem "people who don't agree with me are crybabies (https://www.google.com/search?q=people+who+don%27t+agree+with+me+are+cryb abies&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi98b2kzpLYAhXr8YMKHbciAPMQvwUIJCgA&biw=1920&bih=896)".

And even if you really didn't mean it that way... stop and consider that that is usually how it's meant and that a lot of people are going to take it exactly that way.

Apparently I am fooling you without even trying to. Or more precisely you are fooling yourself. It is not my fault people here or wherever misuse a word. I hear it used correctly fairly regularly from news articles to books. Usually the context is "crying for change," and that is the same context here.
I did not expect to need to give out an English lesson when I wrote it.

Darth Ultron

2017-12-18, 01:24 AM

Having a teleporting recurring villian is not bad dming. In fact, I have no problem with a villian who was knocked out, bound and gagged using the first opportunity to use his memorized teleport.

The proper defense was to have someone with a readied action to replace the gag the instant any arcane syllable left his mouth interrupting the spell and ruining it. Alternatively placing him in an antimagic field would also work.

It's not having the teleporting villain that is bad: it is the weak PCs that can't do anything that is the bad part. It's the games power level and not having anything the characters could have done.

Wait, you are saying the GM's mistake was not giving us enough tools? If so, maybe. Maybe his is trying to set something up for later. Maybe he didn't expect us to try and take the caster prisoner (we had to pull some real tricks to do that, I wouldn't be surprised if it caught him of guard).

Yes.

In a general sense, if a foe can take an action, the hero should be able to counter the action. Not automatically, every time...but there should at least be a chance.

In a general sense, the DM can just do anything in the game....and they can even do the perfect little song and dance to fool the players by ''using the rules'' and pointing to the rule in the book and acting like ''they'' did not do it: "Sorry guys he teleported away, just like it says right there on page 77. It is in the official rules: it happens, my hands are tied. If it was up to me he'd stay captured, but, sorry, you know the rules. All Hail the Rules."

But, just as a DM can do anything on a whim, does not mean they should.

You're not fooling anyone, it was just another instance of the standard internet ad hominem "people who don't agree with me are crybabies".

I see crybabies as just immature people.

I often encounter someone who is say 22, like this:

Player: My wizard casts eight spells!
DM:Um, what? Wait, no he does not.
Player: Yea, hum. He is 8th level so he can cast 8 spells a round.
DM: Um, no, that is not how the game works.
Player: Oh, ya, my Other DM says it is and he is the greatest DM ever!
DM: Nope, sorry your character only gets a standard action, so one spell
Player: waaaaaaaaaaaa!

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 01:36 AM

You're not fooling anyone, it was just another instance of the standard internet ad hominem "people who don't agree with me are crybabies (https://www.google.com/search?q=people+who+don%27t+agree+with+me+are+cryb abies&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi98b2kzpLYAhXr8YMKHbciAPMQvwUIJCgA&biw=1920&bih=896)".

I see crybabies as just immature people.

I often encounter someone who is say 22, like this:

Player: My wizard casts eight spells!
DM:Um, what? Wait, no he does not.
Player: Yea, hum. He is 8th level so he can cast 8 spells a round.
DM: Um, no, that is not how the game works.
Player: Oh, ya, my Other DM says it is and he is the greatest DM ever!
DM: Nope, sorry your character only gets a standard action, so one spell
Player: waaaaaaaaaaaa!

You know Darth for all your idiosyncrasies, you sometimes just make my day. But I don't know how or why you came to that parable from Max's argument.

2D8HP

2017-12-18, 01:36 AM

...I DID denegrate those calling for this so called balance within 3.5 and PF... changing a system 20 years old that is the most popular system of all time to fit THEIR idea of what it should be is beyond absurd. ..
I don't know what actually is/was "the most popular RPG" (IIRC 1983 "Redbox" D&D sold the most, but video games were less advanced then). I do know that in my area open tables for Pathfinder are easier for me to find, 5e D&D is a close second, and every other game combined is third, which makes me a little sad as first Arduin, then the games by Chaosium, and R. Talsorian were "home grown" here.

It's also an example of the 3e design team fundamentally misunderstanding what their system is capable of producing and just how low-optimization the initial testing really was.....
They followed TSR's tradition in that!

I think @Max_Killjoy noted up-thread how Vampire/W.O.D. was played contrary to how it seemed the designers suggested it be played (I well remember how enomorously popular Vampire was in the 1990's. 1980's D&D only had a saturday morning cartoon for kids (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(TV_series)), whereas Vampire had an evening (appropriately) live action television show (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred:_The_Embraced), 2000's D&D on the other hand has had three movies? One in theatres (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(film)).

Despite inspiring a great webcomic, that 3.x is so popular is puzzling to me, I can only guess that people really like playing powerful spell-casters.

In one way 21st century D&D went against what seemed to have been an on-going trend of increasingly mundane settings.

At my table Traveller and Call of Cthullu became the most played games after D&D, but in my area the general trend in popularity (judging by what gsmes I remember had the most open tables) was toward settings closer to real life, first comic book superheroes with Villians & Vigilantes (1979), and Champions (1981), then the near future (our present) Cyberpunk (1988), then contemporary urban fantasy with Vampire (1991), and finally 3e D&D became the most popular.

But maybe 3.x is part of an ongoing trend towards games in-which the PC's are poweful in the context of the setting?

In early D&D you start play as a "dirty peasant" (to use @RazorChain's phrase), and gaining levels is slow compared to later editions of D&D. In contrast PC's in WD&D may quickly rocket to "god-wizard" status. I believe Wizards are less powerful than their 3e equivalents, but to me the increased power of PC's compared to TSR D&D PC's, and especially the increased rate of "leveling up" is striking (perhaps @Tanarii as someone with lots of experience playing 2e, 3.x, 4e and 5e could chime some more?).

I speculate that my taste for playing "squishy" PC's (as in Call of Cthullu and early D&D) is a minority one, and that how well a "power fantasy" experience is delivered correlates with how popular a RPG, which makes me wonder if Exalted (if I have the right impression of it) would be the most popular if it had better name recognition?

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 01:54 AM

.

.
They followed TSR's tradition in that!

I think @Max_Killjoy noted up-thread how Vampire/W.O.D. was played contrary to how it seemed the designers suggested it be played (I well remember how enomorously popular Vampire was in the 1990's. 1980's D&D only had a saturday morning cartoon for kids (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(TV_series)), whereas Vampire had an evening (appropriately) live action television show (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred:_The_Embraced), 2000's D&D on the other hand has had three movies? One in theatres (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_(film)).

Despite inspiring a great webcomic, that 3.x is so popular is puzzling to me, I can only guess that people really like playing powerful spell-casters.

In one way 21st century D&D went against what seemed to have been an on-going trend of increasingly mundane settings.

At my table Traveller and Call of Cthullu became the most played games after D&D, but in my area the general trend in popularity (judging by what gsmes I remember had the most open tables) was toward settings closer to real life, first comic book superheroes with Villians & Vigilantes (1979), and Champions (1981), then the near future (our present) Cyberpunk (1988), then contemporary urban fantasy with Vampire (1991), and finally 3e D&D became the most popular.

But maybe 3.x is part of an ongoing trend towards games in-which the PC's are poweful in the context of the setting?

In early D&D you start play as a "dirty peasant" (to use @RazorChain's phrase), and gaining levels is slow compared to later editions of D&D. In contrast PC's in WD&D may quickly rocket to "god-wizard" status. I believe Wizards are less powerful than their 3e equivalents, but to me the increased power of PC's compared to TSR D&D PC's, and especially the increased rate of "leveling up" is striking (perhaps @Tanarii as someone with lots of experience playing 2e, 3.x, 4e and 5e could chime some more?).

I speculate that my taste for playing "squishy" PC's (as in Call of Cthullu and early D&D) is a minority one, and that how well a "power fantasy" experience is delivered correlates with how popular a RPG, which makes me wonder if Exalted (if I have the right impression of it) would be the most popular if it had better name recognition?

Well White Wolf has been accused of roleplaying snobbery regarding how WoD was meant to be played. But after the things you have been posting from Tim Kask and just reading Gygax's Roleplaying Mastery it has become very clear to me that TSR tried to shoehorn everybody into how they meant the game should be played.

I've iterated that the problem with D&D is it's vast power spectrum and how fast you get from zero to superhero. There are other systems that cover the spectrum but they do so with making distinctions. When I'm running a Dark Fantasy campaign in Gurps then there is no room for superheroes but yet I can run a superhero campaign in Gurps. If I'm including a HeroQuest in a Gloranthan Runequest campaign then I'm very well aware that HeroQuesting will change the campaign drastically and it's a conscious choice. In D&D leveling just happens organically as it's a part of the system just like advancement happens in most other systems. Even in Exalted where you start as a godling you don't become 100x more powerful in the span of a campaign.

Games are often designed with reward systems in mind and RPG's are one of them. So just cutting off advancement may be a huge disappointment to the players. But no 2D8HP you aren't the only one that prefers playing "squishy" PC's, I kind of grew out of the power fantasy in my teens playing AD&D 2nd ed. I found that having PC's accountable to something other than other superbeings was worth delving into and made up for more interesting scenarios exploring the human psyche and moral conundrums rather than punching out the sun.

Mechalich

2017-12-18, 02:52 AM

.
Despite inspiring a great webcomic, that 3.x is so popular is puzzling to me, I can only guess that people really like playing powerful spell-casters.

D&D gained popularity because it managed to 'be first' in business parlance and was thereafter impossible to knock off. Also, TSR managed to successfully leverage their IP beyond the RPG medium in a way that other games either couldn't or wouldn't (often because they were based off existing IP). Through a quirk of fate D&D achieved it's greatest moment of breakthrough into the public consciousness when it wasn't even a going concern as a game. Baldur's Gate came out in 1998 while TSR was bankrupt and 3e was still in development. D&D managed to ride the hype of a series of phenomenally good video game adaptations right into the release of the new edition, which, thanks to WotC had massively higher production values than anything else on the market. Also 3.X D&D, for all it's flaws, was a huge mechanical improvement over its predecessors and pretty much every other big game on the market. oWoD was the primary competitor at the time, and it's mechanical issues dwarf 3.X's. Then, at the same time White-Wolf chose to deliberately destroy their own setting in a gigantic middle finger to their hardcore fans with their decades-long LARPS WotC introduced the OGL, which focused attention back on D&D because it meant every small time freelancer could try to squeeze their house rules into an actual gaming product.

The OGL, also, helps explain the continued popularity of 3.X D&D, since it allows Pathfinder to exist, but it also focuses the attention of industry creators on the system, and until recently (when FATE and such became available for similar mods) was pretty much the only system you were allowed to do this with.

I've iterated that the problem with D&D is it's vast power spectrum and how fast you get from zero to superhero. There are other systems that cover the spectrum but they do so with making distinctions. When I'm running a Dark Fantasy campaign in Gurps then there is no room for superheroes but yet I can run a superhero campaign in Gurps. If I'm including a HeroQuest in a Gloranthan Runequest campaign then I'm very well aware that HeroQuesting will change the campaign drastically and it's a conscious choice. In D&D leveling just happens organically as it's a part of the system just like advancement happens in most other systems. Even in Exalted where you start as a godling you don't become 100x more powerful in the span of a campaign.

World-building is like map-making, you need to be consistent in scale. D&D is not. However, that's really only true if your characters advance a lot. Over a range of 3-4 levels, so long as crazy amounts of optimization aren't involved, you're okay, and most campaigns never go much further than that. So this problem is elided in actual play and most people are happy enough to just pretend that the world-building problems don't exist (Marvel's continued box office success ought to be all the proof anyone could ever need). As a result, it's only the specific problem of class-to-class imbalance at equivalent levels that really comes up all the time.

Knaight

2017-12-18, 03:24 AM

D&D gained popularity because it managed to 'be first' in business parlance and was thereafter impossible to knock off. Also, TSR managed to successfully leverage their IP beyond the RPG medium in a way that other games either couldn't or wouldn't (often because they were based off existing IP). Through a quirk of fate D&D achieved it's greatest moment of breakthrough into the public consciousness when it wasn't even a going concern as a game.

I'd identify three primary factors that led to D&D being effectively untouchable, none of which are actually related to quality (beyond meeting some minimums). Notably:

1) The satanic panic. A bunch of people up in arms about D&D loudly complaining about it to all that would hear made it a household name in a way it never was before, and was the best marketing that could be asked for. It sucked for existing players, but it was good for the brand.

2) Brand recognition. Between being the first and the aforementioned satanic panic D&D acquired a brand recognition on a level with Frisbee and Kleenex. The particular name of one brand was treated as synonymous with all similar products, much to the annoyance of aficionados.

3) Network effects. RPGs in general benefit from network effects, where other people knowing a specific game is a good reason to get into it. The same effect exists in other multiplayer games, but the barrier to entry caused by even a "light" game often having a rules book in excess of 200 pages really causes it to get exaggerated. Once D&D was already known, and picking up players this secured it. The other two effects have faded in efficacy pretty dramatically (particularly the first), but this stays important.

The typical counter argument presented here is Pathfinder, but it benefits from two of these effects. Paizo was a recognized brand when Pathfinder started, it inherited the D&D 3.5 player network due to nigh identical rules. That let it build up to the point where it also hand brand recognition effects.

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 03:38 AM

Also 3.X D&D, for all it's flaws, was a huge mechanical improvement over its predecessors and pretty much every other big game on the market.

I don't know what huge mechanical improvement 3.X did for the roleplaying world.....it must have gone unnoticed. They turned the THACO around so the mathematically challenged could play and finally included a badly implemented skill system (IMHO) and gave us feats.

Satinavian

2017-12-18, 03:42 AM

.Despite inspiring a great webcomic, that 3.x is so popular is puzzling to me, I can only guess that people really like playing powerful spell-casters.It is a compromise system.

For basically everything there are other games that do it better. But nearly all things could still be done in D&D 3.5 at least to some extend, especcially if you are willing to use other D20 material. So it works for groups who switch genres. And it is a system where you can bring players who want vastly different things from roleplaying at least to the same table. (That might still blow up later, but maybe it doesn't) And it is easier to learn and to DM than GURPS.

And it is widely known. It has the biggest player pool. Everyone wants to tap into this player and GM pool when starting a new group. There are also so many players who don't like to learn new rules and chances are they know 3.5.

This is why it is so popular.

Coincidently it is not that popular in Germany where TDE is the great compromise system where you always can find players. And without the huge player pool D&Ds lure is basically vanishing.

In one way 21st century D&D went against what seemed to have been an on-going trend of increasingly mundane settings.True, the settings get more mundane. But also more realistic and more political. There are less and less problems that can be solved by a martial with a weapon. And the numbers of brave marttial heroes bringing down evil magic wielders is waning too.

If i look at more modern and vastly famous fantasy, then "Game of Thrones" is neither about magic nor martial prowess, it is about human interactions, politics and pettiness. It is the smart courtier dominating here, not the barbarian swordwielder or the magician. Even in the witcher (games and books), where the progagonist is martial he is not about using alchemy or favors from his scorcerer friends and also gets beaten regularly by normal guys in combat.

But maybe 3.x is part of an ongoing trend towards games in-which the PC's are poweful in the context of the setting?

In early D&D you start play as a "dirty peasant" (to use @RazorChain's phrase), and gaining levels is slow compared to later editions of D&D. In contrast PC's in WD&D may quickly rocket to "god-wizard" status. I believe Wizards are less powerful than their 3e equivalents, but to me the increased power of PC's compared to TSR D&D PC's, and especially the increased rate of "leveling up" is striking (perhaps @Tanarii as someone with lots of experience playing 2e, 3.x, 4e and 5e could chime some more?).

I speculate that my taste for playing "squishy" PC's (as in Call of Cthullu and early D&D) is a minority one, and that how well a "power fantasy" experience is delivered correlates with how popular a RPG, which makes me wonder if Exalted (if I have the right impression of it) would be the most popular if it had better name recognition?That is not a trend i recognize.

Most modern games don't have such fast gain of power. Outside of D&D PCs become more powerful as slowly as once imagined. But in most other games PCs don't start as "dirty peasant" anymore if the game is not about dirty peasents. The design is more about assuming a certain time a character should be played and fixing the power gain speed in a way that this times roughly covers the power range the system is intended to handle.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 06:42 AM

Apparently I am fooling you without even trying to. Or more precisely you are fooling yourself. It is not my fault people here or wherever misuse a word. I hear it used correctly fairly regularly from news articles to books. Usually the context is "crying for change," and that is the same context here.
I did not expect to need to give out an English lesson when I wrote it.

Ironic. Your attitude in this post only erases any doubt one might have as to your original intent.

First of all, they're not misusing it. Or are you really claiming that "crying" only has the one meaning?

Second, the context here is an online discussion, and the meaning you're now hiding behind is not the meaning typically used in that context.

The only lesson that might have been necessary here making you understand that when you tell people they're "crying" in this kind of discussion, they're going to take that as an assertion that their position is infantile and they're sobbing and wailing about it. And if by some stretch that's not what you mean, it doesn't matter. You can find a different way to express your opinion, or you can keep causing misunderstandings and making people think you're a smug jerk. Not that there appears to have been any misunderstanding here, given your blatant attitude in other posts. When it's pointed out that their wording caused a misunderstanding, most people say something like "Sorry, I didn't mean it that way" or "Oh, I can see that based on the other meaning of these words, but I really meant this" -- you've chosen instead to go with "You idiot, let me school you on the only possible way this can be used".

And really that's my final comment on the matter -- any further insults from you will only be additional evidence that I had this right all along.

Cosi

2017-12-18, 07:49 AM

@crying debate: Isn't it ironic that the guy arguing about intent here is the same guy who insisted that the author was the final authority on message in the thread about racism?

Or maybe it was a stronger spell, our GM doesn't have a great intuition for balance.

This seems like the real problem. Your DM slapped something together, and it happened that he aimed a lot higher

Not even the evidence I have experienced first hand?

I'm not sure how to parse this. The question is "how successful were various editions of Dungeons and Dragons", unless you are personally a high level employee of WotC's sales division, or some industry journalist, I'm not sure what evidence you would have experienced first hand.

Sure, but that point is a theoretical limit rather than something people will bump up against in actual play.

Except in 3.5, which is the edition that allows you to play Doctor Strange. So yes, if you do what 4e and 5e did and take powerful casters out of the equation, you don't see imbalance. Interestingly, that's exactly what I predicted would happen. The fact that you happen to have played a bunch of lower powered games is an interesting observation, but doesn't speak to how high powered games work.

The typical counter argument presented here is Pathfinder, but it benefits from two of these effects. Paizo was a recognized brand when Pathfinder started, it inherited the D&D 3.5 player network due to nigh identical rules. That let it build up to the point where it also hand brand recognition effects.

Pathfinder just is D&D. The only difference is the publishing company (which changed between 2e and 3e) and the mechanics (which are on the order of the change from 3.0 to 3.5). It's "some dude's D&D houserules". The only difference is that the houserules are being sold to you.

I don't know what huge mechanical improvement 3.X did for the roleplaying world.....it must have gone unnoticed. They turned the THACO around so the mathematically challenged could play

Gatekeep harder please. THAC0 -> BAB was an objectively good change because it made the game easier to play without changing the behavior of the game. If going to a unified "high rolls are good" mechanic was the only thing 3e did, it would still be one of the biggest improvements any edition ever made.

and finally included a badly implemented skill system (IMHO) and gave us feats.

Skills have problems, but again, a unified system is good.

Feats are good, but caught in a weird middle ground.

PrCs were also a good idea, though Paragon Paths are probably a better setup.

CR was a good design choice.

A lot of the math underlying the game (e.g. WBL) is pretty elegant, even if it doesn't really work.

Much as grognards complain about how it ruined the game by removing shackles from casters, those shackles made the game substantially less fun.

Moving towards a paradigm where "the DM makes something up" represented less of the rules is good for both players and DMs.

The variety of classes, and in particular variety of resource management systems was good.

No one is saying it was perfect, or even that the things it did were implemented perfectly, but it was an improvement on earlier editions, and is better than later ones (as evinced by it and PF's lasting popularity).

Cluedrew

2017-12-18, 08:33 AM

Bringing in the context!

and supporting Doctor Strange makes the game less fun for that majorityThere's absolutely no evidence that this is the case.Not even the evidence I have experienced first hand?I'm not sure how to parse this. The question is "how successful were various editions of Dungeons and Dragons", unless you are personally a high level employee of WotC's sales division, or some industry journalist, I'm not sure what evidence you would have experienced first hand.... OK maybe I should have just said it again because that is a silly amount of nesting. But does it explain what I was trying to get at? I'm actually curious if it helps. Because I'm out of time.

Brief comment about it D&D's magic design being so easy to get out of hand is a problem, you can't assume everyone is a master.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 09:51 AM

It is a compromise system.

For basically everything there are other games that do it better. But nearly all things could still be done in D&D 3.5 at least to some extend, especcially if you are willing to use other D20 material. So it works for groups who switch genres. And it is a system where you can bring players who want vastly different things from roleplaying at least to the same table. (That might still blow up later, but maybe it doesn't) And it is easier to learn and to DM than GURPS.

And it is widely known. It has the biggest player pool. Everyone wants to tap into this player and GM pool when starting a new group. There are also so many players who don't like to learn new rules and chances are they know 3.5.

This is why it is so popular.

Coincidently it is not that popular in Germany where TDE is the great compromise system where you always can find players. And without the huge player pool D&Ds lure is basically vanishing.

For me at least, d20 / 3.x / PF isn't so much a compromise as it is a system that does its own thing OK... and nothing else well enough to bother. Its popularity just means it gets used for a lot of things that it's not (IMO) suited for.

True, the settings get more mundane. But also more realistic and more political. There are less and less problems that can be solved by a martial with a weapon. And the numbers of brave marttial heroes bringing down evil magic wielders is waning too.

If i look at more modern and vastly famous fantasy, then "Game of Thrones" is neither about magic nor martial prowess, it is about human interactions, politics and pettiness. It is the smart courtier dominating here, not the barbarian swordwielder or the magician. Even in the witcher (games and books), where the progagonist is martial he is not about using alchemy or favors from his scorcerer friends and also gets beaten regularly by normal guys in combat.
That is not a trend i recognize.

Most modern games don't have such fast gain of power. Outside of D&D PCs become more powerful as slowly as once imagined. But in most other games PCs don't start as "dirty peasant" anymore if the game is not about dirty peasents. The design is more about assuming a certain time a character should be played and fixing the power gain speed in a way that this times roughly covers the power range the system is intended to handle.

Yeah, getting out from under the presumed "zero to demigod" pseudo-Campbellian presumptions of D&D's progression system is one of the best reasons (IMO) to ditch that system. Even the old-old "oh we assumed you're retire after level 10" progression was an insane increase in power. And before it's brought up again, no, "just play in this one little level range" is not a solution, it's a wonky kludge.

Tanarii

2017-12-18, 11:09 AM

I don't know what huge mechanical improvement 3.X did for the roleplaying world.....it must have gone unnoticed. They turned the THACO around so the mathematically challenged could play and finally included a badly implemented skill system (IMHO) and gave us feats.Hey look at that, turns out you do know many of the huge mechanical changes of the 3e system after all. BAB & the skill system were revolutionary.

Other big changes you missed: making the d20 a central resolution core system instead of having lots of subsystems, revamping saving throws so they're not automatic at high level, and making clear and concise* combat rules (mostly based on 2e Combat & Tactics rules.)

Otoh I credit 3e not on their big changes successes on their mechanical changes (which IMO were mostly improvements), but mainly on timing. The Internet was busy exploded in popularity in 2000.

*Edit: okay maybe concise is the wrong word. Let's try Organized in one location and actually being written in a way that is playable instead. :smallbiggrin:

Calthropstu

2017-12-18, 11:17 AM

Talakeal

2017-12-18, 11:20 AM

Except in 3.5, which is the edition that allows you to play Doctor Strange. So yes, if you do what 4e and 5e did and take powerful casters out of the equation, you don't see imbalance. Interestingly, that's exactly what I predicted would happen. The fact that you happen to have played a bunch of lower powered games is an interesting observation, but doesn't speak to how high powered games work.

I feel like we have been going around in circles for several threads here.

My point is that traditional high level D&D adventures like stopping rampaging Tarrasques, creating or destroying epic artifacts, saving the world from the dark lord, slaying ancient dragons, storming the gates of Hell to defeat an arch-devil, battling Balors, Kracken, Liches, and Titans, or forming / overthrowing world spanning empires can be ran in any edition of D&D and it is only 3.X where the power discrepancy between characters is so much that a high level martial won't meaningfully contribute while doing so.

Likewise a high level caster in any edition can still Stop Time, call down meteors, summon demigods, open planar rifts, bring back the dead, teleport across the world, shape-change into a dragon, etc. 3E casters aren't "more powerful" as such, its just that the game has some many ways to ignore the limitations that other editions have placed on casters, spells are easier to pull off and it is far easier to ignore limitations like spell slots and even spells known if you know the tricks. Its not really a matter of power, but rather one of convenience that wrecks the day.

But yes, of course you can raise (or lower) the power level of casters to any point you can imagine because magic is make believe. I also agree that this is harder to do for mundane characters because most people have an idea of what a mundane person is capable of and will call BS on you if your rules make them strong enough to leap tall buildings or so incompetent that they fail routine tasks in their area of expertise 25% of the time (cough 5E cough).

If one was so inclined they could also create a setting where martials dominated casters by limiting casters to occasionally pulling a rabbit out of a top hat while letting martials turn into DBZ esque martial artists. One could also be playing a game set in a super advanced sci-fi setting where anything a D&D wizard can do can be easily replicated by technology and studying magic is just a waste of time.

Also, the problem with Dr. Strange (and indeed most comic book characters, especially ones with ill-defined "reality warper" powers) as a comparison point is that they are super inconsistent. Most comics I read with Dr. Strange in them are crossovers where he doesn't really do anything a mid level low OP D&D caster could do, but I also understand there are other comics where he can defeat gods and remake universes.

It's also an example of the 3e design team fundamentally misunderstanding what their system is capable of producing and just how low-optimization the initial testing really was. Out of all of the characters on that list only Elminster and possibly Elric (I'm not big into Moorcock's work, my understanding as it depends on how you quantify his abilities and his relationship with Stormbringer) legitimately exist at epic level.

Baba Yaga - a mid to high level Tier I caster, possibly multi-class.
Chu Chalain - a high-level fighter
Conan the Barbarian - a mid-level barbarian/fighter/rogue
Fafhrd - a mid-level fighter/ranger
Gray Mouser - a mid-level fighter/rogue
Gandalf - a high-HD celestial (like a Planetar or Trumpet Archon) underneath a permanent polymorph-type effect pretending to be a low-level wizard
Gilgamesh - either a high-level martial character (with several classes) or an actual mythic demigod
Hiawatha - (presumably the character in the Longfellow poem and not the actual person), a half-celestial who's probably maps best to druid or shaman, mid-level
Odysseus - a mid-level fighter/aristocrat, has an unusually high Int score

Now, somewhat amusingly several of these characters can be considered epic if you approach them as portrayed in the Nasuverse (FATE/ stay night and affiliated series) rather than in their actual source material. Even then though, Nasuverse martials still generally wouldn't match up well with even medium-optimization high-level D&D 3.X casters.

A setting can hit 'mundanes need not apply' at shockingly low-levels of magical power when that magical power (or whatever power, DBZ fighters aren't technically magical but they sure aren't mundane) is incorporated into the world-building properly - it often isn't, even in extremely popular settings - and the technology level is low (a random militia member with a pitchfork versus the same NPC with an AK-47 is a very different calculation).

I agree.

Also, thank you for limiting Gandalf to a Planetar or Trumpet Archon. One of my personal pet peeves is people dramatically overstating Gandalf and he is usually claimed to be an archangel and equivalent to a Solar or even a D&D god. My former DM claimed that he was the greatest of all the Maiar and could easily defeat Sauron single handedly and had even done so several times in the past, and I have seen more than a few people claim something similar online and even back their argument up with misquotes from Tolkien. /RANT

I don't know what huge mechanical improvement 3.X did for the roleplaying world.....it must have gone unnoticed. They turned the THACO around so the mathematically challenged could play and finally included a badly implemented skill system (IMHO) and gave us feats.

3E did pretty up AD&D in a lot of ways by cleaning up the math and making the system more unified, but it also broke game balance pretty badly.

Most of the innovations like feats and skills were done earlier and better by Fallout.

IMO the only things that 3E did really well that I incorporate into most systems I design these days are the Fort/Ref/Will saving throw categories and standardizing action types. And even these I would be surprised if 3E did them first.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 11:46 AM

Killjoy, I'm not going to appologize for others (mainly yourself) misconstruing a meaning of a word used properly. I have made no insults at all, and you insisting my meaning was nefarious puts you flat out in the wrong.

Even after I told you to look up the meaning of the word, you went and deliberately got the wrong one. The context here was clearly referring to a cry for balance. This is neither denegration nor insulting, this is what it is. It's what this whole thread is about... calling out a percieved issue, asking for attention on it and requesting change. Hence, a cry for balance.

Even if we give you a benefit of the doubt that you've not only not earned, but actively and deliberately squandered with your ongoing attitude of solipsistic arrogance, and generously presume that you had that one particular meaning in mind when you originally wrote the comment...

...the other meanings are not wrong -- they're right there in the same dictionaries you keep quoting, so you can't really argue (at least not from an intellectually honest standpoint) that one meaning is right and one meaning is wrong based on that standard -- and are at least as valid in the venue and context at hand, and you've had them explained now in detail.

When the words you use have multiple valid meanings, people who read your comments in a way (you insist, at least) you didn't mean, are not to blame for your ambiguous wording -- especially when the context and venue leans heavily towards a meaning other than the one you really really wanted to use. At some point if you want to be clearly understood and care more about discussion than "winning", you have to take how your words will be received into consideration; there are usually other ways to convey the same idea that bring more light than heat to the exchange.

But it's obvious at this point that being "right" is your only concern. You claim that you didn't mean insult, but you're perfectly willing to be insulting in your "proof" that you weren't being insulting.

So... /plonk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet)).

E: and if that didn't explain it, maybe this quote you ignored earlier will help you:

As you're so fond of dictionary quotes:
Dictionary.com

connotation
noun
1.
the associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning: A possible connotation of “home” is “a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.”.
the act of connoting; the suggesting of an additional meaning for a word or expression, apart from its explicit meaning.
2.
something suggested or implied by a word or thing, rather than being explicitly named or described:
“Religion” has always had a negative connotation for me.
3.
Logic. the set of attributes constituting the meaning of a term and thus determining the range of objects to which that term may be applied; comprehension; intension.

Notice that the dictionary definition only has a denotation, and that implication generally operates at the level of connotation. "The denotation says nothing about this so how can you say I implied it" is thus disingenuous at best.

It's at least as common to see "crying for" used in the context of "crying for your momma!" or "Oh, are you crying?" That connotation exists, no matter how "wrong" you think it is.

(The "you" here is not Knaight, for clarity.)

Talakeal

2017-12-18, 11:51 AM

Hey look at that, turns out you do know many of the huge mechanical changes of the 3e system after all. BAB & the skill system were revolutionary.

Other big changes you missed: making the d20 a central resolution core system instead of having lots of subsystems, revamping saving throws so they're not automatic at high level, and making clear and concise* combat rules (mostly based on 2e Combat & Tactics rules.)

Otoh I credit 3e not on their big changes successes on their mechanical changes (which IMO were mostly improvements), but mainly on timing. The Internet was busy exploded in popularity in 2000.

*Edit: okay maybe concise is the wrong word. Let's try Organized in one location and actually being written in a way that is playable instead. :smallbiggrin:

Its funny, I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion their revamping of saving throws was one of the *worst* changes as it made characters increasingly fragile as they went up in level and was a huge factor in the rise of CMD.

Tinkerer

2017-12-18, 12:09 PM

Its funny, I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion their revamping of saving throws was one of the *worst* changes as it made characters increasingly fragile as they went up in level and was a huge factor in the rise of CMD.

That is a tricky one and one which I had to deal with often as a 2nd ed high level spellcaster. Do you err on the side of making it so that all spells which require a saving throw are over-powered or fundamentally useless? My 2nd ed wizard just eventually stopped using any spells which could be blocked a saving throw because there was next to no chance of them doing anything (pretty much everything they face has magic resistance and saving throws of 2 across the board). Maybe the problem is inherent within saving throws themselves.

Quertus

2017-12-18, 12:22 PM

Gatekeep harder please. THAC0 -> BAB was an objectively good change because it made the game easier to play without changing the behavior of the game. If going to a unified "high rolls are good" mechanic was the only thing 3e did, it would still be one of the biggest improvements any edition ever made.

Skills have problems, but again, a unified system is good.

Feats are good, but caught in a weird middle ground.

PrCs were also a good idea, though Paragon Paths are probably a better setup.

CR was a good design choice.

A lot of the math underlying the game (e.g. WBL) is pretty elegant, even if it doesn't really work.

Much as grognards complain about how it ruined the game by removing shackles from casters, those shackles made the game substantially less fun.

Moving towards a paradigm where "the DM makes something up" represented less of the rules is good for both players and DMs.

The variety of classes, and in particular variety of resource management systems was good.

No one is saying it was perfect, or even that the things it did were implemented perfectly, but it was an improvement on earlier editions, and is better than later ones (as evinced by it and PF's lasting popularity).

THAC0 -> BAB was a good change. Unifying rolls to "roll a d20, add bonuses, did you meet it exceed target number?" was a good change. These changes changed the game from "college-educated adults still ask 'do I want high or low?' after playing for months or years", to "7-year-olds can play the game competently with minimal training".

Note that these are explicitly implementation changes - the underlying concept of "get better at attacking in discrete increments as you level" or even "using a d20 to randomize outcomes" remained the same.

The value of everything else on your list, however, is subjective.

Now, I'd argue that "save vs obfuscated verbiage" -> FRW, that wasn't explicitly on your list, was a good change. But this transition obfuscated how saving throws worked under the hood, with "Save or Die" effects effectively having a lower save DC than other spells in earlier editions. And that a first level character generally had a +7 or +8 average to their saving throws, against a static DC 20 roll.

The skill system changed from proficiency, which was "proficient > stats > level", to skills, which was either "proficient > level > stats", or "level > proficient > stats". Was this a good change? Depends on who you ask.

Was CR a good idea? Well, that one's actually very complicated to answer. Was it a good idea to give a GM a tool to roughly gauge how challenging am encounter should be? In a system with as broad of range of build power levels as 3e? Absolutely not. In a system with 2e's smaller power range? Yeah, probably could be helpful - if the GM views their job as creating balanced encounters, which is opposed to the old-school methods of leaving the determination of the suitability of the challenge to the PCs (which I personally prefer). And, even so, it results in GMs overconfidently assuming that any CR X encounter is appropriate for any possible Level X party, without actually developing the skills to evaluate it for themselves. Was it a good idea to tie the experience earned from an encounter to its expected relative challenge rating? Only if your goal is to encourage high-op builds, and allow GMs to give no XP for encounters by choosing things outside the valid bounds. (Note: I need to add these to the unintended consequences thread)

WBL would have been good for trying to create a static balance point - but it is opposed by the huge balance range available in 3e, from the commoner who kills the Tarrasque at level 1, to the eternally unconscious elder elf Wizard.

In 2e, you'd have people creating cool custom content to add unique flavor to their worlds; in 3e, this just results in arguments about appropriate CR, or even claims that the GM is somehow cheating.

In short, 3e was a hodgepodge of seemingly decent ideas whose actual effects were of questionable value.

Talakeal

2017-12-18, 12:22 PM

That is a tricky one and one which I had to deal with often as a 2nd ed high level spellcaster. Do you err on the side of making it so that all spells which require a saving throw are over-powered or fundamentally useless? My 2nd ed wizard just eventually stopped using any spells which could be blocked a saving throw because there was next to no chance of them doing anything (pretty much everything they face has magic resistance and saving throws of 2 across the board). Maybe the problem is inherent within saving throws themselves.

Most spells which require saving throws take the enemy out of the fight in one go, which isn't really fun or fair for anyone and doesn't really help for team synergy as if some people are spamming SoD spells and others HP damage neither of them are helping the other.

I personally have saving throws that get really good at high levels but are heavily penalized by lower level spells cast from higher level spell slots.

Tinkerer

2017-12-18, 12:36 PM

Calthropstu

2017-12-18, 01:05 PM

Killjoy, it is obvious further discourse with you is useless. I will end this line of conversation and will completely ignore you in the future.

Tanarii

2017-12-18, 01:15 PM

Its funny, I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion their revamping of saving throws was one of the *worst* changes as it made characters increasingly fragile as they went up in level and was a huge factor in the rise of CMD.3e had downsides as well, and among the worst were scaling issues as levels went, resulting in a huge span of bonus value vs the size of a d20. This meant target values that could easily result in automatic failure (for low bonuses vs high target numbers) to automatic success (for high bonuses vs low target numbers). The issue occurred with skills, BAB and saves.

On the plus side, really the thing that had the most impact on RPGs overall was the big dog in the room showing that they were willing to go to a centralized resolution system and codified action system. Centralization & unification were a 3e theme.

Another downside to that is it's relatively rules-heavy, which also had a big impact on RPGs overall, but in the opposite direction. Although EVERY edition of D&D simplifies on the previous edition + all it's splats after years of releases. 3e was no exception, it definitely simplified on the combined total of AD&D 2e's years of releases.

Knaight

2017-12-18, 02:22 PM

3On the plus side, really the thing that had the most impact on RPGs overall was the big dog in the room showing that they were willing to go to a centralized resolution system and codified action system. Centralization & unification were a 3e theme.

Centralization & unification were already well established outside D&D, and this was a textbook case of D&D catching up to where the rest of the industry was ten years ago. Heck, Fudge came out in 1994, and it's vastly more unified than D&D was*. This was small potatoes.

The big potato is the OGL. It's a beautiful licence that gets used for completely non-D&D products with a surprising frequency, it brought the d20 boom for all sorts of systems (which admittedly were mostly terrible, but hey, Mutants and Masterminds) and the industry culture around that d20 boom marked a shift from core systems that one company produced a bunch of content for (GURPS, Palladium) to core systems that were widely available and had a fair few creators involved (Fate, Savage Worlds, ORE, Ubiquity). Then there's the matter of how the combination of OGL terminology and laws around intellectual property of game mechanics allowed for the emergence of the retroclone and the whole OSR movement that sprung up from that.

*What really shows this is the extent to which D&D uses different mechanical scales for different things, where Fudge doesn't. A quick list:

Attributes: 3-18 (D&D, very soft cap), -4 to +4 (Fudge).
Attribute modifiers: -4 to +4 (both, where Fudge just uses attributes).
Task difficulty: 5-30 (D&D, soft cap), -4 to +4 (Fudge).
Skill ranks: 3-23 or 0-10 (D&D), -4 to +4 (Fudge).
Spell level: 0-9 (D&D).
Level: 1-20 (D&D).
Hit dice: d4 to d12 (D&D).

Fudge is a pretty extreme example of mechanical unity, but that list really indicates that D&D overstates it a bit.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 02:25 PM

3e had downsides as well, and among the worst were scaling issues as levels went, resulting in a huge span of bonus value vs the size of a d20. This meant target values that could easily result in automatic failure (for low bonuses vs high target numbers) to automatic success (for high bonuses vs low target numbers). The issue occurred with skills, BAB and saves.

One of the core issues with the system across multiple editions is that it doesn't just have try to balance at one "spot", it has try to balance at 20+ "spots", while balancing an ever-increasing number of items (ie, class bloat as more splats are published) -- the steep progression means it has to keep re-balancing as it climbs the ladder too.

On the plus side, really the thing that had the most impact on RPGs overall was the big dog in the room showing that they were willing to go to a centralized resolution system and codified action system. Centralization & unification were a 3e theme.

HERO had a single resolution mechanic for combat and skills and some other things going back to into the 80s, as one example (3d6, roll under a target number). This wasn't new to 3e... at most 3e can say that it finally gave in to that concept, and by doing so brought it more exposure.

Another downside to that is it's relatively rules-heavy, which also had a big impact on RPGs overall, but in the opposite direction. Although EVERY edition of D&D simplifies on the previous edition + all it's splats after years of releases. 3e was no exception, it definitely simplified on the combined total of AD&D 2e's years of releases.

Rules Heavy and D&D became so synonymous that for some people "Rules Light" and "not D&D also became synonymous.

Tanarii

2017-12-18, 03:14 PM

Centralization & unification were already well established outside D&D, and this was a textbook case of D&D catching up to where the rest of the industry was ten years ago. Heck, Fudge came out in 1994, and it's vastly more unified than D&D was*. This was small potatoes.

HERO had a single resolution mechanic for combat and skills and some other things going back to into the 80s, as one example (3d6, roll under a target number). This wasn't new to 3e... at most 3e can say that it finally gave in to that concept, and by doing so brought it more exposure.Well, you two have a much stronger background in non-D&D systems than I do, so I'll take your word that this was more a case of D&D catching up than D&D trailblazing new ground.

Knaight

2017-12-18, 04:41 PM

Well, you two have a much stronger background in non-D&D systems than I do, so I'll take your word that this was more a case of D&D catching up than D&D trailblazing new ground.

It's usually a safe assumption that anything D&D changes represents them catching up to where the rest of the industry was a while ago, and that gap has only been growing. 5e reminds me a lot of common game design trends circa 2002.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 04:47 PM

It's usually a safe assumption that anything D&D changes represents them catching up to where the rest of the industry was a while ago, and that gap has only been growing. 5e reminds me a lot of common game design trends circa 2002.

Yeah, it always makes me chuckle when someone calls D&D an "industry leader".

All that baggage creates tremendous inertia.

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 05:58 PM

CharonsHelper

2017-12-18, 06:18 PM

Its funny, I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion their revamping of saving throws was one of the *worst* changes as it made characters increasingly fragile as they went up in level

I'd argue that the change to saving throws to 3 broader unified rolls was beneficial, but the ever-increasing nature of DCs screwed up the balance of it.

So - the base rule was better, but the implementation was poor. *shrug* But that's getting a bit into the weeds.

Talakeal

2017-12-18, 06:24 PM

I'd argue that the change to saving throws to 3 broader unified rolls was beneficial, but the ever-increasing nature of DCs screwed up the balance of it.

So - the base rule was better, but the implementation was poor. *shrug* But that's getting a bit into the weeds.

100% agree. The Fort/Ref/Will save system is one of the best ideas 3E had imo.

But like most things, the 3E changes look good on paper but were poorly implemented.

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 06:42 PM

100% agree. The Fort/Ref/Will save system is one of the best ideas 3E had imo.

But like most things, the 3E changes look good on paper but were poorly implemented.

The idea was good but like in 5e you'll be prone to fail more often as you get to higher levels.

Tanarii

2017-12-18, 06:47 PM

Nothing in that edition was innovating and from design principle THAC0 was idiotic in the first place, me and my mates could see that already as a 13 year olds and turned it around already then. Not that we took any credit for being geniuses but most other system either had you roll under or add the die to a number to beat a target number like Cyberpunk 2020.Not defending THAC0, but I do understand why it happened. Wargamers at the time were clearly used to referencing tables for things, including determining if you Hit (and often, what kind of hit you got), and allowing for repeating numbers.

THAC0 is merely a first attempt at a shortcut, trying to turn a hit table that into math based on two values (THAC0 and AC) instead, without completely revamping how the hell the table and AC are designed from the ground up.

If you look at BECMI's hit table, the repeating numbers and other factors (extra damage on hit) make it obvious that it's a table (or matrix) system.

Edit: and that's one of nice things about 3e, it did a lot of ground-up redesign. Of course, they had a few missed in the process. Leading to threads like this, which should have been posted in the 3e forum or been labeled 3.X. Because it's talking about a 3.X problem.

RazorChain

2017-12-18, 06:52 PM

Not defending THAC0, but I do understand why it happened. Wargamers at the time were clearly used to referencing tables for things, including determining if you Hit (and often, what kind of hit you got), and allowing for repeating numbers.

THAC0 is merely a first attempt at a shortcut, trying to turn a hit table that into math based on two values (THAC0 and AC) instead, without completely revamping how the hell the table and AC are designed from the ground up. (Edit: and that's one of nice things about 3e, it did a lot of ground-up redesign.)

If you look at BECMI's hit table, the repeating numbers and other factors (extra damage on hit) make it obvious that it's a table (or matrix) system.

It's such a looooong time since I played BECMI that I kinda have forgotten most of it :smallbiggrin: To my defense I was a kid and only played it for couple of years until we switched over to 2nd edition which I played for almost 10 years. I remember how we'd make tables so we didn't have to calculate until we just turned it upside down like they did in 3.x

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-18, 09:46 PM

.
I think @Max_Killjoy noted up-thread how Vampire/W.O.D. was played contrary to how it seemed the designers suggested it be played

Most of the WW staff expressed nothing but scorn and derision and belittlement for anyone whose campaigns didn't involve at least 80% PCs wallowing in angst and bemoaning their immortal state and struggling against inevitable ennui and blah blah blah blah blah.

2D8HP

2017-12-18, 10:22 PM

Not defending THAC0, but I do understand why it happened. Wargamers at the time were clearly used to referencing tables for things, including determining if you Hit (and often, what kind of hit you got), and allowing for repeating numbers.

THAC0 is merely a first attempt at a shortcut, trying to turn a hit table that into math based on two values (THAC0 and AC) instead, without completely revamping how the hell the table and AC are designed from the ground up.

If you look at BECMI's hit table, the repeating numbers and other factors (extra damage on hit) make it obvious that it's a table (or matrix) system...
Attack Matrix's!
Here's the 1974 one:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lC3ZGo6MEq4/Vjf5l0Upd0I/AAAAAAAAE7I/vnwO8h_6EJY/s280/20151102_185929.jpg
(Note: "Normal men equal 1st level Fighters", despite the level title being "Veteran".
Dirty Peasants of the world unite!)

And here's the AD&D one only a few years later:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_TQnzgXCADuc/TTcWINbQIxI/AAAAAAAAAXs/ZVHu7yKeQvg/s280/Attack+Matrix+fighters.jpg
(Note: the introduction of "0 level humans", so snooty PC's can have people that they fight better than, starting the whole "PC's are exceptional" thing)

Calthropstu

2017-12-18, 11:55 PM

.
Attack Matrix's!
Here's the 1974 one:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lC3ZGo6MEq4/Vjf5l0Upd0I/AAAAAAAAE7I/vnwO8h_6EJY/s280/20151102_185929.jpg
(Note: "Normal men equal 1st level Fighters", despite the level title being "Veteran".
Dirty Peasants of the world unite!)

And here's the AD&D one only a few years later:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_TQnzgXCADuc/TTcWINbQIxI/AAAAAAAAAXs/ZVHu7yKeQvg/s280/Attack+Matrix+fighters.jpg
(Note: the introduction of "0 level humans", so snooty PC's can have people that they fight better than, starting the whole "PC's are exceptional" thing)

Am I the only one who actually liked thac0?
I remember those charts, but never needed to use them. I found it a simple concept to use... thac0 minus ac equaled target number on d20. I certianly never had to use the phrase "does a -5 hit?" in 2e.
I kinda want to play 2e again just for the hell of it. There's a lot of ridiculously overpowered spells they took out of 3e that were fun to sling around. I also liked the old way psionics worked.

Cosi

2017-12-19, 08:01 AM

Bringing in the context!... OK maybe I should have just said it again because that is a silly amount of nesting. But does it explain what I was trying to get at? I'm actually curious if it helps. Because I'm out of time.

I understand the claim you're making -- you personally had a bad time because the game has powerful spells in it. But that's not really a meaningful argument in the context of the huge sales discrepancy between 3e and 4e/5e, and the longevity 3e got via Pathfinder (there is not, to my knowledge, any PF equivalent for 4e and certainly not one as well known). You had a bad experience. But empirically, that experience is not decisive in people's decisions about which games to play. Also, your experience seems to me to be to a much larger degree a result of bad DMing (or more precisely, bad DM guidelines) than any printed mechanics. He already made up the class, would not having a printed spell really have stopped him from making one up?

My point is that traditional high level D&D adventures like stopping rampaging Tarrasques, creating or destroying epic artifacts, saving the world from the dark lord, slaying ancient dragons, storming the gates of Hell to defeat an arch-devil, battling Balors, Kracken, Liches, and Titans, or forming / overthrowing world spanning empires can be ran in any edition of D&D and it is only 3.X where the power discrepancy between characters is so much that a high level martial won't meaningfully contribute while doing so.

Likewise a high level caster in any edition can still Stop Time, call down meteors, summon demigods, open planar rifts, bring back the dead, teleport across the world, shape-change into a dragon, etc. 3E casters aren't "more powerful" as such, its just that the game has some many ways to ignore the limitations that other editions have placed on casters, spells are easier to pull off and it is far easier to ignore limitations like spell slots and even spells known if you know the tricks. Its not really a matter of power, but rather one of convenience that wrecks the day.

Older versions of D&D explicitly say that casters are expected to be more powerful than mundanes. That's the paradigm they're working with -- mundanes rock at low levels, casters rock at high levels. It's a stupid paradigm, but it's there and casters absolutely obsolete mundanes at high levels. As such, I find the notion that mundanes "were, like totally relevant at high level in AD&D" to be basically laughable. Insofar as they were, that would represent a failure on the part of the designers to achieve the goals they set for themselves.

Note that these are explicitly implementation changes - the underlying concept of "get better at attacking in discrete increments as you level" or even "using a d20 to randomize outcomes" remained the same.

Sure, but that's what makes it so obviously a good change. The behavior of the game doesn't change at all, it's just easier to use.

Was CR a good idea? Well, that one's actually very complicated to answer. Was it a good idea to give a GM a tool to roughly gauge how challenging am encounter should be? In a system with as broad of range of build power levels as 3e? Absolutely not.

You lose me right here. If classes aren't measuring up to CR, that is a class balance problem, not a CR problem.

Yeah, probably could be helpful - if the GM views their job as creating balanced encounters, which is opposed to the old-school methods of leaving the determination of the suitability of the challenge to the PCs (which I personally prefer).

There's no reason you can't throw people against non-level-appropriate enemies in a world with CR. Ignoring a guideline is trivial. What's not trivial is putting in a guideline that isn't there. This, incidentally, is why balance in general is good -- if the system is well designed and well balanced, it is easy to unbalance it in whatever direction you desire, while the reverse is decidedly not true.

Was it a good idea to tie the experience earned from an encounter to its expected relative challenge rating? Only if your goal is to encourage high-op builds, and allow GMs to give no XP for encounters by choosing things outside the valid bounds. (Note: I need to add these to the unintended consequences thread)

Experience itself is a bad idea. Fiat leveling is better for the game.

I'm actually still looking at the auto-success on a certain number of saving throws from a few pages back and refining it into a SoI -> SoS -> SoD type system. So for a Petrify style spell vs a high level fighter it might start by turning their foot into stone (SoI), then turn their legs to stone (SoS), then finish them off with the rest turning to stone (SoD).

This is a bad paradigm, because it doesn't solve the real problem -- the lack of synergy between attacks that target saves and attacks that target HP. Making Save or Dies incremental makes saving throws more like damage (though this is probably a bad thing), but it doesn't create any synergy between the Save or Dies and damage. Instead, I think the better paradigm is to let anyone above some HP threshold (probably half) take 15 on saving throws. That means you have to do some damage in order to hit people with save or dies, and it also means you can still blow up weak enemies without having to work through their HP.

3e had downsides as well, and among the worst were scaling issues as levels went, resulting in a huge span of bonus value vs the size of a d20. This meant target values that could easily result in automatic failure (for low bonuses vs high target numbers) to automatic success (for high bonuses vs low target numbers). The issue occurred with skills, BAB and saves.

This is not, in principle, a bad thing. Advancement is important, and the ability to trivialize low level challenges is an important part of advancement. The problem arises when numbers within the party diverge by more than the span of a d20. The solutions to that are obvious (give everyone basic competence numbers), but likely to be somewhat controversial.

I'd argue that the change to saving throws to 3 broader unified rolls was beneficial, but the ever-increasing nature of DCs screwed up the balance of it.

DCs should increase. It should be harder to resist a high level caster's spells than a low level caster's, just as it is harder to evade a high level warrior's attacks than a low level one's. You're free to say that saving throws scaled poorly (and I don't necessarily disagree), but DC scaling is a good thing.

Cluedrew

2017-12-19, 08:32 AM

I understand the claim you're making -- you personally had a bad time because the game has powerful spells in it. But that's not really a meaningful argument in the context of the huge sales discrepancy between 3e and 4e/5e, and the longevity 3e got via Pathfinder (there is not, to my knowledge, any PF equivalent for 4e and certainly not one as well known). You had a bad experience. But empirically, that experience is not decisive in people's decisions about which games to play. Also, your experience seems to me to be to a much larger degree a result of bad DMing (or more precisely, bad DM guidelines) than any printed mechanics. He already made up the class, would not having a printed spell really have stopped him from making one up?Three things:

Its not just me, other people have had the problem as well. Also this is not so much about the spell's power about how hard it is to shut down spell casting. Minor point of clarification there.

Second, sales are not measure of quality. I recall you called someone on appeal to popularity a few pages ago, by the Latin name I can't remember even, same idea here. And even if it was, the system's overall quality does not change the fact that this aspect of it is (or is not, ignoring that debate for a moment) a problem.

Third... I was going to say some stuff about GM guild-lines and being easy to run helping a system. But that is starting to stray from the main topic.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-19, 09:06 AM

Second, sales are not measure of quality. I recall you called someone on appeal to popularity a few pages ago, by the Latin name I can't remember even, same idea here. And even if it was, the system's overall quality does not change the fact that this aspect of it is (or is not, ignoring that debate for a moment) a problem.

Argumentum ad populum -- aka, "Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong".

"McDonalds sells more food than any other restaurant, therefore they must make the best food."

"Jersey Shore had better ratings than _____, therefore Jersey Shore must be a better program."

"D&D 3.x has high sales and longevity, therefore it must be a better system than 4e or 5e."

Quertus

2017-12-19, 09:32 AM

Most spells which require saving throws take the enemy out of the fight in one go, which isn't really fun or fair for anyone and doesn't really help for team synergy as if some people are spamming SoD spells and others HP damage neither of them are helping the other.

I personally have saving throws that get really good at high levels but are heavily penalized by lower level spells cast from higher level spell slots.

This is a bad paradigm, because it doesn't solve the real problem -- the lack of synergy between attacks that target saves and attacks that target HP. Making Save or Dies incremental makes saving throws more like damage (though this is probably a bad thing), but it doesn't create any synergy between the Save or Dies and damage. Instead, I think the better paradigm is to let anyone above some HP threshold (probably half) take 15 on saving throws. That means you have to do some damage in order to hit people with save or dies, and it also means you can still blow up weak enemies without having to work through their HP.

I've heard the idea of synergyzing SoD and damage a lot, but I'm rather confused by this stance.

We want a particular plot of land. We could attempt to gain this plot of land by negotiating with the land's owner. Or we could attempt to break into his house, alter his will, and murder him. These two solutions have no synergy. And that's life. Surely you're not going to insist that the methods of the Face and the Assassin must have synergy, are you? Why, then, should we desire unrealistic synergy in combat? Why should this hold any value but a negative "this doesn't feel right"?

Sure, but that's what makes it so obviously a good change. The behavior of the game doesn't change at all, it's just easier to use.

Fully agree.

You lose me right here. If classes aren't measuring up to CR, that is a class balance problem, not a CR problem.

Hmmm... Honestly, I agree with you, but at the build level, not the class level. Because every class can be built to over- or under-perform. But let me try to explain my crazy point.

Because of the huge variance in ability of various builds, what challenges one build may well be a cakewalk for another, and totally fatal for a third. And this can technically be true even for the builds which score equally on some idiotic same game test.

So, if the GM is trying to create something balanced to the party, they need to develop the skills, and look at it by hand, to determine if it is actually balanced to the party.

And this, IMO, is going to be true in any system interesting enough to produce a sufficiently fantastical environment.

Further, I view the range of possible builds to be a feature, to (at least attempt to) allow for equal contribution despite unequal player skill. And to allow a range of feels from CoC to BDH from the same encounter in the same system.

There's no reason you can't throw people against non-level-appropriate enemies in a world with CR. Ignoring a guideline is trivial. What's not trivial is putting in a guideline that isn't there. This, incidentally, is why balance in general is good -- if the system is well designed and well balanced, it is easy to unbalance it in whatever direction you desire, while the reverse is decidedly not true.

I'd argue that 2e had better balance than 3e, despite lacing a CR system. I'd further argue that pursuing the "why" of this may well be highly productive for answering the OP.

Experience itself is a bad idea. Fiat leveling is better for the game.

Why do you hold this opinion?

Giving experience allows for Pavlovian reinforcement, rewarding the desired behaviour. Why would removing such an impetus be advantageous?

XP allows the pen & paper game to play the same way as computer D&D games. Why would creating divergence be advantageous?

Etc etc. Personally, I see the many advantages of XP. In what ways is fiat leveling better for the game?

This is not, in principle, a bad thing. Advancement is important, and the ability to trivialize low level challenges is an important part of advancement. The problem arises when numbers within the party diverge by more than the span of a d20. The solutions to that are obvious (give everyone basic competence numbers), but likely to be somewhat controversial.

I full well expect my signature academia mage's academic skills to diverge from those of a BDF by more than the span of a d20.

DCs should increase. It should be harder to resist a high level caster's spells than a low level caster's, just as it is harder to evade a high level warrior's attacks than a low level one's. You're free to say that saving throws scaled poorly (and I don't necessarily disagree), but DC scaling is a good thing.

Why? When I cast Giant Growth in MtG, it doesn't matter how much better a player I am than my opponent, the spell still has exactly the same effect (although my choice of target and timing can change how effective that effect is). Why do you believe that the spells of an archmage should be harder to resist than those of an apprentice?

If the answer is simply "balance", well, I think older editions got that right, by giving the archmage more spell slots, more chances to penetrate defenses, and more intelligent options than just spamming SoD effects.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-19, 10:35 AM

Experience itself is a bad idea. Fiat leveling is better for the game.

This presumes a system in which Levels are even a thing.

Are we presuming D&D-like for this discussion?

This is not, in principle, a bad thing. Advancement is important, and the ability to trivialize low level challenges is an important part of advancement.

Is it?

Or is that an unspoken assumption of certain systems and/or gaming styles?

Quertus

2017-12-19, 11:29 AM

Is it?

Or is that an unspoken assumption of certain systems and/or gaming styles?

Personally, I prefer to trivialize "where did you wear your pants?", and not have the GM assume pants-on-heads idiots just because the player didn't specify where they wore their pants.

Similarly, I want highly skilled characters to trivialize "Hello World", toddling in a straight line, and drawing their sword without hurting themselves - all things which were challenges in my youth.

How much (and in what ways) characters are supposed to improve in the system determines just how much (and what) the system should trivialize for them as they advance.

Personally, I have a preference for systems which frequently trivialize former challenges to provide clear reinforcement of the fact that the character has improved. And a fairly strong dislike for systems which allow noobs to outdo experts with any frequency.

As perhaps your least favorite way to relate this back to the topic at hand, casters in 3e D&D have plenty of "I am this tall to ride this ride" abilities - from Flight and Teleport and Plane Shift, to Stone to Flesh and Freedom of Movement and True Sight. The easiest solution to the problem of balancing them, then, would either be to give muggles abilities to be this tall*, too, or to chop casters off at the knee caps by removing these abilities altogether.

* not necessarily the same abilities

Tanarii

2017-12-19, 11:29 AM

Second, sales are not measure of quality. I recall you called someone on appeal to popularity a few pages ago, by the Latin name I can't remember even, same idea here. And even if it was, the system's overall quality does not change the fact that this aspect of it is (or is not, ignoring that debate for a moment) a problem.is especially a bad argument to make when Mearls has already confirmed 5e PHB lifetime sales are more than 3e PHB and 3.5e lifetime sales (individually).

In fact, that was some time ago. It's possible at this point it's exceeded them collectively.

2D8HP

2017-12-19, 11:42 AM

...Because of the huge variance in ability of various builds, what challenges one build may well be a cakewalk for another, and totally fatal for a third. And this can technically be true even for the builds which score equally on some idiotic same game test.

So, if the GM is trying to create something balanced to the party, they need to develop the skills, and look at it by hand, to determine if it is actually balanced to the party.

And this, IMO, is going to be true in any system interesting enough to produce a sufficiently fantastical environment.s..
:confused:

Perhaps 0e/1e D&D wasn't a "sufficiently fantastical environment" to you?

There was some matching of what you rolled for stats to the most appropriate classes (and in oD&D you could sometimes trade stats two-for-one or three-for-one when you first made your PC), and in AD&D humans could "dual-class", and there was a whole bunch of weirdness for playing a Bard (you had to play other classes first), but I really don't remember anyone using the dual-class or Bard (or Psionic) rules, and there just wasn't much in the way of "Builds" in WD&D terms, but it was still a fantastic setting (probably the most fantastic settings were Arduin and Tékumel (Empire of the Petal Throne).

I do remember PC's created for the Champions game being called builds however, as were custom cars in Car Wars, but until WD&D I don't remember any mention of "builds" (but I gather they were 2e AD&D options books that allowed for "builds"?).

I'd argue that 2e had better balance than 3e, despite lacing a CR system. I'd further argue that pursuing the "why" of this may well be highly productive for answering the OPs..
Please do. I have passing familiarity with 0e, 1e AD&D, BX, and WD&D 5e, but little of 2e AD&D, or 3e, 3.5, and 4e WD&D.

This presumes a system in which Levels are even a thing.

Are we presuming D&D-like for this discussion?.
Well, the OP specified that he was "familiar" "with D&D derivative systems" and "Pathfinder is my personal favorite" so that's mostly what's been addressed, but since he put the thread into "General Role-playing" instead of the 3.x sub-forum comparisons are being made.

So, just throwing some ideas around. It's late at night so no guarantee this will be coherent. Also, this is not "how to fix class balance in X system," as the D&D derivative systems I'm familiar with (Pathfinder as my personal preference) generally have the way magic works so deeply baked into the assumptions it's basically impossible to change it without more or less fundamentally rewriting the system. This is a discussion of how to avoid a situation where one class (or equivalent) does not simultaneously do the job of several other classes better than they can because magic....

Many (probably most) other systems don't have classes, in GURPS you have to pay points to be a spell-caster, and in RuneQuest and Stormbringer you had to roll enough POW.

Stormbringer did have problems with "sorcerers" being unbalanced with other PC's, but the only other Playgrounder (besides me) who mentioned playing that game didn't mind, so we're not discussing Stormbringer (sadly since its magic-system was BADASS!), Ars Magica has players control a "troupe" so no one plays only a spell-caster or "muggle", and other than Exalted no one at this Forum much mentions "balance issues" of games other than D&D.

This Forum is based around a web-comic that started with IC reactions of the change from 3e to 3.5 D&D which is the game rules (and problems) most familiar to Playgrounders (I've never played it).

The next biggest chunk of Playgrounders are 5e WD&D players (though more than a few have passing familiarity with 4e), followed by those who remember 2e AD&D, and then those of us who remember "other systems".

Just a quick pick at the last 50 threads on each of the Sub-Forums gives a little indication of where interest, knowledge (and arguments) lie.

If we go down the last 50 posts in the 5e Sub-Forum the earliest last post on any thread is yesterday at 10:17PM (when I checked just now).

For 3e/3.5, etc it yesterday at 11:09AM (so more "action" at the 5e Forum).

For 4e it was 12:47PM on 8/12 (not much "action" there.

And for "older D&D"/Every other RPG it's 11/2/2017.

So yeah WD&D is mostly what's discussed.

For TSR D&D it was explicit that Fighters were more powerful at low levels and magic-users at high levels (I've seen it argued tge Clerics split the deference).

For 5e WD&D they're multiple threads discussing whether they're any balance issues at all.

4e just isn't discussed much at all.

It's mostly 3.x D&D where the "Caster" vs. "Mundane" issue is discussed, with a clear majority saying casters are more powerful, and since this thread is in "General Role-playing" people are comparing 3.x to (mostly) 2e and 5e (I really wish the OP would chime in again).

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-19, 12:38 PM

Personally, I prefer to trivialize "where did you wear your pants?", and not have the GM assume pants-on-heads idiots just because the player didn't specify where they wore their pants.

Similarly, I want highly skilled characters to trivialize "Hello World", toddling in a straight line, and drawing their sword without hurting themselves - all things which were challenges in my youth.

???? Your youth, or the character's youth?

If talking about the character, again that presumes that characters do or should start out fairly green and/or inept.

If talking about you, then perhaps that's a conflation of game balance and character creation issues, with the unrelated notions of "player skill".

How much (and in what ways) characters are supposed to improve in the system determines just how much (and what) the system should trivialize for them as they advance.

Personally, I have a preference for systems which frequently trivialize former challenges to provide clear reinforcement of the fact that the character has improved. And a fairly strong dislike for systems which allow noobs to outdo experts with any frequency.

As perhaps your least favorite way to relate this back to the topic at hand, casters in 3e D&D have plenty of "I am this tall to ride this ride" abilities - from Flight and Teleport and Plane Shift, to Stone to Flesh and Freedom of Movement and True Sight. The easiest solution to the problem of balancing them, then, would either be to give muggles abilities to be this tall*, too, or to chop casters off at the knee caps by removing these abilities altogether.

* not necessarily the same abilities

That's not my least favorite -- at least you acknowledge the mismatch and two of the ways to deal with it.

While I'm not going to dispute personal preferences, the "trivialize former challenges" standard ends up demanding a steep progression curve, invalidating a lot of content, and implying some really wonky things about the setting.

LibraryOgre

2017-12-19, 12:43 PM

Am I the only one who actually liked thac0?
I remember those charts, but never needed to use them. I found it a simple concept to use... thac0 minus ac equaled target number on d20. I certianly never had to use the phrase "does a -5 hit?" in 2e.
I kinda want to play 2e again just for the hell of it. There's a lot of ridiculously overpowered spells they took out of 3e that were fun to sling around. I also liked the old way psionics worked.

2e ThAC0 was a simplification of the 1e attack matricies... 1e players frequently laud the "repeating 20s" aspects of the matricies. If you look at 0th level column in the image, an AC of 1 to -4 requires a 20. To hit a -5, a 0th level human needs a 21 to hit... meaning they need at least a +1 to hit something with an AC of -5. 2e did away with the repeating 20s and declared that a natural 20 would hit anything.

Cosi

2017-12-19, 01:00 PM

Its not just me, other people have had the problem as well. Also this is not so much about the spell's power about how hard it is to shut down spell casting. Minor point of clarification there.

Again, why should it be possible to shut down magic (defined broadly) with not-magic? It isn't easy to shut down technology with not-technology. The problem you're describing, insofar as it is not a DM problem, is actually very easy to fix with minimal applications of magic.

Second, sales are not measure of quality. I recall you called someone on appeal to popularity a few pages ago, by the Latin name I can't remember even, same idea here. And even if it was, the system's overall quality does not change the fact that this aspect of it is (or is not, ignoring that debate for a moment) a problem.

Well what other measure of quality is there? We could talk about your subjective experiences of not liking the power/consistency/whatever of magic and how it warps your game. But we could equally talk about my experiences of those exact same mechanics made the game do things I want better. I'll freely acknowledge that sales isn't a perfect rubric, but do you have a better suggestion for how to reconcile perspectives that are fundamentally subjective?

I've heard the idea of synergyzing SoD and damage a lot, but I'm rather confused by this stance.

We want a particular plot of land. We could attempt to gain this plot of land by negotiating with the land's owner. Or we could attempt to break into his house, alter his will, and murder him. These two solutions have no synergy. And that's life. Surely you're not going to insist that the methods of the Face and the Assassin must have synergy, are you? Why, then, should we desire unrealistic synergy in combat? Why should this hold any value but a negative "this doesn't feel right"?

People want there to be synergy in combat, because it promotes party diversity. If your Wizards only work with Wizards and your Fighters only work with Fighters, you end up with optimal parties that are highly homogenous, which is uninteresting.

Hmmm... Honestly, I agree with you, but at the build level, not the class level. Because every class can be built to over- or under-perform. But let me try to explain my crazy point.

Because of the huge variance in ability of various builds, what challenges one build may well be a cakewalk for another, and totally fatal for a third. And this can technically be true even for the builds which score equally on some idiotic same game test.

So, if the GM is trying to create something balanced to the party, they need to develop the skills, and look at it by hand, to determine if it is actually balanced to the party.

And this, IMO, is going to be true in any system interesting enough to produce a sufficiently fantastical environment.

Further, I view the range of possible builds to be a feature, to (at least attempt to) allow for equal contribution despite unequal player skill. And to allow a range of feels from CoC to BDH from the same encounter in the same system.

I disagree with this, but it's both complicated and off topic. Principally, I think the best way to address imbalance is in an ad hoc fashion from classes that are designed to produce balanced-but-distinct characters whose performance can be adjusted for in game. Trying to address imbalance at the build level while, IMHO, tend to make it worse because player skill and build quality are generally correlated.

I think the "range of feels" thing as a justification for imbalance is basically stupid. We have levels to let people reach a range of power levels in the same system, you don't need imbalance on top of that (and, indeed, imbalance will probably weaken whatever feeling you are attempting to cultivate).

I'd argue that 2e had better balance than 3e, despite lacing a CR system. I'd further argue that pursuing the "why" of this may well be highly productive for answering the OP.

Depends what you mean. I strongly suspect that the "balance" of 2e comes from a combination of coming out before the internet got big (and hence getting less detailed attention from optimizers) and having a much stronger tendency towards "have the DM make something up" as a gameplay paradigm (which tends to mitigate the impact of broken abilities). The first can't really be laid at its feet as an advantage, and the second is a unhealthy paradigm that happens to sometimes cover for other mistakes.

Giving experience allows for Pavlovian reinforcement, rewarding the desired behaviour. Why would removing such an impetus be advantageous?

Because in a roleplaying game, we generally want people to make decisions based on their character, rather than metagame concerns like experience points.

XP allows the pen & paper game to play the same way as computer D&D games. Why would creating divergence be advantageous?

I'm not sure why "it's more like videogames" (even D&D videogames) is an advantage. Tabletop games are different from video games, and as a result they can and should be treated differently.

I full well expect my signature academia mage's academic skills to diverge from those of a BDF by more than the span of a d20.

Sure. But at the same time, Knowledge is not (generally) a group challenge. I think there's absolutely room for skills with weak (or no) explicit correlation to level, but some things (e,g, saves) need to be tied fairly strongly to level. Even there, it's fine if one character is better than another. The problem arises when that divergence increases over levels in areas where the whole party needs to or is expected to participate.

Why? When I cast Giant Growth in MtG, it doesn't matter how much better a player I am than my opponent, the spell still has exactly the same effect (although my choice of target and timing can change how effective that effect is). Why do you believe that the spells of an archmage should be harder to resist than those of an apprentice?

But when you cast Might of Oaks, you get a much bigger effect. Clearly, we want there to be some level scaling, even among mechanically similar abilities. So the question is then, do we want Giant Growth (or perhaps we should step back from the metaphor and talk about color spray or something) to scale on its own? I think you can make a reasonable flavor case for it -- advancing in magic doesn't just mean your spells get bigger, it also means you get better at casting them -- so then we have to ask if the mechanical consequences of having scaling DCs on low level abilities is good. I think that scaling probably is desirable, because it means that low level abilities aren't totally useless at high levels. They're still less useful than high level abilities (wail of the banshee > web even if they have the same DC), but they can sometimes be useful in level-appropriate fights, which is I think important if we expect people to keep track of how many of those abilities they have.

This presumes a system in which Levels are even a thing.

The difference between leveled and point buy systems is not nearly as large as you seem to believe. The problem is tying advancement to particular actions, which warps people's behavior towards those actions. Insofar as those actions are generally high risk, it will tend to make people behave irrational in the short term in pursuit of long term power.

Is it?

It is if you are going to do advancement at all, which you almost certainly are (at least on the system level).

is especially a bad argument to make when Mearls has already confirmed 5e PHB lifetime sales are more than 3e PHB and 3.5e lifetime sales (individually).

In fact, that was some time ago. It's possible at this point it's exceeded them collectively.

You should not take the things Mearls says about sales at face value. His earlier statements about 4e sales managed to not be lies in only the most strictly technical of senses. In fact, the source where he talks about PHB sales, he doesn't say it has beaten sales, he says it is on track to beat sales, a statement that is utterly meaningless (there's another source where he apparently says something favorable on twitter, but the legitimacy of that is pretty close to nil). Seriously, if 5e was selling well, there would have been more than two supplements out this year.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-19, 01:20 PM

Seriously, if 5e was selling well, there would have been more than two supplements out this year.

Does not follow. There was a conscious decision to limit the number of splats for 5e. This was independent of the sales.

Talakeal

2017-12-19, 01:50 PM

We want a particular plot of land. We could attempt to gain this plot of land by negotiating with the land's owner. Or we could attempt to break into his house, alter his will, and murder him. These two solutions have no synergy. And that's life. Surely you're not going to insist that the methods of the Face and the Assassin must have synergy, are you? Why, then, should we desire unrealistic synergy in combat? Why should this hold any value but a negative "this doesn't feel right"?

D&D is a combat focused team game.

Also, it seems weird to say that magic working a certain way is "unrealistic," magic doesn't exist and if someone who is making up the rules for magic wants to say that people who are already injured are more susceptible to death magic I don't see anything wrong with that.

Older versions of D&D explicitly say that casters are expected to be more powerful than mundanes. That's the paradigm they're working with -- mundanes rock at low levels, casters rock at high levels. It's a stupid paradigm, but it's there and casters absolutely obsolete mundanes at high levels. As such, I find the notion that mundanes "were, like totally relevant at high level in AD&D" to be basically laughable. Insofar as they were, that would represent a failure on the part of the designers to achieve the goals they set for themselves.

That was the idea, although there is a lot of debate as to how well they actually implemented it. But there is a world of difference between "one class is the most powerful" and "every other class is irrelevant," especially in a team game where a balanced group is stronger than the sum of its parts.

In my experience a fighter + a wizard in AD&D is stronger than either 2 fighters or 2 wizards, and even in 1 on 1 the wizard has a definite edge but it isn't hopeless.

You can laugh at us all you want, but myself and a lot of other people played high level AD&D for years and didn't notice any glaring flaws in class balance that were immediately obvious playing high level 3E for the first time.

Knaight

2017-12-19, 01:59 PM

Giving experience allows for Pavlovian reinforcement, rewarding the desired behaviour. Why would removing such an impetus be advantageous?

XP allows the pen & paper game to play the same way as computer D&D games. Why would creating divergence be advantageous?

Etc etc. Personally, I see the many advantages of XP. In what ways is fiat leveling better for the game?
That reinforcement tends to reward killing and looting in most systems that fit the parameters of XP and levels, and thus outright gets in the way of the game. As for consistency with the computer games that's just an appeal to tradition thinly disguised - and there's a lot that can be done to bring them together which is a downright bad idea (e.g. hard dialog trees you can't diverge from).

Again, why should it be possible to shut down magic (defined broadly) with not-magic? It isn't easy to shut down technology with not-technology. The problem you're describing, insofar as it is not a DM problem, is actually very easy to fix with minimal applications of magic.
There's a whole lot of technology I can shut down just fine with a stick or a rock. Both of these are technically tool use, which is arguably a technology, but it's not what people mean by the term.

awa

2017-12-19, 02:07 PM

I remember reading about a submarine that needed to return to dock for repairs because a small shark (cookie cutter shark) took a chunk out of some rubber allowing water to damage its electronics.

Their are tons of ways for non-technology to shut down technology, your fancy electronics dont work so well if you leave them out in a thunder storm

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-19, 04:04 PM

A well concealed pitfall trap will defeat a tank. That's literally just a hole.

Infrared can be disrupted by steam. Fire+pot+water

Undrawn knife vs. Undrawn gun, knife always wins within 6 feet.

Guerilla warfare is amazingly effective, hence why such forces can be difficult to manage even by modern first world militaries.

Naw, clever use of mundane tools and/or easy access to a sort of Folk Magic isn't unreasonable.

(Instant antimagic field by making a ring of salt sprinkled with goat blood, for instance.)

Calthropstu

2017-12-19, 04:49 PM

Argumentum ad populum -- aka, "Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong".

"McDonalds sells more food than any other restaurant, therefore they must make the best food."

"Jersey Shore had better ratings than _____, therefore Jersey Shore must be a better program."

"D&D 3.x has high sales and longevity, therefore it must be a better system than 4e or 5e."

To be fair, when one system is thoroughly rejected by the target audience, as 4e was, there is indication something was done poorly. Likewise, the rousing popularity of both PF and 3.x indicates something was done right. We can speculate as to what those were, and while it isn't exactly proof, taking from success is likely to generate success.

While emulating failure such as 4e is more likely to generate failure. The jury is still out as to 5e's longevity.

Darth Ultron

2017-12-19, 06:06 PM

Again, why should it be possible to shut down magic (defined broadly) with not-magic? It isn't easy to shut down technology with not-technology. The problem you're describing, insofar as it is not a DM problem, is actually very easy to fix with minimal applications of magic.

Um, it is easy to shut down technology. Water can ruin any technology that runs on electricity. So can dirt, for that matter. And rocks.

Calthropstu

2017-12-19, 07:03 PM

Um, it is easy to shut down technology. Water can ruin any technology that runs on electricity. So can dirt, for that matter. And rocks.

Agreed. Smash technology with a baseball bat and it tends to break down.Similarly, tackling someone in mid spellcasting should likewise be effective.

2D8HP

2017-12-19, 07:13 PM

Agreed. Smash technology with a baseball bat and it tends to break down.Similarly, tackling someone in mid spellcasting should likewise be effective..
I'm now completely inspired to make a Barbarian/Fighter/Rogue with the 5e "Folk Hero" Background (basically dirty peasants who got lucky), who's chief tactic/goal/ideal/flaw is sneaking up and hitting the backsides of the heads of spell casters with a shovel when they start incanting.

Suitable back-stories to submit to DM's?

RazorChain

2017-12-19, 07:18 PM

Because in a roleplaying game, we generally want people to make decisions based on their character, rather than metagame concerns like experience points.

I just can't agree more on this point. I usually just award XP's after the adventure is finished and it has nothing to do with how many creatures were harmed during the production of my adventures. I don't even award points for anything in particular, sometimes I dole out a bonus point to everybody if the players were clever, heroics were performed or there was a dramatic roleplaying involved.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-19, 07:27 PM

I just can't agree more on this point. I usually just award XP's after the adventure is finished and it has nothing to do with how many creatures were harmed during the production of my adventures. I don't even award points for anything in particular, sometimes I dole out a bonus point to everybody if the players were clever, heroics were performed or there was a dramatic roleplaying involved.

Base XP plus in-character decisions plus moments of pure awesome, here.

I'd surmise that the "XP is bad" movement finds its roots in the presumption that XP comes purely/mainly from killing stuff and taking stuff's stuff.

RazorChain

2017-12-19, 07:32 PM

.
I'm now completely inspired to make a Barbarian/Fighter/Rogue with the 5e "Folk Hero" Background (basically dirty peasants who got lucky), who's chief tactic/goal/ideal/flaw is sneaking up and hitting the backsides of the heads of spell casters with a shovel when they start incanting.

Suitable back-stories to submit to DM's?

As a lad 2D8HP witnessed as the local ratchatcher played his pipes after the village elder in his village didn't want to cough up the money after the ratcatcher rid the village of the rat plague. This had the effects that all the village children followed the evil ratcatcher to a nearby cave. 2D8HP who was known for being mule headed didn't seem to be affected, he kinda just followed along, wondering where his friends were sleepwalking off to. Once in the cave when the evil ratchatcher was going through his incantation to close off the cave then it struck 2D8HP, whose mind wasn't the most agile, that the ratcatchers motives might not be the most altruistic. So 2D8HP snuck behind the evil ratcatcher with a large rock in his hand and bashed him in the back of his head. 2D8HP being a very sturdy lad managed to cave in the ratcatchers skull, interrupt the incantation, and save the day.

2D8HP became famous for saving the village children and he learned the valuable lesson that magicians are best dealt with from behind, preferably with a weapon large enough to cleave them from top to bottom.

2D8HP

2017-12-19, 07:40 PM

Base XP plus in-character decisions plus moments of pure awesome, here..
Off topic, but besides XP for loot, XP for slaying critters, and XP for successful use of skills, I'd like there to be XP for unsuccessful attempts, on the theory that we may learn from mistakes.

To me if a PC, for example, once again successfully picks a low DC lock, like they have many times before, then it's hardly worth XP.

But if instead they come close to picking a high DC lock, than XP should be rewarded.

As a lad 2D8HP witnessed as the local ratchatcher played his pipes after the village elder in his village didn't want to cough up the money after the ratcatcher rid the village of the rat plague. This had the effects that all the village children followed the evil ratcatcher to a nearby cave. 2D8HP who was known for being mule headed didn't seem to be affected, he kinda just followed along, wondering where his friends were sleepwalking off to. Once in the cave when the evil ratchatcher was going through his incantation to close off the cave then it struck 2D8HP, whose mind wasn't the most agile, that the ratcatchers motives might not be the most altruistic. So 2D8HP snuck behind the evil ratcatcher with a large rock in his hand and bashed him in the back of his head. 2D8HP being a very sturdy lad managed to cave in the ratcatchers skull, interrupt the incantation, and save the day.

2D8HP became famous for saving the village children and he learned the valuable lesson that magicians are best dealt with from behind, preferably with a weapon large enough to cleave them from top to bottom.

*tears from viewing sublime beauty*

Cluedrew

2017-12-19, 10:26 PM

Again, why should it be possible to shut down magic (defined broadly) with not-magic? It isn't easy to shut down technology with not-technology.Besides the many things that have been said already: because the magic of a wizard is like technology, which it is to say it is part of nature that has been mastered, but it still faces the limits of nature. Water pumps can't pump ice, nor will the sharpest blade cut through something harder than it. And of course some times faces limits that "mastering" it introduces. There are plenty of places I can walk that that I can't drive a car, even though the latter is obviously is a better way to travel really long distances.

Also, because I find back and forth to be more interesting than something just overriding everything else most of the time.

Well what other measure of quality is there? [...] I'll freely acknowledge that sales isn't a perfect rubric, but do you have a better suggestion for how to reconcile perspectives that are fundamentally subjective?I'll answer with another question. Why do we want a objective measure for something that is going to be seen subjectively in the end anyways. People enjoy many different things in a game, and I see no use in "reconciling" that if that means forcing everything to a single view point, even if that viewpoint is the most broadly applicable one. I do however see a point to (and enjoy) breaking down the whys and finding the common points. The point is a little abstract for me, it gives perspective for when I'm doing game design. But hey it is something and its fun.

Pex

2017-12-19, 10:35 PM

Its funny, I mostly agree with you, but in my opinion their revamping of saving throws was one of the *worst* changes as it made characters increasingly fragile as they went up in level and was a huge factor in the rise of CMD.

I get your meaning, but I think it's misplaced or at least partially. The fragility is in the math not the concept. Making all saving throws into Fortitude, Reflex, and Will was efficient. The fragility, as you say, comes in when the "poor" save advances too slowly in comparison to how the DC of an effect can increase as the levels increase. When you need to roll a Natural 18+ to make a saving throw, that's when you can't help but be in The Suck depending on what the effect is you had to make the save but likely failed. The math could have been better perhaps, but the concept is sound and an improvement on what was before.

HERO had a single resolution mechanic for combat and skills and some other things going back to into the 80s, as one example (3d6, roll under a target number). This wasn't new to 3e... at most 3e can say that it finally gave in to that concept, and by doing so brought it more exposure.

Personally I don't care what game system invented a concept first. I care about the rules being presented for the game I want to play, whether I can have fun with them. Another system doing it first is irrelevant to me. If 3E borrowed a concept from another game, let that other game win a cookie. If I like that concept within 3E, then that's all I need.

Yeah, it always makes me chuckle when someone calls D&D an "industry leader".
All that baggage creates tremendous inertia.

Ok.

I accept the point of correcting someone who thinks 3E invented something when another system did it first. No problem with me there. I only mean I don't really care who invented it.

Tanarii

2017-12-19, 10:51 PM

Wanting players to do stuff for XP is exactly what XP is for. XP is your primary tool for motivating players. You just need to pick what you want them to do, then give XP for it.

XP for finding loot and overcoming foes is fine, if that's what you want the players to focus on.

If you want to reward roleplaying, give XP for making meaningful decisions.

If you want to reward method acting subset of roleplaying specifically (which is what some of you seem to be talking about), give XP for making meaningful decisions for in-character motivations. You might need to have them write out their motivations first though, 5e style. Otherwise you're just giving it for DM fiat when you give a "roleplaying" reward, like so many DMs do.

I've also seen systems that suggest rewarding heroic actions in particular.

Palladium had their typical vague and kinda messy system, that rewarded:
- RP or good judgement about the same as killing/subduing a minor menace
- clever (useful) or quick thinking ideas/actions, and avoiding unnecessary violence, about the same as killing/subduing a major menace
- Critical plans that save lives, endangering your life to help others, about the same as killing/subduing a great menace

Pex

2017-12-19, 11:03 PM

.
4e just isn't discussed much at all.

Funny thing, that.

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” - Oscar Wilde

I find that as evidence of 4E failure.

2D8HP

2017-12-19, 11:09 PM

Wanting players to do stuff for XP is exactly what XP is for. XP is your primary tool for motivating players. You just need to pick what you want them to do, then give XP for it.....
After too few glorious years of playing D&D, the tables I knew turned to less fun (for me) games. Among them was 1978 Runequest. If your familiar with Call of Cthullu then the rules system will be familiar to you.

You'd roll under your "skills" for your PC to succeed at tasks, and if you did then you would put a check mark next to that skill, and if you rolled over, your PC would increase in skill.

This led to the practice of "golf-bagging", in which players in the middle of combat, would switch which weapons their PC's used, solely to increase distinct weapons skills.

Watch what gets incentivized

Tanarii

2017-12-19, 11:22 PM

Yup. Runequest's skill system is infamous for incentivizing trying to use all your skills exactly until you get one check, as opposed to using them 'naturally'.

Weapons were a little more iffy, because you still wanted to actually kill your opponent. Whiffing constantly was a good way to end up dead. :smallyuk:

2D8HP

2017-12-19, 11:45 PM

Yup. Runequest's skill system is infamous... :smallyuk:.
:amused:

Not as infamous as it's Fumble rules

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVWxHHNUAAA6dPj.png

Knaight

2017-12-20, 01:48 AM

Base XP plus in-character decisions plus moments of pure awesome, here.

I'd surmise that the "XP is bad" movement finds its roots in the presumption that XP comes purely/mainly from killing stuff and taking stuff's stuff.

It's a D&D specific movement, which suggests that that is a factor. Other factors include the amount of accounting going into experience. I don't want to track six digits of experience, ever. I certainly don't want to track five or so on a per encounter basis, and adding up a dozen three to four digit numbers then dividing the result is vastly more accounting than I'm willing to do for the system side of things.

Now, if we're talking about calculations with actual meaning and not just avoiding models that do just as well with fewer calculations I'm willing to get into it a bit. Sadly, my players have informed me that they never want to see a diagram of the processing in a chemical plant show up in an RPG ever again.

RazorChain

2017-12-20, 03:50 AM

It's a D&D specific movement, which suggests that that is a factor. Other factors include the amount of accounting going into experience. I don't want to track six digits of experience, ever. I certainly don't want to track five or so on a per encounter basis, and adding up a dozen three to four digit numbers then dividing the result is vastly more accounting than I'm willing to do for the system side of things.

Now, if we're talking about calculations with actual meaning and not just avoiding models that do just as well with fewer calculations I'm willing to get into it a bit. Sadly, my players have informed me that they never want to see a diagram of the processing in a chemical plant show up in an RPG ever again.

It got mentioned in another thread that players demand experience per encounter which I find absurd, even when I was playing D&D in the olden days you'd just tally up at the end of the session, it's not like we'd level up in the middle of adventure anyway. But yes all this crap you'd had to account for...thieves skills used x level, how many HD of monsters the fighter vanquished, spells used for greater good for the wizard and then monster xp on top and other xp like roleplaying or finishing an avdvenure.

Now I just have a baseline XP and give extra awards for cool stuff that happens in play, and if one PC does something cool or one player has a brilliant RP moment everybody gets extra XP because I'm a lazy git.

VoxRationis

2017-12-20, 02:04 PM

Tinkerer

2017-12-20, 02:14 PM

Did people ever decide whether they wanted to focus on making martials more magical or focus on bringing the casters down a few pegs? It might be worth splitting the thread for these two approaches, because what is productive for one has little to do with the other.

It is the classic split, bear in mind that even with doing that you are still going to have to steer hard to keep things on track. Additionally it should probably move it to the 3.X section since that is where 90% of the arguments are coming from.

Calthropstu

2017-12-20, 04:21 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-20, 05:29 PM

What about those of us voting "neither?"

Seconded, but for completely different reasons.

There is a lot of room for buffing martials without making them magical, and if you dont fix a lot of the idiosyncrasies of 3e casting even giving martials Powers on par with Silver Surfer wont reslly help.

RazorChain

2017-12-20, 05:40 PM

Cosi

2017-12-20, 06:33 PM

In my experience a fighter + a wizard in AD&D is stronger than either 2 fighters or 2 wizards, and even in 1 on 1 the wizard has a definite edge but it isn't hopeless.

You can laugh at us all you want, but myself and a lot of other people played high level AD&D for years and didn't notice any glaring flaws in class balance that were immediately obvious playing high level 3E for the first time.

I do not believe you. You are making the exact same appologia for 2e that people made for 3e. I fundamentally do not believe that you noticed problems in one system but not the other. I suspect, as mentioned, that 3e has be subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny than 2e, and people are consequentially more aware of its flaws. I believe that you personally don't try to do broken things, and didn't notice that you still had things like charm person or the ability to make CoDzilla (apparently this is something 2e can do if you allow the various "build-a-Cleric" splats), but you can hardly put that at 3e's feet.

A well concealed pitfall trap will defeat a tank. That's literally just a hole.

Yes, and as we all know, military R&D the world over has abandoned anti-tank weaponry in favor of "just dig some holes".

Guerilla warfare is amazingly effective, hence why such forces can be difficult to manage even by modern first world militaries.

Guerilla warfare is a high level strategic decision that has roughly nothing to do with technological questions. It's a shift from destroying your opponent's capacity to make war to destroying your opponent's willingness to make war. The Viet Cong didn't defeat the US in the way that the US defeated Germany.

Naw, clever use of mundane tools and/or easy access to a sort of Folk Magic isn't unreasonable.

"Folk Magic" rather entirely misses the point. If you can have "Folk Magic" you can just have "Magic". Use of mundane tools is situational at best, and therefore can't reasonably be described as a "counter".

Also, because I find back and forth to be more interesting than something just overriding everything else most of the time.

Well sure, but "back and forth" between medieval knights and tanks is rather lacking. Back and forth between two armies that both have tanks, but have different designs and military doctrines is rather less so. Or, to go back to the main topic, conflict between two sides, both of which use "magic" (again, defined broadly), but have different sets of "magical" abilities and different use restrictions.

Wanting players to do stuff for XP is exactly what XP is for. XP is your primary tool for motivating players. You just need to pick what you want them to do, then give XP for it.

It's a storytelling exercise, not a skinner box. The primary tool for motivating players should be player motivation. It's a role playing game. The player should have some idea of what drives their character. Maybe they seek to be immortal. Maybe they want to avenge their family. Maybe some less cliched thing. But something. And the pursuit of that thing should be what drives them to interact with the world. Not the need to make their XP number bigger.

Did people ever decide whether they wanted to focus on making martials more magical or focus on bringing the casters down a few pegs? It might be worth splitting the thread for these two approaches, because what is productive for one has little to do with the other.

Because that is not actually hard? Like, if you want to make casters less good there isn't actually very much to talk about. You decide how much less good you want them to be (note that while this can lead to conflicts, those conflicts are not in any fundamental sense different from the ones going on here and therefore doesn't deserve a separate thread), then you iteratively change them and test until you are satisfied they are sufficiently less good. Ditto for making martials more good. Those exercises require a lot more work (in that you need to go out and do game design), but a lot less discussion (in that you don't really need to do very much arguing once you've agreed what the desired power level is).

There is a lot of room for buffing martials without making them magical, and if you dont fix a lot of the idiosyncrasies of 3e casting even giving martials Powers on par with Silver Surfer wont reslly help.

Stop. Stop making this claim, it is not remotely true. Seriously, you don't think there's any space at all between "more powerful than Captain America"* and "more powerful than the Silver Surfer"? Because that's nuts. Wizards are kind of a bad example, because their power doesn't directly compare to the Fighter. So let's talk about Clerics. With the use of DMM: Persist a Cleric can fight well to a superhuman degree, while also having the ability to see the future and summon angels. So as I understand it, you must believe either:

1. This character is so powerful that the Silver Surfer would be trivialized by her presence, or:
2. There are some mundane abilities you can give Captain America that will allow him to contributing alongside this character as an equal participant.

So, which is it? Because it looks to me like the answer is "there are totally casters that obsolete mundanes but wouldn't obsolete superheroes, because obviously".

*: Or whoever you actually think "peak mundane" is supposed to be, you seem to pivot on this a lot.

Talakeal

2017-12-20, 07:09 PM

I do not believe you. You are making the exact same appologia for 2e that people made for 3e. I fundamentally do not believe that you noticed problems in one system but not the other. I suspect, as mentioned, that 3e has be subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny than 2e, and people are consequentially more aware of its flaws. I believe that you personally don't try to do broken things, and didn't notice that you still had things like charm person or the ability to make CoDzilla (apparently this is something 2e can do if you allow the various "build-a-Cleric" splats), but you can hardly put that at 3e's feet.

I am aware that you don't think a whole lot about either my integrity or my intelligence, but let's just put this in the most simple terms:

3.5 Shape change grants you all of the supernatural abilities of any creature with HD equal to your caster level. You can change creature types once per turn as a free action, and the spell lasts 10 minutes per level. Somewhere in the Monster Manuals there is a monster which can replicate damn near every spell and effect in the game as a supernatural or ex ability. This means that, by pure unambiguous RAW you get *every spell in the game casteable as often as you like, and a moderately well built sorcerer can have this effect running 24/7.

This requires no weird reading of RAW, no combos, no splats, nothing. Just unlimited magical power.

My group had been playing high level AD&D for years with no major problems, but the moment we hit 17th level in 3.5 our mage so this spell and instantly broke the game like a twig*.

Shape-change isn't the only similar path to infinite power that can be found in straightforward 3.X RAW. Chain-gating is popular, as are self resetting magical traps.
Simulacrum / Ice Assassin, Genesis, and Polymorph any Object can be read in a way to grant similar levels of infinite power.
The economy is similarly broken, by RAW it is trivially easy to reduce crafting costs to zero, and even if it isn't you can rig up a pretty simple combo to create infinite gold or just get access to wish as an SLA and create whatever item you desire.
And of course the whole manipulate form nonsense that leads to Pun-Pun.

I am sure somewhere in AD&D there is a similarly broken combo that we just don't know about because the game was mostly pre-internet, but it is going to be an obscure edge case that requires a lot of effort to find and players to go out of their way to access. In 3.5 the broken stuff is just sitting right there in the open.

And even if you are playing at zero op, the disparity in 3.X is much higher due to the base nature of the game. Saving throws tend to get harder to make as levels go up instead of easier, spells are no longer trivially either to interrupt, iterative attacks suffer a large to hit penalty, spells take much less time to prepare, casters can move while casting most spells but fighters can't full attack while moving, and even before adding on bonus spells for high ability scores (and 8th-9th level divine spells) you simply get more spells, both per day and known.

Stop. Stop making this claim, it is not remotely true. Seriously, you don't think there's any space at all between "more powerful than Captain America"* and "more powerful than the Silver Surfer"? Because that's nuts. Wizards are kind of a bad example, because their power doesn't directly compare to the Fighter. So let's talk about Clerics. With the use of DMM: Persist a Cleric can fight well to a superhuman degree, while also having the ability to see the future and summon angels. So as I understand it, you must believe either:

1. This character is so powerful that the Silver Surfer would be trivialized by her presence, or:
2. There are some mundane abilities you can give Captain America that will allow him to contributing alongside this character as an equal participant.

So, which is it? Because it looks to me like the answer is "there are totally casters that obsolete mundanes but wouldn't obsolete superheroes, because obviously".

Of course there is a ton of space between Captain America and Silver Surfer. I didn't say there wasn't. I said that in 3.5 a level 20 fighter is way below Captain America in most respects and could stand a ton of buffs, but it won't really help without also nerfing the casters because the 3.5 wizard is beyond Silver Surfer.

*: He didn't even need to dig through a pile of books to do it; he just remembered the previous 16 levels of encounters, picked out the ones the party had the most trouble with, and then assumed the form of the one that was most applicable to the given situation.

Because that is not actually hard? Like, if you want to make casters less good there isn't actually very much to talk about. You decide how much less good you want them to be (note that while this can lead to conflicts, those conflicts are not in any fundamental sense different from the ones going on here and therefore doesn't deserve a separate thread), then you iteratively change them and test until you are satisfied they are sufficiently less good. Ditto for making martials more good. Those exercises require a lot more work (in that you need to go out and do game design), but a lot less discussion (in that you don't really need to do very much arguing once you've agreed what the desired power level is).

Agreed.

*: Or whoever you actually think "peak mundane" is supposed to be, you seem to pivot on this a lot.

I don't recall ever being asked this question. I remember saying what sort of character I would like to be able to play, I remember saying what I picture a level 20 fighter as being, and I recall agreeing with someone that there isn't currently anything a level 20 fighter can do that would look out of place if Captain America did it, but I don't recall ever saying what I thought "peak mundane" meant.

Honestly I am not sure if that is ever a question that I (or anyone else) could answer as humans just don't have enough information about physics, biology, and engineering to predict what the actual theoretical limits of the humanoid body might be, and in any case an answer would have to be very setting dependent.

Edit:

@Cosi:

I just read this post by you in another thread:

These are stupid and unsatisfying answers. They're necessary answers, because the game mostly doesn't work if you assume them not to hold, but the fact that you have to give those answers (or really, ask those questions), indicates that something should be changed.

So really, "why don't Zodars rule the world" is the wrong question. The right question is "how do we change the rules so they game still functions, but the logical conclusion of a Zodar using its powers effectively is no longer omnipotence".

Which implies to me that you already know that by RAW 3.5 casting makes for omnipotent characters and that to have a meaningful discussion some nerfs are in order. So why do you refuse to accept it when I say much the same thing?

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-20, 07:42 PM

Yes, and as we all know, military R&D the world over has abandoned anti-tank weaponry in favor of "just dig some holes".
This is not an argument against the fact that a pitfall would work.

Guerilla warfare is a high level strategic decision that has roughly nothing to do with technological questions. It's a shift from destroying your opponent's capacity to make war to destroying your opponent's willingness to make war. The Viet Cong didn't defeat the US in the way that the US defeated Germany.
Except that it is still used TODAY and still causes logistical headaches. I can't mention where such struggles were had, but they had large amounts of silicate granules laying around.

3rd world countries with old Soviet rifles and makeshift explosives vs. a nation with sattelites, intercontinental missiles, and supersonic jetfighters sure sounds like a technological disparity to me.

Or are you going to try to sell me that a donkey cart and a bugatti are technologically equivalent because they both have wheels?

"Folk Magic" rather entirely misses the point. If you can have "Folk Magic" you can just have "Magic". Use of mundane tools is situational at best, and therefore can't reasonably be described as a "counter".
A mundane tool applied with cleverness and strategy should be able to trump magic.

Folk magic specifically means highly simplified rituals with straightforward, broad-use effects at material cost.

Well sure, but "back and forth" between medieval knights and tanks is rather lacking. Back and forth between two armies that both have tanks, but have different designs and military doctrines is rather less so. Or, to go back to the main topic, conflict between two sides, both of which use "magic" (again, defined broadly), but have different sets of "magical" abilities and different use restrictions.

*in your opinion.

It's a storytelling exercise, not a skinner box. The primary tool for motivating players should be player motivation. It's a role playing game. The player should have some idea of what drives their character. Maybe they seek to be immortal. Maybe they want to avenge their family. Maybe some less cliched thing. But something. And the pursuit of that thing should be what drives them to interact with the world. Not the need to make their XP number bigger.

So people who happen to enjoy the XP end and get pleasure and fulfillment from the Bigger Number Subgame are just having badwrongfun? Must be windy on top of a horse that high.

Sounds like you can be safely ignored and nothing of value will be lost. You can't seem to be able to tell the difference between your personal opinions and objective facts, and seem to have the toxic belief that if people don't like a thing IN THE SAME WAY YOU DO, they are enjoying it wrong.

10/10 so enlightened.

Cosi

2017-12-20, 08:38 PM

3.5 Shape change grants you all of the supernatural abilities of any creature with HD equal to your caster level. You can change creature types once per turn as a free action, and the spell lasts 10 minutes per level. Somewhere in the Monster Manuals there is a monster which can replicate damn near every spell and effect in the game as a supernatural or ex ability. This means that, by pure unambiguous RAW you get *every spell in the game casteable as often as you like, and a moderately well built sorcerer can have this effect running 24/7.

It sounds to me like digging through every Monster Manual for the powers that you want is exactly:

an obscure edge case that requires a lot of effort to find

You understand that there is genuinely a lot of work that goes into tracking down good forms for Shapechange Handbooks and the like, right? This is not actually the trivial exercise in "find good monster, get good abilities" you're characterizing it as. I also strongly disagree that you can get "damn near every spell" from Su abilities (at least, directly, you can get wish but that's its whole own thing).

Honestly I am not sure if that is ever a question that I (or anyone else) could answer as humans just don't have enough information about physics, biology, and engineering to predict what the actual theoretical limits of the humanoid body might be, and in any case an answer would have to be very setting dependent.

You can see how that makes arguing with you difficult, right? How am I supposed to demonstrate that the game can/does/should support balanced characters above the limit you want some characters to have if you won't explicate what that limit is? You've acknowledged that there is a limit, but as I understand it that limit is somewhere between Captain America and the Silver Surfer, which is not exactly helpful.

Which implies to me that you already know that by RAW 3.5 casting makes for omnipotent characters and that to have a meaningful discussion some nerfs are in order. So why do you refuse to accept it when I say much the same thing?

Because you're not saying the same thing. I'm saying "some things make the game not function, those things should be nerfed". That doesn't touch the things that make mundane characters cry. Having infinite power is broken from first principles. It should be removed from the game. Fighting better than Captain America while also having some utility magic isn't. You can remove the first thing and still have the problem I asked you about. So what exactly is the problem with a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels, or alternatively what is the mundane character that can compete with her?

This is not an argument against the fact that a pitfall would work.

In what sense? Could you defeat a tank with a pitfall? Perhaps you could, some percentage of the time. But I think the behavior of every military since the development of tanks indicates that "holes" are not a generally valid solution. It's a game where results are determined by die roll, so the odds need to actually be in your favor for strategies to be effective. Or you need some probability manipulation. It's not enough to say "it sometimes works out for you if you're lucky, well-prepared, and advantaged by terrain".

Except that it is still used TODAY and still causes logistical headaches. I can't mention where such struggles were had, but they had large amounts of silicate granules laying around.

It seems like you didn't bother to read the post you're replying to. I'm not saying you can't win with guerilla tactics. I'm saying that victories from guerilla tactics don't happen the same way victories through conventional tactics do and they don't establish the same things. It is, I should hope, uncontroversial to say that the Viet Cong (or North Vietnamese, or however you want to characterize that coalition) won the Vietnam War (as they achieved their strategic objective of causing the US to withdraw their soldiers from the theater of operations). It is, I would again hope, similarly uncontroversial to claim that the Allies won World War II (once again, they achieved their strategic objective of precipitating regime change in Germany). But it would be strange to claim that the US was "defeated" in the same way that Nazi Germany was. The US, for example, retained continuity of government in a way that Germany did not, and the Viet Cong were not in a position to dictate terms of surrender to their opponents.

A mundane tool applied with cleverness and strategy should be able to trump magic.

It's strange that you have no problem making objective claims yourself, given your deep opposition to others making them. Shouldn't this say, for consistency's sake if nothing else, "I would like it if mundane tools could overcome magical resources with cleverness and strategy"? That said, I am not above arguing with people who disagree with me, so it should be pointed out that magic users are also able to apply "cleverness and strategy".

*in your opinion.

I'm not nearly high enough to find "but that's just, like, your opinion, man" to be a compelling argument. Do you honestly think that "knights versus tanks" would be close, or are you just making noise?

So people who happen to enjoy the XP end and get pleasure and fulfillment from the Bigger Number Subgame are just having badwrongfun? Must be windy on top of a horse that high.

Not at all. But there are better versions of that than tabletop games. WoW is better at letting you get bigger and bigger numbers than D&D is. If what you want is "bigger and bigger numbers", you should play WoW. This isn't a novel observation. Different media make different trade-offs between different forms of engagement. Just as you're better off switching to Shadowrun if you want Cyberpunk Fantasy, you're better off switching to WoW if you want numbers that keep getting bigger. It's important to know what you want, and to know how well suited different media are to giving you what you want.

Talakeal

2017-12-20, 09:40 PM

It sounds to me like digging through every Monster Manual for the powers that you want is exactly:

You understand that there is genuinely a lot of work that goes into tracking down good forms for Shapechange Handbooks and the like, right? This is not actually the trivial exercise in "find good monster, get good abilities" you're characterizing it as. I also strongly disagree that you can get "damn near every spell" from Su abilities (at least, directly, you can get wish but that's its whole own thing).

Being told you can use any SU ability in the game and then going through the monster manuals until you find the one you need might be time consuming, but it is very simple and straightforward.

Multiple game breaking problems have come up in my experience of playing 3.X. In AD&D not only have none ever come up, but I haven't even heard of any on the internet. If they exist they aren't going to be just "search the book for the win button," they are going to be combing through really obscure stuff, odd rule interactions, or fuzzy readings of the text more on par with Pun-Pun than Shapechange or Ice Assassin abuse.

Although, to be fair, we usually did stick to core only in both editions, there are probably some really poorly done splatbooks for AD&D considering how much TSR was putting out in the early 90s.

Seconded, but for completely different reasons.

There is a lot of room for buffing martials without making them magical, and if you dont fix a lot of the idiosyncrasies of 3e casting even giving martials Powers on par with Silver Surfer wont reslly help.

You can see how that makes arguing with you difficult, right? How am I supposed to demonstrate that the game can/does/should support balanced characters above the limit you want some characters to have if you won't explicate what that limit is? You've acknowledged that there is a limit, but as I understand it that limit is somewhere between Captain America and the Silver Surfer, which is not exactly helpful.

I do not. There is not a clearly defined line between what is and is not mundane, and I am pretty sure that saying you can't have this discussion until I define one is resorting to the continuum fallacy.

I have given you several ideas of what I would expect a level 20 fighter to look like in my ideal version of 3.X, and I can elaborate if you want to discuss specifics, but I don't think pointing out the exact point where something breaks suspension of disbelief is either helpful or required.

Because you're not saying the same thing. I'm saying "some things make the game not function, those things should be nerfed". That doesn't touch the things that make mundane characters cry. Having infinite power is broken from first principles. It should be removed from the game. Fighting better than Captain America while also having some utility magic isn't. You can remove the first thing and still have the problem I asked you about. So what exactly is the problem with a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels, or alternatively what is the mundane character that can compete with her?

The comment that you were responding to was:

There is a lot of room for buffing martials without making them magical, and if you don't fix a lot of the idiosyncrasies of 3e casting even giving martials Powers on par with Silver Surfer wont really help.

And I stand by this. Casters can do enough things that make the game "not function" that even if you piled all of the abilities of Superman, Thor, Goku, and Silver Surfer onto a martial character they still wouldn't be able to compete with a wizard who is going by pure RAW and making the most out of the 3.5 magic system.

In my opinion DMM: Persist needs to be toned down and fighters need to be buffed, but that isn't a necessity of the game. You could, in theory, have a character who is so good in fighting that their combat ability is so far above the DMM cleric that it more than makes up for angel summoning and divination. Or the fighter could be equally good in combat but have a plethora of other skills that are equally useful.

But you can pile more abilities onto any character, that's kind of a strange argument.

Like:

"Who can beat a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels?

How about a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels while teleporting at will?

Who can beat a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels while teleporting at will?

How about a DMM: Persist Cleric who can fight better than Captain America while also seeing the future and summoning angels while teleporting at will and can travel through time?"

And so on. Yes you can keep piling on abilities and you can keep increasing power, versatility, and or endurance virtually forever in some hypothetical super-epic level game. And I already conceded that you will eventually run into the limits of a mundane character in said hypothetical super-epic game.

Cosi

2017-12-20, 10:15 PM

I do not. There is not a clearly defined line between what is and is not mundane, and I am pretty sure that saying you can't have this discussion until I define one is resorting to the continuum fallacy.

But you could name a weakest character that was definitely above what a mundane could do, right? I don't know exactly how fast it is possible for a person to run, but that number probably isn't 30 MPH. It's certainly not 60 MPH. So given that, and given that we have cars that go 70 MPH, we can confidently say that cars are faster than it is possible for a person to be even if we don't know exactly how fast it is possible for a person to run. So what are some feats that would make a person definitely stronger than you think a mundane character should be able to be. Is "punch through adamantine" stronger than mundane could be? Out-grapple the Tarrasque?

In my opinion DMM: Persist needs to be toned down and fighters need to be buffed, but that isn't a necessity of the game. You could, in theory, have a character who is so good in fighting that their combat ability is so far above the DMM cleric that it more than makes up for angel summoning and divination. Or the fighter could be equally good in combat but have a plethora of other skills that are equally useful.

But we've specified that there is a limit to mundane prowess, and we've observed that this character is above it (or at least, above the best example of a mundane fighter you are willing to name, which amounts to the same thing).

And I stand by this. Casters can do enough things that make the game "not function" that even if you piled all of the abilities of Superman, Thor, Goku, and Silver Surfer onto a martial character they still wouldn't be able to compete with a wizard who is going by pure RAW and making the most out of the 3.5 magic system.

Except literally no one has ever been defending that. My position is not "you should get to do Chain Binding" so much as "you should get to have a couple of combat demons or be able to turn into giant animals" or any number of other things that give people combat numbers sufficient to make mundanes irrelevant. You're arguing with a strawman, and you're doing it to sidestep an actual comparison between "peak mundane" and "moderately optimized caster".

And so on. Yes you can keep piling on abilities and you can keep increasing power, versatility, and or endurance virtually forever in some hypothetical super-epic level game. And I already conceded that you will eventually run into the limits of a mundane character in said hypothetical super-epic game.

A DMM: Persist Cleric of the kind I'm describing isn't an element of "some hypothetical super-epic level game". She's like a 12th level character depending on exactly how tough you think Captain America is and exactly what utility powers you think she should have. The hypothetical super martial you keep bringing up is not convincingly better than a moderately optimized mid level caster that is actually competing with him. We can heap on abilities on either side if you want, but you aren't going to get anywhere because you've already conceded the relevant points.

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-20, 10:55 PM

In what sense? Could you defeat a tank with a pitfall? Perhaps you could, some percentage of the time. But I think the behavior of every military since the development of tanks indicates that "holes" are not a generally valid solution. It's a game where results are determined by die roll, so the odds need to actually be in your favor for strategies to be effective. Or you need some probability manipulation. It's not enough to say "it sometimes works out for you if you're lucky, well-prepared, and advantaged by terrain".
You seem to be jumping through a lot of hoops to disprove that "heavy thing fall in hole, heavy thing no come out" is not an example of somethinf very mundane beating technology.

(Or all the examples of similar you conveniently didn't respond to in favor of the purposefully silly one.)

It seems like you didn't bother to read the post you're replying to. I'm not saying you can't win with guerilla tactics. I'm saying that victories from guerilla tactics don't happen the same way victories through conventional tactics do and they don't establish the same things. It is, I should hope, uncontroversial to say that the Viet Cong (or North Vietnamese, or however you want to characterize that coalition) won the Vietnam War (as they achieved their strategic objective of causing the US to withdraw their soldiers from the theater of operations). It is, I would again hope, similarly uncontroversial to claim that the Allies won World War II (once again, they achieved their strategic objective of precipitating regime change in Germany). But it would be strange to claim that the US was "defeated" in the same way that Nazi Germany was. The US, for example, retained continuity of government in a way that Germany did not, and the Viet Cong were not in a position to dictate terms of surrender to their opponents.

And? You're making an attempt to nitpick about the specific KIND of victory because this violates the core of your argument that superior technology always wins. It doesn't. No amount of nitpicking about the variety of victory changes this.

It's strange that you have no problem making objective claims yourself, given your deep opposition to others making them. Shouldn't this say, for consistency's sake if nothing else, "I would like it if mundane tools could overcome magical resources with cleverness and strategy"? That said, I am not above arguing with people who disagree with me, so it should be pointed out that magic users are also able to apply "cleverness and strategy".

Sure. I'll own that mistaken wording, though 3.5 does frequently equate lvl 20 fighters to lvl 20 wizards. (Both are CR 20, for example, when statted as opponents) so this has some basis in 3.5 design and where it fails to deliver what it claims, be it directly or not.

(For instance CocaCola co. Might never explicitly claim that Vitaminwater is healthy, which it isn't, but it sure does use a lot of other indicators. And yes, this example is caused by malice whereas WotC was mostly incompetence, but the net effect is the same: implied promise left unfulfilled.)

I'm not nearly high enough to find "but that's just, like, your opinion, man" to be a compelling argument. Do you honestly think that "knights versus tanks" would be close, or are you just making noise?
You'll find that your assertion was not that the fight would be onesided. You claimed it was objectively uninteresting. Ie, will not be worth exploring no matter who views it.

Not at all. But there are better versions of that than tabletop games. WoW is better at letting you get bigger and bigger numbers than D&D is. If what you want is "bigger and bigger numbers", you should play WoW. This isn't a novel observation. Different media make different trade-offs between different forms of engagement. Just as you're better off switching to Shadowrun if you want Cyberpunk Fantasy, you're better off switching to WoW if you want numbers that keep getting bigger. It's important to know what you want, and to know how well suited different media are to giving you what you want.

"I'm not saying they're having fun wrong!" He claims as he insists that people who enjoy that thing should do a different hobby and not this one.

Did you shoot that hole in yer foot so you could run faster, friend?

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 01:38 AM

But you could name a weakest character that was definitely above what a mundane could do, right? I don't know exactly how fast it is possible for a person to run, but that number probably isn't 30 MPH. It's certainly not 60 MPH. So given that, and given that we have cars that go 70 MPH, we can confidently say that cars are faster than it is possible for a person to be even if we don't know exactly how fast it is possible for a person to run. So what are some feats that would make a person definitely stronger than you think a mundane character should be able to be. Is "punch through adamantine" stronger than mundane could be? Out-grapple the Tarrasque?

I can't put my finger on exactly where the "weakest definitely not mundane" character would fall, but I would agree that the fastest potential human is probably somewhere around 30MPH and below 60 MPH. And I would agree that punching through adamantine and out-grappling a tarrasque are certainly outside of human capabilities. What exactly does that mean though?

Also, the whole argument is kind of silly because no character in D&D except possibly the forsaker is actually totally mundane, because everyone has a truckload of magic items by high levels, and it is certainly possible to punch through adamant or out grapple a tarrasque with the right magic items / ki abilities / etc.

But we've specified that there is a limit to mundane prowess, and we've observed that this character is above it (or at least, above the best example of a mundane fighter you are willing to name, which amounts to the same thing).

A DMM: Persist Cleric of the kind I'm describing isn't an element of "some hypothetical super-epic level game". She's like a 12th level character depending on exactly how tough you think Captain America is and exactly what utility powers you think she should have. The hypothetical super martial you keep bringing up is not convincingly better than a moderately optimized mid level caster that is actually competing with him. We can heap on abilities on either side if you want, but you aren't going to get anywhere because you've already conceded the relevant points.

Say what? I actually don't quite know what you are getting at here.

D&D combat is super abstract and a DMM cleric doesn't really have anything on a similarly leveled fighter in the combat department.

D&D thinks that Conan is an epic level barbarian, and most any epic level barbarian will have much higher combat numbers than a level 12 DMM cleric, and though Conan is often brought up as an example of the pinnacle of mundane combat abilities he is nowhere near the best possible non-magical character that I can picture without breaking suspension of disbelief.

The hypothetical level 20 fighter revision I posted several threads ago would have fighter's mark, action surge, legendary resistance, 20 bonus feats, passive scaling weapon, armor, and shield specialization, focus, and mastery, passive retroactive power attack, increased ability to use strength in combat, and could take four attacks a round at full BaB as a standard action. Such a character would absolutely wipe the floor with a DMM cleric in a straight fight and still wouldn't break out of the mundane box.

And again, D&D combat is super abstract. Saying +50 attack bonus or 10 attacks a round doesn't actually mean a whole lot when it comes to realism or mundane vs. martial.

Except literally no one has ever been defending that. My position is not "you should get to do Chain Binding" so much as "you should get to have a couple of combat demons or be able to turn into giant animals" or any number of other things that give people combat numbers sufficient to make mundanes irrelevant. You're arguing with a strawman, and you're doing it to sidestep an actual comparison between "peak mundane" and "moderately optimized caster".

I am not "arguing with a straw-man," I was responding to this quote:

"Did people ever decide whether they wanted to focus on making martials more magical or focus on bringing the casters down a few pegs? It might be worth splitting the thread for these two approaches, because what is productive for one has little to do with the other."

And I pointed out that I want to buff martials without making them magical AND bring casters down to the level where they can't pull off the game breaking NI loops that are so trivial for them to achieve in 3E.

Cosi

2017-12-21, 07:46 AM

You seem to be jumping through a lot of hoops to disprove that "heavy thing fall in hole, heavy thing no come out" is not an example of somethinf very mundane beating technology.

The original argument was not "there should be some circumstances where a lucky mundane tactic beats an unlucky magical one". It was "there should be mundane counters to magic". Can holes beat tanks? Sure. Does that make holes a counter to tanks? I think the history of post-tank warfare bears out pretty clearly that it does not.

(Or all the examples of similar you conveniently didn't respond to in favor of the purposefully silly one.)

Oh, so where are the goalposts now? Because I thought they were at "you can totally beat tanks with holes". I wonder how I got that impression. Wait, no I don't, I got it from reading your post.

And? You're making an attempt to nitpick about the specific KIND of victory because this violates the core of your argument that superior technology always wins. It doesn't. No amount of nitpicking about the variety of victory changes this.

The claim was that low tech doesn't beat high tech. And that's true. The Viet Cong didn't win by destroying the US's ability to make war, they won by destroying the US's desire to make war. To claim that those are the same thing because they're both "victory" is to get entirely caught up in semantics at the expense of meaning.

You'll find that your assertion was not that the fight would be onesided. You claimed it was objectively uninteresting. Ie, will not be worth exploring no matter who views it.

A fight with a known outcome is not interesting. That's why combat is nondeterministic.

"I'm not saying they're having fun wrong!" He claims as he insists that people who enjoy that thing should do a different hobby and not this one.

Where, exactly, is the flaw in "what you are doing is a bad way of getting what you want" as an argument? It seems to me that there necessarily must be differences in the characteristics of different forms of entertainment, and that it therefore must necessarily be possible to have chosen a form of entertainment that is ineffective for achieving some particular goal. If someone said "I want to watch dark and gritty movies about gunslingers in the old west, therefore I'm going to watch Marvel's superhero movies" would it really be saying they're "having fun wrong" to suggest that they should probably watch something else to achieve their nominal goal?

I can't put my finger on exactly where the "weakest definitely not mundane" character would fall, but I would agree that the fastest potential human is probably somewhere around 30MPH and below 60 MPH. And I would agree that punching through adamantine and out-grappling a tarrasque are certainly outside of human capabilities. What exactly does that mean though?

It means that if you can show a character can hit those targets, they're better than a mundane could be. If they can do that with only class abilities, they'll still be better after items. If they can do that with options left over, they'll also have whatever those options are.

Also, the whole argument is kind of silly because no character in D&D except possibly the forsaker is actually totally mundane, because everyone has a truckload of magic items by high levels, and it is certainly possible to punch through adamant or out grapple a tarrasque with the right magic items / ki abilities / etc.

If you want the Fighter to have "ki abilities", we're already on the same side, we're just qubbling about whether we should use magic or some other word to describe all the various superhuman powers people get. Using magic items to achieve level appropriate performance, you're locking in the Magic Item Christmas Tree. Magic items should be random, but that implies that no character can rely on them to be level appropriate.

D&D combat is super abstract and a DMM cleric doesn't really have anything on a similarly leveled fighter in the combat department.

D&D combat is abstract, which is why I want you to give an example of the most powerful mundane. Then you can look at that characters feats, look at the feats of some D&D character, and see if one is better than the other. If you can build some D&D character that is 20th level or lower and doesn't use infinite loops, but has more power than the power necessary to match the strongest mundane, your thesis (that it's only infinite loops that keep mundanes down) is wrong. If you can't, then it's right.

D&D thinks that Conan is an epic level barbarian, and most any epic level barbarian will have much higher combat numbers than a level 12 DMM cleric, and though Conan is often brought up as an example of the pinnacle of mundane combat abilities he is nowhere near the best possible non-magical character that I can picture without breaking suspension of disbelief.

I thought we agreed that claiming Conan was "epic" was a result of designers not understanding the system. IIRC the most impressive enemies Conan defeats in his stories are "a couple of frost giants", which would put him somewhere around 11th level. Claiming that he's "epic" is foolish, because he doesn't have the feats to support that. If you want to engage in these kinds of claims, you need to start with feats characters display, not abstract claims like "this character is epic".

The hypothetical level 20 fighter revision I posted several threads ago would have fighter's mark, action surge, legendary resistance, 20 bonus feats, passive scaling weapon, armor, and shield specialization, focus, and mastery, passive retroactive power attack, increased ability to use strength in combat, and could take four attacks a round at full BaB as a standard action. Such a character would absolutely wipe the floor with a DMM cleric in a straight fight and still wouldn't break out of the mundane box.

"DMM Cleric" is too broad a category for this to be usefully true. Could such a character beat some DMM Cleric? Probably. Are there DMM Clerics that could beat such a character? Equally, probably. Of course, there's another problem where it's entirely possible that such a character does go outside the mundane box, but we can't know that because you won't define the box properly. There's even a final problem where that character still deosn't have anything that's as useful as raise dead or plane shift outside combat, let alone gate.

I am not "arguing with a straw-man," I was responding to this quote:

Your broad strokes position is "people only say mundanes are non-viable because of crazy cheese that needs to be removed", while people's actual position is "practical optimization casters obsolete mundanes in combat, and have non-combat capabilities that mundanes can't match".

RazorChain

2017-12-21, 10:13 AM

The original argument was not "there should be some circumstances where a lucky mundane tactic beats an unlucky magical one". It was "there should be mundane counters to magic". Can holes beat tanks? Sure. Does that make holes a counter to tanks? I think the history of post-tank warfare bears out pretty clearly that it does not.

Not here to derail this thread but as an ex military I just have to butt my head in. Anti tank trenches are really a thing that is used as a defensive fortification to deter Tanks and slow them down to make them easier targets for anti tank weaponry. Sometimes you might also disguise those trenches to try to disable a tank. In modern tanks it's even a selling point how big a trench the tank can cross.

So anti tank trenches are/were used to counter tanks just like the Czech hedgehog and the dragons teeth though most of these have been supplanted by the Anti Tank mine.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 01:35 PM

Your broad strokes position is "people only say mundanes are non-viable because of crazy cheese that needs to be removed", while people's actual position is "practical optimization casters obsolete mundanes in combat, and have non-combat capabilities that mundanes can't match".

Ok, let's step back a step here.

When presented with the question of "What would better fix the balance of 3E, buffing martials or nerfing casters?" my answer is "Both."

3E made a bunch of decisions that hobbled martial characters while at the same time easing or removing most of the restrictions on casters.

In addition 3E has a bunch of cheesy spells which are essentially "win buttons" and the line between low op, practical op, and theoretical op is really just how far you want to push these cheesy spells.

As you have said earlier, shape-changing into a fiend for at-will teleport is ok by you but shape-changing into a zodar for at will wishes is not, but these are both essentially the same thing; you are using shape-change to ignore the spells known and spells per day limitations, and just because you choose to use one but feel the other crosses a line does not mean the interaction is broken.

There IS an interaction point where you can go on adventures and do the type of stuff that high level D&D PCs do and have a party which includes both fantastical mundanes and D&D style full casters without one side completely obsoleting the other. Most editions of D&D pull it off and most D&D like RPGs pull it off.

Just because you prefer a higher powered game that doesn't mean that games without that power level can't exist.

I surmise that if you fixed all of the "cheese" in 3E it would leave casters at a point where a theoretical high end martial (but not the pathetic crippled martials 3E gave us) could indeed stand up to the caster's. But if you don't fix that cheese then a determined caster will still obsolete a martial character no matter what.

If I may speculate a bit, you like 3E because it allows you to play at a higher level than other editions, but it isn't because the game is designed for that power level. It is because you take the same broken rules that *could* be used to create infinitely powerful loops and then draw a line in the sane saying "We can go this far but no further," and your enjoyment of the edition has less to do with it being so lax with limits as it does with everyone in your gaming group agreeing that the line was at the same place.

Or to put it another way:
1: 3E nerfed martials.
2: 3E buffed casters.
3: 3E contains a ton of combos, mostly spells, that allow for infinite power loops.

Calthropstu

2017-12-21, 01:56 PM

Ok, let's step back a step here.

When presented with the question of "What would better fix the balance of 3E, buffing martials or nerfing casters?" my answer is "Both."

3E made a bunch of decisions that hobbled martial characters while at the same time easing or removing most of the restrictions on casters.

In addition 3E has a bunch of cheesy spells which are essentially "win buttons" and the line between low op, practical op, and theoretical op is really just how far you want to push these cheesy spells.

As you have said earlier, shape-changing into a fiend for at-will teleport is ok by you but shape-changing into a zodar for at will wishes is not, but these are both essentially the same thing; you are using shape-change to ignore the spells known and spells per day limitations, and just because you choose to use one but feel the other crosses a line does not mean the interaction is broken.

There IS an interaction point where you can go on adventures and do the type of stuff that high level D&D PCs do and have a party which includes both fantastical mundanes and D&D style full casters without one side completely obsoleting the other. Most editions of D&D pull it off and most D&D like RPGs pull it off.

Just because you prefer a higher powered game that doesn't mean that games without that power level can't exist.

I surmise that if you fixed all of the "cheese" in 3E it would leave casters at a point where a theoretical high end martial (but not the pathetic crippled martials 3E gave us) could indeed stand up to the caster's. But if you don't fix that cheese then a determined caster will still obsolete a martial character no matter what.

If I may speculate a bit, you like 3E because it allows you to play at a higher level than other editions, but it isn't because the game is designed for that power level. It is because you take the same broken rules that *could* be used to create infinitely powerful loops and then draw a line in the sane saying "We can go this far but no further," and your enjoyment of the edition has less to do with it being so lax with limits as it does with everyone in your gaming group agreeing that the line was at the same place.

Or to put it another way:
1: 3E nerfed martials.
2: 3E buffed casters.
3: 3E contains a ton of combos, mostly spells, that allow for infinite power loops.

Actually, no. Casters were actually nerfed in 3e. They dropped quite a few purely broken spells from 2e that were truly ridiculous. And what about 1e, where enlarge person had no cap and you could literally wipe out planets?
Remember 10th lvl spells? Or the version of meteor swarm that was basically 1 fireball per level? Casters have suffered nerfs from version to version. 3e was no exception, although they did manage to miss a few infinite loops. But ya know something? When you design a game with thousands of rules it's really easy to miss stuff.

Tinkerer

2017-12-21, 02:07 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 02:12 PM

Actually, no. Casters were actually nerfed in 3e. They dropped quite a few purely broken spells from 2e that were truly ridiculous. And what about 1e, where enlarge person had no cap and you could literally wipe out planets?
Remember 10th lvl spells? Or the version of meteor swarm that was basically 1 fireball per level? Casters have suffered nerfs from version to version. 3e was no exception, although they did manage to miss a few infinite loops. But ya know something? When you design a game with thousands of rules it's really easy to miss stuff.

I never played 1E so I can't really say.

I am sure they removed a few broken spells from splat-books, but going by the PHB nearly every spell has had some restrictions listed in 3E compared to 2E.

Furthermore they added level 8-9 spells for divine, added bonus spells from ability scores for arcane, made it so most spells could be cast while moving (and casting no longer made you lost dex bonus to AC), and they have the whole 5 foot step / concentration mechanic to avoid disruption while in AD&D simply being hit (not even taking damage) auto disrupted your spell. It also only takes 15 minutes to prepare all spells rather than 10 minutes a level, and wizards now have free spells on level up and listed costs for new spells in the book (and they don't have to deal with the chance to fail at learning a spell or the limits on total spells known based on intelligence). Wizards roughly doubled their number of spells per day at any given level even without factoring in bonus spells for Int.

Could you give me an example of a mechanical nerf to spell casting in 3E, or even a specific core spell that was significantly nerfed?

Cosi

2017-12-21, 02:20 PM

Not here to derail this thread but as an ex military I just have to butt my head in. Anti tank trenches are really a thing that is used as a defensive fortification to deter Tanks and slow them down to make them easier targets for anti tank weaponry. Sometimes you might also disguise those trenches to try to disable a tank. In modern tanks it's even a selling point how big a trench the tank can cross.

So anti tank trenches are/were used to counter tanks just like the Czech hedgehog and the dragons teeth though most of these have been supplanted by the Anti Tank mine.

I think that kind of proves my point, right? No one is relying on "holes" as their anti-tank strategy. People use them, but people are already using mundane techniques to limit casters. The example that started this off involved a caster who was tied up with ropes which are, presumably, not magic.

3E made a bunch of decisions that hobbled martial characters while at the same time easing or removing most of the restrictions on casters.

The changes 3e made to casters were good changes. If having those changes necessitates that martials eventually not be mundane, that seems an entirely reasonable price to pay. All sorts of character concepts don't last the whole game.

As you have said earlier, shape-changing into a fiend for at-will teleport is ok by you but shape-changing into a zodar for at will wishes is not, but these are both essentially the same thing; you are using shape-change to ignore the spells known and spells per day limitations, and just because you choose to use one but feel the other crosses a line does not mean the interaction is broken.

That's like saying that you have to either be okay with Uberchargers that hit for 10,000 damage every attack, or against dealing damage at all. The specific thing that is broken is "wish for magic items that doesn't force you to pay XP costs allows you to get arbitrary amounts of power". No character can be balanced against "as much power as you happen to ask for". Characters can absolutely be balanced against "at-will teleport".

Just because you prefer a higher powered game that doesn't mean that games without that power level can't exist.

This is you projecting. I have never once said the game should exclude mundanes. I have said that the game should include characters who are move powerful than mundanes. Those are different statements. You, as noted, are the one calling for the removal of characters outside the power range you like.

I surmise that if you fixed all of the "cheese" in 3E it would leave casters at a point where a theoretical high end martial (but not the pathetic crippled martials 3E gave us) could indeed stand up to the caster's. But if you don't fix that cheese then a determined caster will still obsolete a martial character no matter what.

Only because you've defined cheese as "anything better than Talakeal's favorite characters". Also because you're conflating TO (which doesn't belong in the game at all) and PO (which is fine for the game in the abstract, but results in overperforming CR, indicating that levels need to be moved around). If you gave some actual feats for what you expected mundanes to do, it would be possible to prove that casters can beat those targets without cheese. Casters can, for example, do the things Conan does without cheese. But you refuse to do that. Every single time. The charitable interpretation would be that you don't know what you want well enough to give examples, which would raise questions about what you're doing here.

If I may speculate a bit, you like 3E because it allows you to play at a higher level than other editions, but it isn't because the game is designed for that power level.

Stop lying about D&D's power target. Immortals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Immortals_Rules) was published before I was born. The idea that "more powerful than Captain America" is an aberration native only to 3e is missing out on any number of supplements from BECMI onwards that have attempted to provide exactly that. Hell, as time goes on, increasing levels of power have (notionally) been brought into the core rules. Where Epic was a splat in 3e, it was core in 4e. Every single edition of D&D has claimed to that power level. Have they failed to deliver good rules? Sure. But that's not the same as saying the game doesn't support it. The game doesn't have good rules for lots of things. The solution is to write better rules, not carve away anything there aren't good rules for already.

Pex

2017-12-21, 02:22 PM

Tinkerer

2017-12-21, 02:34 PM

Cosi

2017-12-21, 02:46 PM

For me I get back to my earlier point. I don't mind the nerfing of spellcasters. What I'm concerned about is what the nerfing is. I don't want the nerfing to make the class not fun to play. What makes it not fun is punishing me for being a spellcaster. Punishing me is making my character's life The Suck for doing what he's supposed to be doing, casting spells. I will not accept any nerf that causes a spellcaster to lose hit points, lose sanity, lose the ability to cast spells for a while, be easier to be attacked by enemies, suffer minus numbers to character statistics, spell has a chance to not work separate from the saving throw/magic resistance or rolling to hit*.

Generally agree. I don't understand why people think it makes the game better for casters to spend most of their time not casting. Fighters don't spend most of their time figuring out ways to avoid fights.

Limit on spells able to be known based on theme.

I still basically don't think of this as a nerf. Theme is not all that big of a restriction, unless you lay down hard mechanical boundaries in advance, in which case the theme isn't doing the work.

To learn a spell must have a prerequisite of knowing another spell or spells.

This is untenable from a content perspective. If your third level spell requires a specific 2nd level spell, you have to write an exponentially increasing number of spells at each spell level to maintain a given range of choice each time the character selects a new ability. It gets even worse if thinks have more than one prerequisite. You could do something like Spheres or Domains where you get a list of powers and can pick up multiple lists.

Have a pool of resource points separate from any other character resource to be divided up as the player chooses to fuel his spells. A spell needs at least one point invested that day to be able to be cast and adding in more points increases the effect.

This sounds a lot like Incarnum, which I agree is a reasonable way to run a magic system.

Honestly though, if you just make the spell effects balanced (which is not terribly hard), "you have some slots you can fill with different abilities which refresh every X time" is a fine way to run a class without any extra stuff.

But... spellcasters already have those characteristics. Losing HP (in comparison), easier to be attacked by enemies, etc. Are you saying that you don't want things going any further in that direction?

He's saying he doesn't want casting a spell to make those things more pronounced as apposed to not casting one. So it's fine to have less HP in exchange to the ability to use burning hands, but not to lose HP in exchange for casting burning hands. I don't 100% agree, because I think there's definitely room for Drain casters who take penalties to get outsized effects, but I'm broadly sympathetic. I also think it's a waste to stick all of these on one class. You shouldn't have a class that has Drain + "pick several Spheres" + Random Power Recharge, you should have independent classes that do each of those things. People like specialist classes.

Calthropstu

2017-12-21, 02:53 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 02:55 PM

The changes 3e made to casters were good changes. If having those changes necessitates that martials eventually not be mundane, that seems an entirely reasonable price to pay. All sorts of character concepts don't last the whole game.

The first part of this statement I actually agree with. The core rules for casters were a bit too limiting for casters in AD&D.
I don't believe those changes alone mean that mundane characters need not apply.
The last part I cannot reject more strongly. If you are printing classes in the core book that necessitate people retire their characters at a certain point than you are wrong. Compromise on archetypes is always going to be better than simply shouting "get the hell away from my table with your badwrongfun!"

That's like saying that you have to either be okay with Uberchargers that hit for 10,000 damage every attack, or against dealing damage at all. The specific thing that is broken is "wish for magic items that doesn't force you to pay XP costs allows you to get arbitrary amounts of power". No character can be balanced against "as much power as you happen to ask for". Characters can absolutely be balanced against "at-will teleport".

Agreed.

But the same effect that gets you at-will teleport is the one that gets you at-will wish. The game *can* be balanced against either, but it isn't.

This is you projecting. I have never once said the game should exclude mundanes. I have said that the game should include characters who are move powerful than mundanes. Those are different statements. You, as noted, are the one calling for the removal of characters outside the power range you like.

I'm sorry, I thought your whole premise was that everyone needed to either start playing a supernatural character or retire once they hit mid level.

Only because you've defined cheese as "anything better than Talakeal's favorite characters". Also because you're conflating TO (which doesn't belong in the game at all) and PO (which is fine for the game in the abstract, but results in overperforming CR, indicating that levels need to be moved around). If you gave some actual feats for what you expected mundanes to do, it would be possible to prove that casters can beat those targets without cheese. Casters can, for example, do the things Conan does without cheese. But you refuse to do that. Every single time. The charitable interpretation would be that you don't know what you want well enough to give examples, which would raise questions about what you're doing here.

What in the blue hell are you talking about?

First off, I am defining "balanced" as against the monsters the book says are a fair challenge at a given level and the "midpoint" between the published classes. There are plenty of my "favorite characters" who fall outside of this range in both directions, and my longest played D&D characters were a druid and a sorcerer.

D&D kitchen sink casters have a spell for everything. This is balanced by "spells known" and "spells per day". If a caster has the right spell for the right job they will absolutely be better than a mundane character for that specific job, but they need to have the right spell memorized and once they have cast it is gone.

3.5 has several tricks that allow you to cast any spell in the game at-will, the most obvious are Shape-Change and Chain Gating. I fully agree that at this point a character who does have access to these tricks *will* outperform a character who does not, be they mundane or another caster.

It is fully possible to have a character with tons of versatility, or endurance, or power and balance them against other characters. But when you give a character all three you are damn right they make other characters obsolete.

Note that you can have an at-will caster, the warlock functions more or less fine, it only becomes a problem when you combine the at-will power with the versatility and power of the T1 casters who were desired around a "fire and forget" model that you disrupt the balance.

Stop lying about D&D's power target. Immortals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Immortals_Rules) was published before I was born. The idea that "more powerful than Captain America" is an aberration native only to 3e is missing out on any number of supplements from BECMI onwards that have attempted to provide exactly that. Hell, as time goes on, increasing levels of power have (notionally) been brought into the core rules. Where Epic was a splat in 3e, it was core in 4e. Every single edition of D&D has claimed to that power level. Have they failed to deliver good rules? Sure. But that's not the same as saying the game doesn't support it. The game doesn't have good rules for lots of things. The solution is to write better rules, not carve away anything there aren't good rules for already.

That's very rude.

It's also incorrect. Stop lying about me lying!

I have *explicitly* called out the Immortals supplement as the sort of good game where mortals need not apply multiple times.

I have also explicitly stated that I am talking about the level 1-20 high fantasy dungeon crawling and going on quests to save the world from the dark overlord style of play and have repeatedly said that if you want to talk about epic level games that is a different conversation that we could have, but it would need to start with a better understanding of what epic level means and a core foundation of how epic level rules work than the 3E ELH provided.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 02:57 PM

What does it matter when you could literally make yourself immune to weapon damage? Oh look, I'm about to be attacked by a fighter. *cast protection from magic weapons and turn into a vampire becoming immune to normal weapons too.*

Then eat my other spell which makes me immune to weapon damage AND redirects all the damage I took DIRECTLY BACK AT YOU. Casters could literall walk up to noncasters in 2e and beat them in a fist fight.

Well, for one thing AD&D shape-change *does not* give you supernatural immunities. For another, simply being hit disrupts spell casting, you don't have to take any damage, so simply sitting there and throwing harmless pebbles at them any time they tried to cast a spell would render them pretty impotent.

Cosi

2017-12-21, 03:05 PM

The last part I cannot reject more strongly. If you are printing classes in the core book that necessitate people retire their characters at a certain point than you are wrong. Compromise on archetypes is always going to be better than simply shouting "get the hell away from my table with your badwrongfun!"

Where exactly is the compromise on your end? You wanted a mundane character, you ended up with a mundane character. What part of that is a "compromise"?

I'm sorry, I thought your whole premise was that everyone needed to either start playing a supernatural character or retire once they hit mid level.

And we return, again, to the basic hypocrisy of your position. The mundane character is allowed to say "nope, you can't get those powers, having to compete with them would invalidate my concept", but the magic character isn't allowed to say "you need to be able to contribute alongside someone with these powers for me to actualize my character concept". You can't have it both ways. Either you can kick the archmage out of the low level party, or the archmage can't kick you out of the high level party. Not both.

Calthropstu

2017-12-21, 03:13 PM

Well, for one thing AD&D shape-change *does not* give you supernatural immunities. For another, simply being hit disrupts spell casting, you don't have to take any damage, so simply sitting there and throwing harmless pebbles at them any time they tried to cast a spell would render them pretty impotent.

Errr, where was that rule? Pretty sure this is flat wrong. In fact, stoneskin prevented all damage and I remember books that included that using the 2e rules. They were still able to cast spells with flying debris being thrown at them.
So pretty sure this is made up.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 03:23 PM

Where exactly is the compromise on your end? You wanted a mundane character, you ended up with a mundane character. What part of that is a "compromise"?

And we return, again, to the basic hypocrisy of your position. The mundane character is allowed to say "nope, you can't get those powers, having to compete with them would invalidate my concept", but the magic character isn't allowed to say "you need to be able to contribute alongside someone with these powers for me to actualize my character concept". You can't have it both ways. Either you can kick the archmage out of the low level party, or the archmage can't kick you out of the high level party. Not both.

Because we are playing Dungeons and Dragons.

If I showed up to Vampire with a werewolf or Star Trek with a Jedi I would be in the wrong. If I showed up to a game of Magic and wanted to play as the Banelish hero rather than a planes walker I would be wrong.

But dungeons and dragons is a game where you can play a fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger, rogue, bard, monk, cleric, druid, wizard, or sorcerer from levels 1-20. D&D is a game that defines a fighter (or a rogue, monk, or barbarian) as someone who doesn't cast spells.

What you call "hypocrisy" I see as a change in terms. "Arch-mage" is a power level, not a concept. I would never kick an apprentice magic user who has the potential to one day become an arch-mage out of the party. Likewise you shouldn't have to accept a level 1 fighter in your level 20 party.

If insisted that my guy had exactly the capabilities that Conan displayed in X novel, and we determined that was 7th level, and then I insisted on playing "my concept of a 7th level Conan" in your level 18 party I would be in the wrong; but as long as "barbarian" is a concept the game supports I should be well within my rights to play an 18th level version of Conan in the party.

Tinkerer

2017-12-21, 03:24 PM

What does it matter when you could literally make yourself immune to weapon damage? Oh look, I'm about to be attacked by a fighter. *cast protection from magic weapons and turn into a vampire becoming immune to normal weapons too.*

Then eat my other spell which makes me immune to weapon damage AND redirects all the damage I took DIRECTLY BACK AT YOU. Casters could literall walk up to noncasters in 2e and beat them in a fist fight.

Uh, protection from magic weapons was a 1st edition FR spell. In 2nd it was split into 3 spells. Correct me if I'm mistaken however I can't quite recall the spell which allows you to turn into a vampire.

EDIT: SMH of course you were talking shape change, I always forget about undead when reading it because of the living creature wording. Of course this is assuming that you are at least level 18 and you can stop the opponent from targeting the jade circlet which you must keep on you. Or the many weaknesses of the vampire form.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 03:27 PM

Errr, where was that rule? Pretty sure this is flat wrong. In fact, stoneskin prevented all damage and I remember books that included that using the 2e rules. They were still able to cast spells with flying debris being thrown at them.
So pretty sure this is made up.

2E revised PHB page 111. In fact, this page explicitly says that you *cannot* cast a spell if you are exposed to a storm. Although the book does say that the DM can make a ruling in the case of non-weapon attacks, so replace "pebble" with "dart" if you want to be 100% RAW.

Cosi

2017-12-21, 03:29 PM

But dungeons and dragons is a game where you can play a fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger, rogue, bard, monk, cleric, druid, wizard, or sorcerer from levels 1-20. D&D is a game that defines a fighter (or a rogue, monk, or barbarian) as someone who doesn't cast spells.

You don't have to cast spells to not be mundane. Binders, Incarnates, Psions, and Artificers all don't cast spells. None of them are mundane.

What you call "hypocrisy" I see as a change in terms. "Arch-mage" is a power level, not a concept. I would never kick an apprentice magic user who has the potential to one day become an arch-mage out of the party. Likewise you shouldn't have to accept a level 1 fighter in your level 20 party.

"Mundane" is a power concept too. What exactly changes about his character concept if you let Captain America fly? He's still loyal, inspiring, self-sacrificing, and patriotic. He still has his shield and his personal code of ethics. He still fought Nazis. Hell, Superman is basically just a leveled up version of Captain America without the shield. Does Superman become mundane if he has a Kryptonian shield he carries around?

If flying Captain America is a different character from regular Captain America, then archmage is a different character from apprentice. And if he's not, why do you care if Captain America can fly?

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-21, 03:35 PM

I think that kind of proves my point, right? No one is relying on "holes" as their anti-tank strategy. People use them, but people are already using mundane techniques to limit casters. The example that started this off involved a caster who was tied up with ropes which are, presumably, not magic.

The Russian judge has given 8/10 for these mental gymnastics.

That people use more than one anti-tank strategy in no way makes you less wrong in the assertion that digging holes is rarely used to counter tanks when, in fact, it's very common. It is supplemented, but that's not an argument that you're right. Just a statement that holes filled with explosives > just holes. That doesn't make the holes any less effective at their job of stopping tanks. Also, your entire argument was "if it works, why don't they use it?" They do. The end. This is where you say "Ah, ok. Didn't know that" and move on.

When a guy with actual military experience explains that you're wrong and you still try to claim you're right... it just looks bad.

As to the other arguments you made:

"Marvel westerns"
This is a horrible example. It would be more akin to someone who likes Westerns watching Star Wars, which operates on Western tropes despite being technically another genre.
You can get your western kick from watching Star Wars, just in a different way.

Your argument is now that they're enjoying a thing suboptimally. And also ignoring that I never claimed people ONLY like the numbers, but that it is a valid thing to enjoy. You decided somewhere that people can only like 1 aspect of any given thing and if they don't like the right one then they're wrong. Which is not only elitist, snobby, and requires unusually tall equines, but factually not true.

On "Goalposts"
Pointing out a failure to deal with other objections in favor of one particular one is not a goalpost shift. That's pointing out a thing you did. Two different things.

On "victory"
Notice how I've been using victory as what it is, whereas you have been relying on a semantic argument to change the variety of victory (which is also a goalpost shift from Winning to A Specific Kind of Winning) and then accusing me of using semantics.

LOLWUT

Bruh.

BRUH.

Wut r u doin

Cosi

2017-12-21, 03:45 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 04:57 PM

You don't have to cast spells to not be mundane. Binders, Incarnates, Psions, and Artificers all don't cast spells. None of them are mundane.

And?

"Mundane" is a power concept too. What exactly changes about his character concept if you let Captain America fly? He's still loyal, inspiring, self-sacrificing, and patriotic. He still has his shield and his personal code of ethics. He still fought Nazis. Hell, Superman is basically just a leveled up version of Captain America without the shield. Does Superman become mundane if he has a Kryptonian shield he carries around?

If flying Captain America is a different character from regular Captain America, then archmage is a different character from apprentice. And if he's not, why do you care if Captain America can fly?

You know, maybe "concept" was the wrong word to use.

Because yeah, power level is part of the concept. And changing any part of the character does change their concept. Some things are minor, other things are major. For most characters you can change the auxiliary details without changing the "core" and few characters have their power level as the "core" of their concept, but there are a few.

So yeah, concept was probably the wrong word. Maybe archetype would have been a better choice?

What would you call descriptions like:

A fighter, regardless of level, is a master of arms. He has no supernatural abilities save perhaps those contained within his gear, he is a badass combatant who can use weapons and armor better than any class.

Likewise a wizard, regardless of level, is an academic spell-caster. He has very high levels of power, contained within finite packets called spells which are lost once cast, and balances out his incredible versatility and power with a dependency on a spell book and needing to take time to plan out which spells he thinks he will need and prepare them beforehand.

Calthropstu

2017-12-21, 05:02 PM

ijon

2017-12-21, 05:14 PM

Trevor, if you're going to flame instead of making arguments, go post on a board where that's appropriate like 4chan. I'm done engaging with you until you have something substantive to say. Protip: that would involve engaging with people's arguments, rather than insisting that they are wrong.

trevor did make arguments. just because you don't like the tone of them doesn't mean they aren't there.

although quite frankly, at this point I think you're trying to cover up for your lack of ways to misdirect his arguments yet again.

if hole can beat tank - and it can, no matter how much you squabble about how often it gets used - then you cannot say technology always beats not-technology.

if some bands of soldiers with beat up WW2 and cold war surplus can beat the biggest military superpower in the world - which they did, no matter how you try to invalidate it based off the type of victory - you cannot say that more technology always trumps less technology.

and even if neither of those premises are true, even if more technology is absolutely always better, this is a game. why can't, say, a carefully placed silvered arrow or whatever beat polymorphing? why can't a legendary warrior just know how to smash or cut his way through a wall of force or a forcecage? why does magic get to be so damn infallible?

me, I'm sick of the whole system anyway. "pick from a list" isn't fun to work with; I'd much prefer something like magicka's system where you start with a base effect, mix elements together to get what you want. have D&D-like spells here and there for what can't be made in that system, but for the most part, let me go crazy.

but regardless of the system, the spells need counters. if I throw up a wall of fire, let people destroy it by throwing water at it. if I throw up a field of ice, you should be able to melt it. if I let loose a beam of lightning, a copper rod shoved into the ground near the beam should be able to divert it. if I start flying, a bunch of arrows should make keeping flight a whole lot harder - after all, I have a bunch of arrows in me. if I scry on someone, there should be a way for them to notice I'm scrying on them, and just straight up hide from the sensor. polymorph? silver arrow to some magical focal point that keeps the polymorph together. dimension door? Mr. Barbarian Man who's in your face says no, and grabs you through the door and pulls you back. gate? Mr. Barbarian Man still says no, and tries his absolute best to crush the gate closed with his bare hands before anything gets through*.

there's plenty of ways for mundane to counter magic... if you actually build with that in mind. 3.5 for the most part did not (at least webs can burn), and that's why these stupid threads about "wizards > fighters" pop up month after month after month after year after year.

no, it won't satisfy your god-wizard desires. it will satisfy the players of martials who don't want to be useless (oh hey, now I can attack the spell! I'm useful!), and tone down the power of spells without harming them conceptually. it doesn't even require martials to have some magic-but-not-magic! is that not what people want?

fighters are supposed to be the masters of their craft, after all. is it really so much of a stretch that they'd have figured out how to stab magic?

* this one doesn't work unless calling a creature actually takes time. which it should. gate being able to instantly drag someone through is a very good example of "you can't do anything to stop this spell", and I hate it.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-21, 05:16 PM

Because we are playing Dungeons and Dragons.

If I showed up to Vampire with a werewolf or Star Trek with a Jedi I would be in the wrong. If I showed up to a game of Magic and wanted to play as the Banelish hero rather than a planes walker I would be wrong.

But dungeons and dragons is a game where you can play a fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger, rogue, bard, monk, cleric, druid, wizard, or sorcerer from levels 1-20. D&D is a game that defines a fighter (or a rogue, monk, or barbarian) as someone who doesn't cast spells.

What you call "hypocrisy" I see as a change in terms. "Arch-mage" is a power level, not a concept. I would never kick an apprentice magic user who has the potential to one day become an arch-mage out of the party. Likewise you shouldn't have to accept a level 1 fighter in your level 20 party.

If insisted that my guy had exactly the capabilities that Conan displayed in X novel, and we determined that was 7th level, and then I insisted on playing "my concept of a 7th level Conan" in your level 18 party I would be in the wrong; but as long as "barbarian" is a concept the game supports I should be well within my rights to play an 18th level version of Conan in the party.

And to me, that's one of the hardest parts of both these discussions and the effort to find better balance.

d20/D&D-like systems don't just say "this system can handle all these different particular degrees of power", they say "If you play by the RAW, your game WILL progress through these different particular degrees of power unless you just start over at some point".

Cosi

2017-12-21, 05:18 PM

And?

Therefore you can preserve the Fighter not casting spells while still having him not be mundane.

So yeah, concept was probably the wrong word. Maybe archetype would have been a better choice?

I don't see how that helps, really. Superman and Captain America seem like pretty similar archetypes. They're both metaphors for a romanticized past America that have boyscout ethics. I don't think you can reasonably claim that turning from Captain America to Superman is destroying your concept but turning from Doctor Strange to Sorcerer's Stone Harry Potter isn't.

A fighter, regardless of level, is a master of arms. He has no supernatural abilities save perhaps those contained within his gear, he is a badass combatant who can use weapons and armor better than any class.

I think if you have to shoehorn in "doesn't have supernatural abilities" explicitly, you're acknowledging that's not a fundamental part of the character conception. In this model, two characters can behave identically the entire game, but have to be different classes because one will eventually get ki blasts.

That said your arguments are rather weak. You do seem to be saying that if I like ever increasing numbers I should be playing video games instead of tabletop which simply isn't true. If I like the experienc of ttrpgs AND increasing numbers, D&D is an excellent choice. It has many things to offer, increasing numbers is one of them and has been since inception.

If you remember the original argument, I wasn't rejecting the idea of playing a game with increasing numbers. I was rejecting the idea of having "increase your numbers" as your motivation in a roleplaying game.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 05:36 PM

Therefore you can preserve the Fighter not casting spells while still having him not be mundane.

I think if you have to shoehorn in "doesn't have supernatural abilities" explicitly, you're acknowledging that's not a fundamental part of the character conception. In this model, two characters can behave identically the entire game, but have to be different classes because one will eventually get ki blasts.

A character's power source is a very core part of their identity in D&D.

Clerics and paladins channel godly power, druids and rangers channel natural energy, monks use Ki, wizards use arcane, psions use psychic powers, etc.

Rogues and fighters use their own innate skill. That is a core part of the classes.

I don't think you can reasonably claim that turning from Captain America to Superman is destroying your concept but turning from Doctor Strange to Sorcerer's Stone Harry Potter isn't.

D&D is a game about zero to hero levels of progression. A level 1 character is a virtual nobody straight out of training and by the end they are a legendary hero with the power to change the world. That is a core premise of the game.

Saying you can't play Dr. Strange at level 1 is more or less saying he is not an appropriate character in D&D. It also doesn't really feel right to me, as presumably Strange spent years learning magic before becoming all powerful, the recent movie had him unable to do more than shoot sparks for the first half and flat out told him that it would take him years or hard work and practice before he could do what the other masters could do.

I don't see how that helps, really. Superman and Captain America seem like pretty similar archetypes. They're both metaphors for a romanticized past America that have boyscout ethics.

One big difference is that Captain America is usually portrayed as the underdog. That's why his origin as a powerless weakling who stuck with it through heart and determination is so important. He succeeds because he cares.

Superman on the other hand has always been "the best" and constantly has to keep getting buffed to show everyone else up.

Its kind of like on Death Battle when they said "Superman will always beat Goku because Goku's story is about overcoming your limits while Superman's story is about having no limits."

Cosi

2017-12-21, 05:49 PM

If hole can beat tank - and it can, no matter how much you squabble about how often it gets used - then you cannot say technology always beats not-technology.

Does no one remember the original context of these arguments? The request was for "counters" to magic. Something that is only a part of your strategy is not a counter. It could be part of a counter, but it cannot itself be a counter. The status quo already has "counters to casters include non-magical elements". If that's what you want, you already have what you want, so clearly that can't be what you want when you ask for mundane counters to magic. Therefore, showing that counters to high-tech weapons include low-tech elements fails to provide an example relevant to the original point.

if some bands of soldiers with beat up WW2 and cold war surplus can beat the biggest military superpower in the world - which they did, no matter how you try to invalidate it based off the type of victory - you cannot say that more technology always trumps less technology.

I'm not invalidating it, I'm saying you're making a false equivalence. It seems self-evidently true that the position of the Viet Cong relative to the US after the Vietnam War was different than the position of the US relative to Germany after WW2. Given that, it seems perfectly reasonable to claim that those wars demonstrated different things. The Viet Cong didn't demonstrate an ability to overcome the US war machine, they demonstrated an ability to survive it long enough for it to give up. If you think those things are the same, you have missed the point on a pretty fundamental level.

and even if neither of those premises are true, even if more technology is absolutely always better, this is a game. why can't, say, a carefully placed silvered arrow or whatever beat polymorphing? why can't a legendary warrior just know how to smash or cut his way through a wall of force or a forcecage? why does magic get to be so damn infallible?

It's the Captain Hobo (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54615&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10) effect. If having a direct hotline to the power of the gods can't make you any better than a regular dude at fighting, your powers look lame.

me, I'm sick of the whole system anyway. "pick from a list" isn't fun to work with; I'd much prefer something like magicka's system where you start with a base effect, mix elements together to get what you want. have D&D-like spells here and there for what can't be made in that system, but for the most part, let me go crazy.

Because that is all but impossible to design well. Open ended spell design is hard to balance, and tends to be very complicated to use. Creating "matter" is broken in a way that creating specific kinds of matter is not (imagine if wall of stone was made out of solid nitrogen). If you have to redesign your fire blast from the ground up every time you use it, you either pick a default (largely equivalent to having fixed powers) or bog down the game figuring out exactly how many dice of which energy you want in what shape.

but regardless of the system, the spells need counters.

Yes, but those counters shouldn't be mundane abilities, because it makes magic less impactful.

no, it won't satisfy your god-wizard desires. it will satisfy the players of martials who don't want to be useless (oh hey, now I can attack the spell! I'm useful!), and tone down the power of spells without harming them conceptually. it doesn't even require martials to have some magic-but-not-magic! is that not what people want?

Bluntly, no. People want to be able to play powerful characters. If every ability has to be written with "how does Conan stop this" in mind, they can't get that. Because anything that Conan can do, some random dude can probably do with enough luck or numbers. And if you can't beat random dudes, your power level just can't go that high.

A character's power source is a very core part of their identity in D&D.

But "mundane" isn't a power source, it's the absence of a power source. "innate skill" doesn't mean "not magic". Goku's power comes from "innate skill" and is very much magic (again, broad definition of magic). Mundane just means "things that require no special ability to do". It's like saying you have the protected niche of not having a protected niche.

One big difference is that Captain America is usually portrayed as the underdog. That's why his origin as a powerless weakling who stuck with it through heart and determination is so important. He succeeds because he cares.

Sure. That still doesn't make what Captain America does specific to a power level. Captain America vs Iron Man has Captain America as the underdog. But so would "Captain America, but he can fly" vs Thanos.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 05:51 PM

A character's power source is a very core part of their identity in D&D.

Clerics and paladins channel godly power, druids and rangers channel natural energy, monks use Ki, wizards use arcane, psions use psychic powers, etc.

Rogues and fighters use their own innate skill. That is a core part of the classes.

I would say that, for me, character class/archetype/concept is dominantly about power source. Not power level. A wizard is a wizard, even if there's no chance of becoming Dr. Strange. A fighter draws on training, as does a rogue. That doesn't mean that they aren't fantastical (by which I mean capable of more than is possible for the modal untrained character in the setting). They don't cast spells, they don't channel arcane, divine, or psionic power, but they do access power. 4e called it the "martial" power source--tapping into the underlying power of reality through skill and training. It's fundamentally non-mundane--no hero is mundane by definition.

On the other hand, trying to recreate or emulate characters (even in concept) from other media in D&D is one of the sources of the problems here. You can't classify Captain America as a X (fighter, mundane, whatever). He doesn't fit in D&D. Neither does Dr. Strange. Both of those come from settings whose fundamental rules are completely different than those of D&D, enough so that they only confuse the picture.

Both of those also break the most important limitations. The implicit setting limitations. Why are even the most powerful NPC wizards so "poorly" optimized? Because, in that setting, by the decision of the overgods (the setting designers), that's the appropriate power level. When you find "tricks" that break that (either as an ubercharger, or a god wizard, or whatever), you're breaking the constraints that hold the setting together. It's possible, it may even be allowed by a particular reading of the rules text, but should you? Or should you find another system, another setting that better portrays those power levels? Breaking things is easy, including constraints. Any fool that reads guides on the internet can do it. Staying within them takes control. It's also much better for the game, for the game culture, and especially for newcomers.

Calthropstu

2017-12-21, 05:55 PM

trevor did make arguments. just because you don't like the tone of them doesn't mean they aren't there.

although quite frankly, at this point I think you're trying to cover up for your lack of ways to misdirect his arguments yet again.

if hole can beat tank - and it can, no matter how much you squabble about how often it gets used - then you cannot say technology always beats not-technology.

if some bands of soldiers with beat up WW2 and cold war surplus can beat the biggest military superpower in the world - which they did, no matter how you try to invalidate it based off the type of victory - you cannot say that more technology always trumps less technology.

and even if neither of those premises are true, even if more technology is absolutely always better, this is a game. why can't, say, a carefully placed silvered arrow or whatever beat polymorphing? why can't a legendary warrior just know how to smash or cut his way through a wall of force or a forcecage? why does magic get to be so damn infallible?

me, I'm sick of the whole system anyway. "pick from a list" isn't fun to work with; I'd much prefer something like magicka's system where you start with a base effect, mix elements together to get what you want. have D&D-like spells here and there for what can't be made in that system, but for the most part, let me go crazy.

but regardless of the system, the spells need counters. if I throw up a wall of fire, let people destroy it by throwing water at it. if I throw up a field of ice, you should be able to melt it. if I let loose a beam of lightning, a copper rod shoved into the ground near the beam should be able to divert it. if I start flying, a bunch of arrows should make keeping flight a whole lot harder - after all, I have a bunch of arrows in me. if I scry on someone, there should be a way for them to notice I'm scrying on them, and just straight up hide from the sensor. polymorph? silver arrow to some magical focal point that keeps the polymorph together. dimension door? Mr. Barbarian Man who's in your face says no, and grabs you through the door and pulls you back. gate? Mr. Barbarian Man still says no, and tries his absolute best to crush the gate closed with his bare hands before anything gets through*.

there's plenty of ways for mundane to counter magic... if you actually build with that in mind. 3.5 for the most part did not (at least webs can burn), and that's why these stupid threads about "wizards > fighters" pop up month after month after month after year after year.

no, it won't satisfy your god-wizard desires. it will satisfy the players of martials who don't want to be useless (oh hey, now I can attack the spell! I'm useful!), and tone down the power of spells without harming them conceptually. it doesn't even require martials to have some magic-but-not-magic! is that not what people want?

fighters are supposed to be the masters of their craft, after all. is it really so much of a stretch that they'd have figured out how to stab magic?

* this one doesn't work unless calling a creature actually takes time. which it should. gate being able to instantly drag someone through is a very good example of "you can't do anything to stop this spell", and I hate it.

Oddly enough nearly all the things you mentioned are actually a thing in Pathfinder. Scrying creates a sensor that can be noticed with perception, wall of ice can be melted, and Gate can straight up fail. You call a type of creature and its hd can't exceed twice your cl and it can be controlled if it does not exceed your hd.

So when you call a Solar with CL 30 and get a Solar with 10 levels of Fighter under its belt and it tells you to go to hell... and tries to send you there.... oops.

But yeah PF put a whole bunch of mundane counters to spells. Check it out.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 06:13 PM

It's the Captain Hobo (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54615&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10) effect. If having a direct hotline to the power of the gods can't make you any better than a regular dude at fighting, your powers look lame.

Yes, but those counters shouldn't be mundane abilities, because it makes magic less impactful.

Bluntly, no. People want to be able to play powerful characters. If every ability has to be written with "how does Conan stop this" in mind, they can't get that. Because anything that Conan can do, some random dude can probably do with enough luck or numbers. And if you can't beat random dudes, your power level just can't go that high.

And this is why this discussion will never reach anything resembling an end.

What you want out of RPGs is to feel superior to the "muggles," and don't want to compromise.

If I enjoy playing, say the three musketeers, and you enjoy playing Dr. Strange then we should both be able to play our characters in the same game. And if the rules say that all of the characters are equal, you need to get over the feeling of "but I don't feel special without dominating the game!" and suck it up just like I need to get over the feeling of "This weird wizard is totally out of place in my swashbuckling adventure and messing up the theme!" and suck it up.

Unless you are lucky enough to find a group where everyone wants the same thing you have to have some compromises, and if you are playing a well balanced game those compromises will often be in theme and feel as much as they are mechanics.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-21, 06:18 PM

And this is why this discussion will never reach anything resembling an end.

What you want out of RPGs is to feel superior to the "muggles," and don't want to compromise.

If I enjoy playing, say the three musketeers, and you enjoy playing Dr. Strange then we should both be able to play our characters in the same game. And if the rules say that all of the characters are equal, you need to get over the feeling of "but I don't feel special without dominating the game!" and suck it up just like I need to get over the feeling of "This weird wizard is totally out of place in my swashbuckling adventure and messing up the theme!" and suck it up.

Unless you are lucky enough to find a group where everyone wants the same thing you have to have some compromises, and if you are playing a well balanced game those compromises will often be in theme and feel as much as they are mechanics.

Should the Three Musketeers and Dr Strange really be playable in the same campaign, in the same setting, in the same system, at the same time?

Or do they grow out of incompatible presumptions and conditions?

ijon

2017-12-21, 06:18 PM

Yes, but those counters shouldn't be mundane abilities, because it makes magic less impactful.

so basically, screw mundanes. they can't have nice things because it rains on your magic parade.

Bluntly, no. People want to be able to play powerful characters. If every ability has to be written with "how does Conan stop this" in mind, they can't get that. Because anything that Conan can do, some random dude can probably do with enough luck or numbers. And if you can't beat random dudes, your power level just can't go that high.

so in other words, mundanes can't counter magic because it means they'd be able to fight back, and you can't have that. it doesn't matter if a mage can conjure up a wall of fire, because someone can dump a massive tank of water on it. it doesn't matter if they can call in a withering thunderstorm, because someone can get a copper rod and redirect lightning away from him. it doesn't matter if they can open a gate to a plane of water and flood the entire world, because someone can maybe close it without magic. it doesn't matter if they can teleport people from one side of the world to the other, because other people can either hijack the teleport or drag you back. they're powerful, but because the rabble who don't have magic still have some hope of fighting back, it's pointless.

gee, I wonder why people have a problem with that line of thinking.

Oddly enough nearly all the things you mentioned are actually a thing in Pathfinder. Scrying creates a sensor that can be noticed with perception, wall of ice can be melted, and Gate can straight up fail. You call a type of creature and its hd can't exceed twice your cl and it can be controlled if it does not exceed your hd.

So when you call a Solar with CL 30 and get a Solar with 10 levels of Fighter under its belt and it tells you to go to hell... and tries to send you there.... oops.

But yeah PF put a whole bunch of mundane counters to spells. Check it out.

yeah, I've read that before. but the game I'm currently in is 3.5, and it is making me so, so sad how easily my dude with a giant sword and some close-range pyromancy, and my dude with a shield and spear, is made useless.

that, and I think I'd enjoy something with more tech and guns anyway.

Milo v3

2017-12-21, 06:21 PM

If I enjoy playing, say the three musketeers, and you enjoy playing Dr. Strange then we should both be able to play our characters in the same game. And if the rules say that all of the characters are equal, you need to get over the feeling of "but I don't feel special without dominating the game!" and suck it up just like I need to get over the feeling of "This weird wizard is totally out of place in my swashbuckling adventure and messing up the theme!" and suck it up.
Alternatively, we could actually just get a system which actually has characters of the same level on the same level? That way if people want a musketeer-scope game you play level 3-6, while if you want a (comic) Dr. Strange-scope game you play 9-12 if you wanted to use D&D style leveling. If it was something like mutants and masterminds, you'd have it be 6-9 for the musketeers while 9-12 for the Dr. Stranges.

This whole problem comes from different classes have different ideas on what the scope/power of different stages of the game should have, despite the fact that every class is meant to be equal-ish at each level. Going out of your way to play a high-level concept in a low-level game, or a low-level concept in a high-level game sounds more like actively trying to create a problem.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 06:22 PM

Should the Three Musketeers and Dr Strange really be playable in the same campaign, in the same setting, in the same system, at the same time?

Or do they grow out of incompatible presumptions and conditions?

I agree here. Any system that can model one is unlikely to be able to model the other. Any setting that supports play with one will fail with the other. The kinds of challenges each will find appropriate are too disparate.

Settings, as well as systems, have implicit "appropriate" power levels. They may technically work with higher or lower levels, but that's like running a motor on the wrong voltage or frequency of AC current. Risky, and breakage is not the motors fault.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 06:27 PM

Alternatively, we could actually just get a system which actually has characters of the same level on the same level? That way if people want a musketeer-scope game you play level 3-6, while if you want a (comic) Dr. Strange-scope game you play 9-12.

This whole problem comes from different classes have different ideas on what the scope/power of different stages of the game should have, despite the fact that every class is meant to be equal-ish at each level. Going out of your way to play a high-level concept in a low-level game, or a low-level concept in a high-level game sounds more like actively trying to create a problem.

Should the Three Musketeers and Dr Strange really be playable in the same campaign, in the same setting, in the same system, at the same time?

Or do they grow out of incompatible presumptions and conditions?

Agreed, if you are lucky enough to have a group that all agrees on one setting and power level.

But in the real world you have to compromise, and there isn't anything inherently wrong with bending your perception of the narrative a little to let that one guy who only wants to play Dr. Strange do so in your three muskateers campaign or vice versa.

D&D is a bit of a strange case as it has rapid advancement and changes wildly over time, other games don't have that problem so much.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-21, 06:31 PM

I agree here. Any system that can model one is unlikely to be able to model the other. Any setting that supports play with one will fail with the other. The kinds of challenges each will find appropriate are too disparate.

Settings, as well as systems, have implicit "appropriate" power levels. They may technically work with higher or lower levels, but that's like running a motor on the wrong voltage or frequency of AC current. Risky, and breakage is not the motors fault.

Even a system that can handle both, probably can't handle both at the same time... and even if it can, they inherently aren't on an even playing field and won't be balanced against each other in the same campaign.

If someone wants to lord it over the "mundanes" or "muggles", then a game where those characters are supposed to be viable playable options right alongside the "magic" characters isn't the appropriate game.

Agreed, if you are lucky enough to have a group that all agrees on one setting and power level.

But in the real world you have to compromise, and there isn't anything inherently wrong with bending your perception of the narrative a little to let that one guy who only wants to play Dr. Strange do so in your three muskateers campaign or vice versa.

In that case, either the Muskateers have to get a boost, "Dr Strange" needs to sacrifice, or the players have to agree that their characters are just operating on different scopes and scales.

Milo v3

2017-12-21, 06:31 PM

But in the real world you have to compromise, and there isn't anything inherently wrong with bending your perception of the narrative a little to let that one guy who only wants to play Dr. Strange do so in your three muskateers campaign or vice versa.
Thing is if you do that, then you don't get the right to complain that Dr. Strange is too versatile or powerful compared to the musketeers.

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 06:36 PM

Thing is if you do that, then you don't get the right to complain that Dr. Strange is too versatile or powerful compared to the musketeers.

Note that I am not talking about letting one player ignore the rules of the game.

I am suggesting that he get as close as he can to Dr. Strange within the rules of the game even if it doesn't fit the other player's notions of the themes and narrative of the world.

The "Captain Hobo" argument above is all about a game where the rules are more or less balanced and ensure that all of the characters be on more or less equal footing mechanically but one guy makes a wildly inappropriate character backstory.

Cosi

2017-12-21, 07:01 PM

What you want out of RPGs is to feel superior to the "muggles," and don't want to compromise.

And what you want is to not have powers, and don't want to compromise. My position is exactly like yours: I want the game to support the kinds of characters I want to play. Again, what exactly are you compromising on when you get your super-mundane?

If I enjoy playing, say the three musketeers, and you enjoy playing Dr. Strange then we should both be able to play our characters in the same game.

I don't think that's true at all. If you enjoy playing the God Emperor of Man, and I enjoy playing a grizzled noir detective, our characters won't work in the same game. And that's fine! Some things don't work together. We can either pick other concepts, or not play together. Sometimes you can't reach a compromise. What's the appropriate compromise if I want to play Shadowrun and you want to play D&D? I play a cyborged out Troll who rolls dicepools and you play a Barbarian who rolls d20s?

"but I don't feel special without dominating the game!"

That's not what I said and you know it. I'm not demanding that I be better than the other players. I'm saying that if being blessed by the god of war doesn't make me a better warrior than a normal dude, that blessing doesn't feel meaningful. I'm absolutely fine not overshadowing someone who is a good warrior because of their ancestor spirits or totem powers. Or someone who has arcane powers or whatever other powers. My problem is very specifically that you are asking that "nothing" be as good as "something". That makes whatever something I have unsatisfying.

so in other words, mundanes can't counter magic because it means they'd be able to fight back,

I mean, that's kind of a pointlessly antagonistic way to put it, but yeah. If normal people can counter magic, that fundamentally changes the nature of magic, just as it would fundamentally change the nature of Superman if you could negate his powers with a ham sandwich. The idea that it's somehow stupid or selfish to be interested in stories where character with powers are meaningfully more powerful than characters without them strikes me as absurd. Lots of stories are like that, many of them are very good. To be clear, I'm not saying this is the way it has to be at all levels or in all games. But shouldn't some levels of some games be able to do stories like Traveler's Gate where having powers lets you walk all over people without them?

Alternatively, we could actually just get a system which actually has characters of the same level on the same level?

No, see, we have to allow all the concepts in the same game because otherwise we're being mean. Everything is actually equal, it's just the stupid casters breaking everything with dumb cheese. /s

Yes, this is exactly what you should do. Have Tiers* that define what kinds of characters are appropriate, and don't complain about power discrepancies if you do cross-Tier adventures. The Three Musketeers are simply less powerful than Doctor Strange, and trying to put them in the same party will either warp the characters, or result in a story where one character overshadows the rest.

*: Do be absolutely clear, I mean 4e style Tiers, not JaronK's stuff.

Going out of your way to play a high-level concept in a low-level game, or a low-level concept in a high-level game sounds more like actively trying to create a problem.

Yes, this is absolutely true. The problem is that while people can identify "high level concept, low level game" as a problem, they seem incapable of doing the reverse.

Settings, as well as systems, have implicit "appropriate" power levels. They may technically work with higher or lower levels, but that's like running a motor on the wrong voltage or frequency of AC current. Risky, and breakage is not the motors fault.

I don't think this is as true as you believe. MtG supports a wide range of power levels fairly elegantly. There are plenty of low level adventures to be had on Zendikar or Theros or Ravnica even though there are planeswalkers out there. You have to do some work to figure out how to put the system in equilibrium, but I don't think it's impossible to get it to work. What tends to be impossible is tacking stuff on later, which is why I'm unwilling to accept Talakeal's "solution" of "my stuff goes in the core game, your stuff gets added on later when we do Epic". I just don't think that can be made to work. Whatever goes in the game needs to be planned for from the word go.

Agreed, if you are lucky enough to have a group that all agrees on one setting and power level.

You should. Just as you should have a group that agrees on one system and one place to game and one DM and one set of houserules. That agreement may be a a compromise, but if our compromise is "I play a guy with a gun, you play a guy with reality warping cosmic power" you hardly have a right to complain when I'm more effective than you are. Similarly if our compromise is "I play a guy with a gun, you play a guy with equivalently powerful magic" I don't have a right to complain that I don't have cosmic power.

Pex

2017-12-21, 07:09 PM

But... spellcasters already have those characteristics. Losing HP (in comparison), easier to be attacked by enemies, etc. Are you saying that you don't want things going any further in that direction?

There is a difference between the goblin attacks, hits your low AC, you take 4 damage and casting Magic Missile taking 4 damage to pay for the privilege of casting it.

Milo v3

2017-12-21, 07:19 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 07:22 PM

And what you want is to not have powers, and don't want to compromise. My position is exactly like yours: I want the game to support the kinds of characters I want to play. Again, what exactly are you compromising on when you get your super-mundane?

We both get to play the character we want. That's compromise.

That's not what I said and you know it. I'm not demanding that I be better than the other players. I'm saying that if being blessed by the god of war doesn't make me a better warrior than a normal dude, that blessing doesn't feel meaningful. I'm absolutely fine not overshadowing someone who is a good warrior because of their ancestor spirits or totem powers. Or someone who has arcane powers or whatever other powers. My problem is very specifically that you are asking that "nothing" be as good as "something". That makes whatever something I have unsatisfying..

But its not about "normal dude," its about the other PCs.

A level 20 warrior is going have been the pinnacle of genetic perfection to start with and will have endured years of training to his limit and facing life or death odds in battle. He is a legendary hero. And he could say the exact same thing about seeing a level 20 DMM cleric who suddenly can fight as good as he can because he sat around a temple and kissed up to a god and had everything handed to him on a silver platter.

IMO PCs should be roughly balanced regardless of their archetype, and fighter who does not draw on an external power source has been a core PC archetype in every edition of D&D.

Pex

2017-12-21, 07:26 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 07:30 PM

No, see, we have to allow all the concepts in the same game because otherwise we're being mean. Everything is actually equal, it's just the stupid casters breaking everything with dumb cheese. /s

Having fun beating up on that straw-man there?

I never said that the game was perfectly balanced or that cheese was entirely in the caster court. In fact I have said the opposite repeatedly in this very thread.

Now let me ask you a hypothetical question for a second; imagine for a second I only had fun playing as Pun-Pun, and told everyone who didn't want to play Pun-Pun that everyone else was being stupid for not wanting me to play Pun-Pun in every game and that D&D is, should be, and always has been, built around Pun-Pun and everyone else is just too dumb or dishonest to admit it. How would you respond to that?

ijon

2017-12-21, 07:30 PM

I think a good way to see whether a concept makes sense as a PC for a certain tier in a system is to look at what they're meant to be up against.

For example, if you're playing D&D or Pathfinder, go to the MM/Bestiary and look in the Creatures Sorted By CR Section. At low levels, you shouldn't be fighting giant elementals and tonnes of demons. While at high levels, you probably shouldn't be battling bandits and ankhegs. At high levels, the only "mundane" opponents that are even provided as potential options are NPCs with levels in "mundane" classes that you have to build yourself, because at that level mundane encounters aren't really what the game expects, so why are you still trying to play a level 5 character at high level?

but I don't want a level 5 dude. I want the fighter who can cut through forcecages because he's just that precise with a sword. I want the barbarian who can slam-dunk a guy through a wall and ignore his entire head being cut off because he's just that angry. I want the rogue who can open doors with a mere touch because he's just that slick. they don't channel any inner power or ki or whatever you want to call it; they just know their craft so well that they can do this crazy stuff, and yet still be just human. anyone could do it with enough practice, and the first step is taking that first level. most just die before they get that far.

it's the difference between slicing through a horde of enemies because you've been blessed by tyr or something, and slicing through a horde of enemies because you've been doing this for so long that this is child's play to you. the difference between opening locks in an instant thanks to enchanted gloves, and opening locks in an instant because you could pick it open in your sleep. you're just that good.

Lord Raziere

2017-12-21, 07:32 PM

We both get to play the character we want. That's compromise.

Exactly! We're already compromising by sitting down to play and acknowledging that you can play whatever you want and I can play whatever I want, and that we have no control over the story or the world other than our own backstories. Thats the GM's job.

and really, what happens in one PC's backstory doesn't really matter to another PC's backstory. if consistency prevents two cool superheroes from teaming up to do be awesome and have good bonding moments and funny moments where they interact with one another, screw consistency.

Jama7301

2017-12-21, 07:33 PM

so why are you still trying to play a level 5 character at high level?

Because the game gives me 20 levels of Fighter or Rogue to play.

It's so alien to me that in a world where wizards can literally rewrite the rules of reality, that martials are bound to the laws of this world. That there cannot exist a non-magic blacksmith so good at his job, that he can produce a Legendary weapon. That a high-level fighter, who is the pinnacle of close-range combat, can't do anything to a Forcecage.

Magic seems to have so many "no, you don't" buttons built in that can be thrown around, but any non-magical button that says "no" to a caster cannot exist.

I get the feeling that trying to replicate a spell through mundane means would also get axed at some tables, unless the process followed real-world physics to a T. If a rogue wanted to blow open a door they couldn't pick with a waterskin filled with oil and gunpowder, I'm sure a ruling of "you create a lot of smoke and fire*, but the door is fine" would come up, because that's how it would happen if you did that on Earth. But a little bat Guano and some funny words create an explosion just fine.

It's frustrating as someone who likes playing non-casters to see that there comes a flat point where you Aren't Needed Anymore. Where you could be replaced by a fraction of a class ability, in a spell slot.

*Not sure if this would happen with that particular mix, just seemed like the most common result based on how little I play with fire for fun.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 07:37 PM

A point buy system like GURPs can. They wouldn't exist in the same universe/game, but the same system can be used for either. Creating Dr. Strange over the Three Musketeers amounts to using more points to create the character and which abilities can be purchased. A Musketeers Game could be 100 points and no magic/psionics/super powers/high tech while a Dr. Strange Game is 500 Points and everything is allowed.

But not the same setting or game. Which is kinda the point here. Any functioning table is going to have to choose (or compromise in the middle). And doing so by level is one of the worst ways you can do so (if levels are a thing). It's guaranteed to make everyone unhappy for at least a good chunk of the time. And that's crappy design.

Let's say you had the following (abstracted) setup. Levels go 1-20, and there are only two basic types of player characters. Early bloomers and late bloomers. They have the following power curves:

1 --------------------------------10----------------------------- 20
<----------early bloomers------------------>
<--------------late bloomers----------->

This means that a mixed party of early and late bloomers is only going to be able to coexist for about a third of the game. If you start at level 1, the late bloomers are useless for the first 1/3 of the game--if it reaches 20, which most don't. If you start at the bottom of the late-bloomer curve, the late bloomers are happy throughout, but the early bloomers are at best at parity, then fade after 1/2 of the game. Any way you slice it, the two can't both be satisfied the whole game. Unless you start at the levels where late bloomers start becoming meaningful, and end when the early bloomers are starting to fade out. But if you do that, why not just make that the whole game? Why even have the first and last thirds in the same game? You could split it into three separate games and do everyone a favor. One where there's only the early bloomers, one where there's only the late bloomers, and one where things are balanced. 3e pretends to cover that last bit. But fails. Badly. In a multitude of ways.

And GURPS is kind of an exception here, as it's more a toolkit than a game system. You can build two different game systems, both using GURPS for the mechanical bits, but they aren't the same game system. Just like two cars that use the same engine (of which there are many such examples) aren't the same car, despite sharing that important component. Just like FATE and FUDGE (despite FATE being essentially FUDGE + <narrative stuff> as I understand it) are very different systems built on the same foundations.

Tanarii

2017-12-21, 07:59 PM

It's so alien to me that in a world where wizards can literally rewrite the rules of reality, that martials are bound to the laws of this world. That there cannot exist a non-magic blacksmith so good at his job, that he can produce a Legendary weapon. That a high-level fighter, who is the pinnacle of close-range combat, can't do anything to a Forcecage.
Why can't a non-magic blacksmith exist that is so good at his job he can produce a Legendary Weapon?

Talakeal

2017-12-21, 08:00 PM

Why can't a non-magic blacksmith exist that is so good at his job he can produce a Legendary Weapon?

AFAIK they didn't add the ability for non casters (or artificers) to make magic weapons until PF.

Mechalich

2017-12-21, 08:12 PM

I think a good way to see whether a concept makes sense as a PC for a certain tier in a system is to look at what they're meant to be up against.

For example, if you're playing D&D or Pathfinder, go to the MM/Bestiary and look in the Creatures Sorted By CR Section. At low levels, you shouldn't be fighting giant elementals and tonnes of demons. While at high levels, you probably shouldn't be battling bandits and ankhegs. At high levels, the only "mundane" opponents that are even provided as potential options are NPCs with levels in "mundane" classes that you have to build yourself, because at that level mundane encounters aren't really what the game expects, so why are you still trying to play a level 5 character at high level?

Well, there are a number of rather high CR giants (and other monsters that are defined primarily by being really big). A Fire Giant is supposedly CR 10 and has no magical powers whatsoever. A mastodon is CR 9 and is beaten by a level 1 druid spell - charm animal. It is interesting to note that PF tends to hand out certain magic blocking SLAs to high level primarily physical monsters in order to prevent them from being ganked in the most obvious ways. For instance the Linnorms - whose only offensive magical ability is their breath weapons - get permanent Freedom of Movement and True Seeing and immunity to mind-affecting effects because if they didn't have those they wouldn't possibly be viable at CR 14+.

In some sense, representing big creatures - whether they are mundane animals like elephants or fantasy staples like dragons - is a tricky issue in game design. A system that represents fairly dynamic combat between say two guys in chainmail with swords - which is the core fantasy combat experience - tends to throw up odd results when you try to use it to represent a Sahel tribesman with a spear fighting a Rhino. This is hardly a unique to D&D problem - the oWoD storyteller system collapses into madness when you try and represent large animals or mythic monsters (both things that can conceivably show up in Werewolf or Mage) using that system.

Milo v3

2017-12-21, 08:38 PM

but I don't want a level 5 dude. I want the fighter who can cut through forcecages because he's just that precise with a sword. I want the barbarian who can slam-dunk a guy through a wall and ignore his entire head being cut off because he's just that angry. I want the rogue who can open doors with a mere touch because he's just that slick. they don't channel any inner power or ki or whatever you want to call it; they just know their craft so well that they can do this crazy stuff, and yet still be just human. anyone could do it with enough practice, and the first step is taking that first level. most just die before they get that far.

it's the difference between slicing through a horde of enemies because you've been blessed by tyr or something, and slicing through a horde of enemies because you've been doing this for so long that this is child's play to you. the difference between opening locks in an instant thanks to enchanted gloves, and opening locks in an instant because you could pick it open in your sleep. you're just that good.
This sort of thing is agreeing with my view point, not against it. The problem is that in default D&D, that isn't what happens with martials because they want to keep playing with their level 5 character concepts until 20th level.

I specifically made homebrew fixes for rogue/fighter/barbarian for reasons like this + use the HP as meat-points interpretation to better have martials be cool at high levels.

Well, there are a number of rather high CR giants (and other monsters that are defined primarily by being really big). A Fire Giant is supposedly CR 10 and has no magical powers whatsoever. A mastodon is CR 9 and is beaten by a level 1 druid spell - charm animal. It is interesting to note that PF tends to hand out certain magic blocking SLAs to high level primarily physical monsters in order to prevent them from being ganked in the most obvious ways. For instance the Linnorms - whose only offensive magical ability is their breath weapons - get permanent Freedom of Movement and True Seeing and immunity to mind-affecting effects because if they didn't have those they wouldn't possibly be viable at CR 14+.
I love how when I say high level, your first two examples are creatures from the bottom half of the game's leveling system. In a game where there are CR 30 creatures, CR 10 is not a high level creature. :smalltongue:

Also.... fire giants aren't mundane. They're giant people made of friggin fire who throw molten rock at their enemies. Funnily because of their supernatural abilities, linnorms are very difficult to kill with just magic because they can only be killed if they are attacked with Cold Iron (but mages can still save-or-lose them, or save-or-lose them and then slit their throat with a cold iron dagger).

Chaosticket

2017-12-21, 08:46 PM

In some kinds of roleplaying games a Fighter type is actually the bottom of the class tree and gaining superhuman powers and physical abilities is what they gain from tiering up.

From my experience with many games its possible to gain powers. Martial/mundane classes keep trying to be superpowerless superheroes and some outright gain "supernatural" powers that are very technically not.

I see it instead as unlocking classes. Say you Fighter has high intelligence. That means you can learn magic to become a "jedi knight". There are counterparts like the Arcane Trickster and Arcane Archer.

I dont think their needs to be a rebalance unless magical classes are better than martial ones from the start.

I kind it weird when people insist they should be able to beat everything the "hard way" even in games with Archdevils and Lovecrafting Gods

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-21, 08:53 PM

Because the game gives me 20 levels of Fighter or Rogue to play.

It's so alien to me that in a world where wizards can literally rewrite the rules of reality, that martials are bound to the laws of this world. That there cannot exist a non-magic blacksmith so good at his job, that he can produce a Legendary weapon. That a high-level fighter, who is the pinnacle of close-range combat, can't do anything to a Forcecage.

Magic seems to have so many "no, you don't" buttons built in that can be thrown around, but any non-magical button that says "no" to a caster cannot exist.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with that if you build your setting around it.

But oddly, I think that you're getting pushback from TWO sides.

* those who insist that only "spellcasters" can do fantastic/magical things.
* those who insist that what their fighter or rogue or other "not a spellcaster" character does cannot have anything to do with magic (even in the broadest most open sense), nothing at all, must be completely "not magic" to the core.

So if a Fighter is leaping 50 feet or cutting through an iron-shod oaken door in a single stroke, that's either "not right" (typically first group) or "HAS to be because he's just that damn good, cannot be magic" (typically second group).

Lord Raziere

2017-12-21, 08:56 PM

I don't see anything inherently wrong with that if you build your setting around it.

But oddly, I think that you're getting pushback from TWO sides.

* those who insist that only "spellcasters" can do fantastic/magical things.
* those who insist that what their fighter or rogue or other "not a spellcaster" character does cannot have anything to do with magic (even in the broadest most open sense), nothing at all, must be completely "not magic" to the core.

I don't get the latter myself. You can do fantastic things without being magic, magic is literally just a word. An overused one to be honest. and wizards being the catchall term for the people who do fantastic things, just as overused. there is more to fantasy than everything being a wizard using magic.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 09:06 PM

I think a core part of the whole disconnect here is the concept of character concepts.

"Dr. Strange" is not a character concept. It's a character goal, which may or may not be achievable in a particular setting, system, or campaign. Useful character concepts tell how a character does his job (which in D&D is adventuring), not what power they have (or don't have). Not all character concepts are useful or valid for certain games--those concepts shouldn't be supported in the system. They break the fundamental assumptions about the system and setting. Some are inherently self-limiting--these can work if the rest of the campaign fits their limitations, but shouldn't be allowed to unilaterally dictate the campaign/setting.

Not useful concepts for a typical D&D game: "I'm a complete non-combatant with no significant out-of-combat skills either." "I'm a god incarnate, with full power intact." One is not useful because it offers nothing; the other fails because it leaves nothing for others. Both may be valid, useful concepts for other games, but not D&D as usually played. This is where the "I'm a god wizard" concepts fit, for me.

Self-limiting concepts (again, for a typical D&D game): "I'm a barbarian that hates anything mystical or magical. I refuse to use any magic items or Su abilities." This can work, but only for a very limited range of settings and campaigns. It has a certain niche, but will run out of steam very quickly. "I'm a mage who only uses fire spells." This can work fine, for a while, in limited settings and campaigns. It fails in any of low-magic campaigns, early levels, or against fire-resistant/immune enemies. "I am a pacifist who doesn't attack foes." If grappling's allowed, this can work for a while, but likely to be seriously annoying and less-than-useful unless the party builds around the technique. This is where the "I'm a mundane--no magic allowed" concepts fit, again, for me.

Examples of more useful concepts: "I'm an arcane magic user who focuses on disabling enemies." "I'm a weapon-master (not the class) who focuses on big melee weapons and brute strength." "I'm a nimble type who prefers the shadows and striking while unseen." "I'm a follower of the gods who tries to protect his allies." "I'm a divine warrior who smites the foe with divine wrath." "I blast my foes with arcane might." All of these tell me how a character approaches challenges in general. All of these can scale to all sorts of power levels while being able to provide motivations for actions and meaningful guidance for the DM.

I've focused mainly on combat here, but the same could be applied to other areas of the game. "I'm a dumb brute who doesn't do social stuff" is a self-limiting concept in the social regime. "I can talk anyone into anything" is inappropriate, as it leaves too little room for challenges. "I'm a fast talker who prefers to only tell the technical truth" is a more useful concept. "I'm an expert X, so I rarely fail" is a bad concept for a low-starting-level (or low-power) campaign. It may be doable at higher levels (character or power), but it doesn't downscale well.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-21, 09:17 PM

I don't get the latter myself. You can do fantastic things without being magic, magic is literally just a word. An overused one to be honest. and wizards being the catchall term for the people who do fantastic things, just as overused. there is more to fantasy than everything being a wizard using magic.

I think part of the problem (from both sides) is that "magic" has become erroneously synonymous with "spellcasting".

There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the sword-wielding, armor-wearing, martial-concept character pushing her physical acts beyond the realm of what's normally possible for most people through an internal application of "fantastical energy" (that is, magic, ki, universe-power, divine light, void energy, whatever) because of her training, willpower, bloodline, ego, again whatever. Just integrate that into the setting and system and you're good to go.

But for some reason the very suggestion of that seems to actually offend some people, including those who want to be able to play an expy or archetype of some thoroughly and steadfastly "not-magic" character and have them be balanced and dead-even with the "spellcaster" who can wreck worlds (as in straight up Tyrannosaurus Rekt) at the highest levels.

Just takes us back to how a game can't be everything to everyone simultaneously. Somewhere along the way D&D made, or at least its fans presumed, a promise that it can't keep... because NO game ever can possibly keep it.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 09:21 PM

Mechalich

2017-12-21, 09:49 PM

Just takes us back to how a game can't be everything to everyone simultaneously. Somewhere along the way D&D made, or at least its fans presumed, a promise that it can't keep... because NO game ever can possibly keep it.

The fiction has contributed to this. Drizzt is probably the most famous D&D character, he's also one of the least magical (he doesn't even have several of the magical abilities a ranger of his level ought to possess). Yet Drizzt's relationship with spellcasters is extremely erratic. Sometimes he can do absolutely nothing - like when he got mind-ganked by Illithids or wailed fruitlessly against an entreri protected by a kinetic barrier. Other times he's beaten Balors and helped his friend Bruenor Battlehammer kill an epic level Drow cleric. Sure, Drizzt has magical scimitars but otherwise he's all skill.

In D&D fiction spells level 'immune to magical weapons' and the like can be subverted by narrative at any time. A woman armed only with a magical sword can hunt and kill multiple Phaerrim in the ruins of Myth Drannor and a completely magic-less Tuigan Horde can be just as dangerous to the magic flooded Realms as the actual Mongols were to medieval Europe.

At the same time Raistlin Majere can solve literally every problem the Heroes of the Lance have by himself in Neraka and save the world as a stepping stone to his ascension to godhood and magical monsters like Lord Soth can simple power word, kill pretty much an opponent who gets in their way.

Square that circle.

Lord Raziere

2017-12-21, 09:50 PM

I think part of the problem (from both sides) is that "magic" has become erroneously synonymous with "spellcasting".

There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the sword-wielding, armor-wearing, martial-concept character pushing his physical acts beyond the realm of what's normally possible for most people through an internal application of "fantastical energy" (that is, magic, ki, universe-power, divine light, void energy, whatever) because of her training, willpower, bloodline, ego, again whatever. Just integrate that into the setting and system and you're good to go.

But for some reason the very suggestion of that seems to actually offend some people, including those who want to be able to play an expy or archetype of some thoroughly and steadfastly "not-magic" character and have them be balanced and dead-even with the "spellcaster" who can wreck worlds (as in straight up Tyrannosaurus Rekt) at the highest levels.

Just takes us back to how a game can't be everything to everyone simultaneously. Somewhere along the way D&D made, or at least its fans presumed, a promise that it can't keep... because NO game ever can possibly keep it.

Well the only not-magic character I can recall being able to keep up with godlike people without going wuxia/anime or whatever is the batman and um......

how to say it?

Batman has a bunch of gadgets that are literally dependent on plot for their existence (seriously, check, the gadgets Batman has is not consistent even between one episode and the next and one thing he'll have in one instance he'll mysteriously not have in another) and many of his gadgets are well, not plausible by real world standards. batarangs are an impractical weapon to fight crime with at best. his hookshot which he uses to swing around? yeah um, where is all that rope coming from? did he invent tardis space just for his hookshot so that he can swing around gotham? and realistically speaking a utility belt can only hold so much of anything.

then we get into the ridiculous number of skills he has. like, he is this hyper-polymath genius that puts most rogues and bards to shame with how much he can do without any tools at all. The amount of things he can do with expertise and competence would take multiple lifetimes to learn, dozens maybe even hundreds of lives to compress it all into a single person, and just imagine the kind of powerful memory you'd need to keep that all straight without going insane from the sheer information overload!

Not only that, he pushes through pain and injuries that would kill most people, he spends obsessive amounts of time just fighting crime without stopping or resting, he hatches complex schemes to foil the villains complex schemes, all the while somehow constantly keeping himself in shape, keeping his multi-billion dollar corporation in the black, organizing charities for Gotham, patrolling the city to beat up random muggers, discussing things with Gordon, with dates with Catwoman and/or Talia Al'Ghul on the side, while potentially teaching 1-3 apprentices in Robin, Bat Girl and Grayson and of course doing work with the Justice League which is home to a bunch of crazy deeds he can do that are even more unbelievable all by themselves.

One wonders how this guy has time to go to all those rich people parties he finds himself in. or go to the bathroom.

Its to the point where you suspect, that the Batman has somehow cloned himself to go forth and learn everything in legion then come back and fuse himself together again, so he can clone himself again so that one fights crime, one dates the ladies, one keeps his corporation intact and one teaches the future superheroes. and somehow juggles it so that none of these people know he is doing this.

In all probability, we could find numerous other strange unrealisms in any other "mundane" we can name, because Batman by this metric is somehow pulling off being able to manage a vastly complex busy lifestyle without snapping entirely or wearing out. He is as human as a tireless robot filled with all the knowledge of the world and more tools designed into him than Inspector Gadget.

So what they are looking for is a myth, and there is no point to the distinction because any being worth playing at the level I'd find fun (high level) is unrealistic and fantastic no matter how you slice it.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-21, 09:54 PM

The fiction has contributed to this. Drizzt is probably the most famous D&D character, he's also one of the least magical (he doesn't even have several of the magical abilities a ranger of his level ought to possess). Yet Drizzt's relationship with spellcasters is extremely erratic. Sometimes he can do absolutely nothing - like when he got mind-ganked by Illithids or wailed fruitlessly against an entreri protected by a kinetic barrier. Other times he's beaten Balors and helped his friend Bruenor Battlehammer kill an epic level Drow cleric. Sure, Drizzt has magical scimitars but otherwise he's all skill.

In D&D fiction spells level 'immune to magical weapons' and the like can be subverted by narrative at any time. A woman armed only with a magical sword can hunt and kill multiple Phaerrim in the ruins of Myth Drannor and a completely magic-less Tuigan Horde can be just as dangerous to the magic flooded Realms as the actual Mongols were to medieval Europe.

At the same time Raistlin Majere can solve literally every problem the Heroes of the Lance have by himself in Neraka and save the world as a stepping stone to his ascension to godhood and magical monsters like Lord Soth can simple power word, kill pretty much an opponent who gets in their way.

Square that circle.

A large part of this is intentional on the part of the writers--they know (or care) very little about the mechanics. On purpose. There are statements to the effect that "what makes good game-play makes bad fiction, so we just plain ignore the game rules when writing the novels." Plus the fact that many of the novel chains span several editions--Drizzt got his start in ~2e, Dragonlance was 2e or before, etc. FR especially suffers from a bad case of legacy sacred cows. Many of the foundational assumptions were made under very different systems and then carried over out of tradition/a desire for continuity. The one time they tried to make a clean break, it didn't go so well...

Mechalich

2017-12-21, 11:49 PM

A large part of this is intentional on the part of the writers--they know (or care) very little about the mechanics. On purpose. There are statements to the effect that "what makes good game-play makes bad fiction, so we just plain ignore the game rules when writing the novels." Plus the fact that many of the novel chains span several editions--Drizzt got his start in ~2e, Dragonlance was 2e or before, etc. FR especially suffers from a bad case of legacy sacred cows. Many of the foundational assumptions were made under very different systems and then carried over out of tradition/a desire for continuity. The one time they tried to make a clean break, it didn't go so well...

What makes good gameplay does make bad fiction. The writers aren't wrong about that. And it is certainly true that D&D, specifically, has a bunch of weird legacy problems, though it is not the only setting with that issue. White Wolf tried to make a break from oWoD to nWoD and that went even worse than 4e did.

Of course a lot of other fantasy fiction has the same sort of imbalance problems. Fantasy fiction likes to have god-wizards just sort of lying around because that way they can dispense plot hooks, deus ex machina plot holes away, offer cryptic clues to get around blocks, and perform various other services. The best TTRPG relevant example is Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless face from the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Those two are god-wizards, but the stories aren't about them and Fritz Leiber structures his stories such that the wizards aren't interested in mundane things or the concerns of mortals at all. That removes their agency from the setting. The same thing happens in Conan. There are plenty of wizards and Conan's ability to stick a sword in them is very close to nil in many cases, but for the most part those wizards have other s*** going on and are completely uninterested in things like world conquest or even keeping Conan from ransacking their towers. Heck, this is even the case in Marvel. In the most recent Thor movie Dr. Strange shows up for five minutes for the sake of, from his perspective, getting Thor and Loki out of the way as rapidly as possible, because he has unmentioned other stuff to do. There's no question of him joining in their adventure.

Unfortunately, you can't rob a PC of their agency in the same way you can a god-wizard or even a 'god-martial' like superman. If you give a player the power to mess with society on a global scale they are going to do that (heck there are whole genres of video games dedicated to this premise).

The caster versus mundane problem at its core speaks to one type of character being drawn from the pool of ordinary people and one type being drawn from the pool of possible supermen. So essentially you can either make everyone ordinary or everyone super. The former doesn't mean no magic, it just means whatever your magic does it doesn't provide any more bad***ery than a person without magic could achieve. The later means you can make the characters as powerful as you want but that now you have a two-tiered world and that raises all kinds of nasty questions with what are usually some very ugly answers. White Wolf took the two-tier situation seriously at least twice, with Aberrant and Exalted, the result was grimdark all over everything.

The path to a middle ground involves changing the definition of 'mundane.' The more capable an elite ordinary person happens to be the more a magical person can achieve. The simplest scenario is technological advancement. The wizards of Harry Potter, for instance, would be very impressive in the Dark Ages, but actually aren't that impressive in the 21st century (if you send Seal Team 6 into Hogwarts, minus the whole 'tech doesn't work here' BS, there's going to be a lot of wizard bodies on the floor). The other option is 'everyone has inherent magic' which is common in a lot of anime settings. However this can have the same effect as massive tech boosts in speculative science fiction - the world that results ends up bearing no resemblance to our own and it becomes extremely challenging to place any interesting stories into it. Since most TTRPGs tell stories at a very low level of complexity and rely on fairly simple methods of conflict resolution (ex. face-stabbing) this is problematic.

Chaosticket

2017-12-22, 12:01 AM

Some games much more clearly have non-magical "hero" powers like what actors from action films can do.

I think it's true that people want to be super without actively admitting they do. I just admit I want the magic. I like the Pathfinder Bloodrager as its basically a Barbarian with clearly magical source of its Rage and outright casts spells. Ranger, Paladin, etc. they have magic.

Problem is that there are classes really are meant to be a Fighter, but better. The Fighter however keeps getting changed to something unique on its own.

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-22, 12:01 AM

I was going to comment further but turns out sometimes the vest strategy is to let your opponent keep talking himself into a hole.

Neato burrito.

As per the discussion:

I don't think there's a problem with liking strong casters or weak casters or strong mundanes or weak mundanes.

Where 3.5's problems begin and end is with their implications that a lvl20 fighter os equivalent in capability to a lvl20 wizard. This is not true.
It would be like if someone handed you a Small t-shirt and a 3XL t-shirt and told you they were the same size.

In response, half the people are saying one shirt is too big, the others saying one shirt is too small, and the tailors are confused as all hell.

Sounds to me like everyone would be better off shopping somewhere that knows how to make shirts in the size you need.

Chaosticket

2017-12-22, 12:07 AM

Sorry if this is a wrong summary. Everyone can find a game to fit them.

In every other game I talk about caution and balance to prevent problems like D&D magic.

Here magic is too useful and fun to just ban it.

Mechalich

2017-12-22, 12:29 AM

Where 3.5's problems begin and end is with their implications that a lvl20 fighter os equivalent in capability to a lvl20 wizard. This is not true.
It would be like if someone handed you a Small t-shirt and a 3XL t-shirt and told you they were the same size.

It's more complicated than that.

3.5, and in some sense every version of D&D to a lesser degree, has the problem that a world where someone with the powers of a 20th level wizard and a 20th cleric, and Pit Fiends and Balors, and Planetar's exist is not a world that is composed primarily of ordinary peasants growing wheat and barley like its England in the year 1150 CE. It's something massively different.

I recall the 2e DMG making a point about dungeon design in that you couldn't have low-level monsters like a lone orc surviving on a dungeon level full of basilisks and dragons and beholders. This was correct, but they failed to extend this to 'the game world is just a very big dungeon.'

If you have a world with god-level entities you've got one of two things going on:
1. You have a world in which only the gods matter and you can squeeze the masses for pulp. Magical experiments requiring thousands of sacrifices, slave-run magical item factories, artifacts that remove the free will of whole cities in order to maintain order, giant flying death machines that can blow apart mountains at a stroke, etc. (these are all actual things that are in Exalted). Those characters who are not part of the chosen ruling elite with the powerz are nothing. They are mere insects forced to obey the whims of their overlords. You can treat them nicely if you want, but to the extent that your players wish to stop the horrible lord of necromancy from turning the population of the whole country he just conquered into his zombie army the will, choices, and capabilities of those conquered people doesn't matter a whit (also the zombie army is mostly a vanity project because one of your characters can obliterate its tens of thousands in like two actions). The only thing that matters is you and your god-buddies finding a way to take down the overlord and his elite death squad minions.

2. A world in which the masses are powerful enough that however god-like you might be an angry mob can still kill you. Since you're a god that must mean the masses have got some neat powers of their own and this world is probably very strange. Most 'everyone has powers' worlds completely ignore the implications.

5e, to it's credit, tries to find a mechanical way around this using bounded accuracy but that's a very mechanical way of addressing the issue.

ijon

2017-12-22, 01:15 AM

This sort of thing is agreeing with my view point, not against it. The problem is that in default D&D, that isn't what happens with martials because they want to keep playing with their level 5 character concepts until 20th level.

I specifically made homebrew fixes for rogue/fighter/barbarian for reasons like this + use the HP as meat-points interpretation to better have martials be cool at high levels.

oh, I thought you were saying that we as players wanted to bring level 5 dudes to a level 20 game. that's fair.

and yeah, homebrew fixes everything, as long as your DM lets you use it. I was doing a fighter fix thing myself, and then I decided against it as it'd basically be me going "hey this is my class it does everything I want perfectly HOW CONVENIENT", and yeah that's kinda sketchy coming from a player.

But oddly, I think that you're getting pushback from TWO sides.

* those who insist that only "spellcasters" can do fantastic/magical things.
* those who insist that what their fighter or rogue or other "not a spellcaster" character does cannot have anything to do with magic (even in the broadest most open sense), nothing at all, must be completely "not magic" to the core.

So if a Fighter is leaping 50 feet or cutting through an iron-shod oaken door in a single stroke, that's either "not right" (typically first group) or "HAS to be because he's just that damn good, cannot be magic" (typically second group).

as someone in the second camp, here's why I want martials that can wreck face without any magic: you can always just mix magic in with some form of multiclassing. if you have a purely mundane fighter/rogue/barbarian that can actually do their job and do it well, you have an easy blank slate to slap your magic onto, without having to worry about mucking it all up somehow. and if you don't want it, that's fine; it works perfectly well without anything extra.

I think D&D would lose some character without some purely mundane core classes. after all, it's a swords and sorcery game, and part of that is the knight in shining armor, cutting his way through ugly situations with nothing but his wits and his trusty sword and shield. I'd like to keep that.

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 04:58 AM

And this is why this discussion will never reach anything resembling an end.

What you want out of RPGs is to feel superior to the "muggles," and don't want to compromise.

If I enjoy playing, say the three musketeers, and you enjoy playing Dr. Strange then we should both be able to play our characters in the same game. And if the rules say that all of the characters are equal, you need to get over the feeling of "but I don't feel special without dominating the game!" and suck it up just like I need to get over the feeling of "This weird wizard is totally out of place in my swashbuckling adventure and messing up the theme!" and suck it up.

Unless you are lucky enough to find a group where everyone wants the same thing you have to have some compromises, and if you are playing a well balanced game those compromises will often be in theme and feel as much as they are mechanics.

Except you are blatantly wrong. People have been play D&D with the arcane casters dominating at high levels FOR 40 YEARS. So going to have to say claiming it doesn't work just... doesn't work. Why has this worked for so long? You are projecting. Not everyone feels as you do.

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 05:02 AM

Because the game gives me 20 levels of Fighter or Rogue to play.

It's so alien to me that in a world where wizards can literally rewrite the rules of reality, that martials are bound to the laws of this world. That there cannot exist a non-magic blacksmith so good at his job, that he can produce a Legendary weapon. That a high-level fighter, who is the pinnacle of close-range combat, can't do anything to a Forcecage.

Magic seems to have so many "no, you don't" buttons built in that can be thrown around, but any non-magical button that says "no" to a caster cannot exist.

I get the feeling that trying to replicate a spell through mundane means would also get axed at some tables, unless the process followed real-world physics to a T. If a rogue wanted to blow open a door they couldn't pick with a waterskin filled with oil and gunpowder, I'm sure a ruling of "you create a lot of smoke and fire*, but the door is fine" would come up, because that's how it would happen if you did that on Earth. But a little bat Guano and some funny words create an explosion just fine.

It's frustrating as someone who likes playing non-casters to see that there comes a flat point where you Aren't Needed Anymore. Where you could be replaced by a fraction of a class ability, in a spell slot.

*Not sure if this would happen with that particular mix, just seemed like the most common result based on how little I play with fire for fun.

Again, Pathfinder. Mundanes can create enchanted weapons, it just increases the dc if you don't have access to the requirements.

Cybren

2017-12-22, 06:06 AM

Mechalich

2017-12-22, 07:01 AM

Like whose line it is anyway, the secret to GURPS is that the points don't matter. Points are an initial snapshot of appropriate resource allocation, but ultimately you have to balance the result and not the numbers. Individual traits, regardless of point cost, can drastically swing power-level of a character or derail campaigns without careful attention. Even the five point ability Rapier Wit might break open 300 CP special ops games. Remember, you can kill all living things in the universe for about 50CP

All point buy systems are vulnerable to various flavors of abuse, even ones considerably more focused than GURPs. For example, in Eclipse Phase building a combat monster character is probably pointless - since another character can spend a tenth of those points to buy a horde of hunter-killer robots that can destroy you, your starship, and the habitat where it was built. Unless the GM puts their foot down about minions, in which case the calculus totally changes. In a point buy system the 'best' build is pretty much always situation dependent to whatever comes up in the campaign most often.

This is actually one of the major points in favor of class-based systems. With classes the designers can focus on balancing a discrete set of options against each other and making certain they work. 3.X violates this of course, both by having feats (which while individually weak can be optimized into universe destroying builds) and by having too many classes/prestige classes/variant options (like Pathfinder archetypes). 2e had balance problems because everything was ad hoc and if you were willing to dumpster dive through various highly obscure supplements enough you could build something insanely broken (like a Thri-Kreen natural weapons specialist who gets more attacks/round than the rest of the party and the NPC party they're fighting put together). One of the reasons 5e has certain advantages in the balance department compared to it's predecessors is that it is simply a smaller system with fewer options because nobody works in the D&D division at WotC anymore.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-22, 08:06 AM

as someone in the second camp, here's why I want martials that can wreck face without any magic: you can always just mix magic in with some form of multiclassing. if you have a purely mundane fighter/rogue/barbarian that can actually do their job and do it well, you have an easy blank slate to slap your magic onto, without having to worry about mucking it all up somehow. and if you don't want it, that's fine; it works perfectly well without anything extra.

I think D&D would lose some character without some purely mundane core classes. after all, it's a swords and sorcery game, and part of that is the knight in shining armor, cutting his way through ugly situations with nothing but his wits and his trusty sword and shield. I'd like to keep that.

OK, but with what the high-level spellcasters are, you can never balance that purely-"mundane", absolutely-no-magic "knight in shining armor" with those spellcasting characters -- not in a fictional world that looks anything like the sort of quasi-medieval not-Eurasia of so many game settings.

It might work at low levels, but again we hit the problem that a D&D-like system needs to balance across all the levels, from 1 to 20+.

And again, don't confuse the general "magic" with the specific "spellcasting". The knight in shining armor doesn't ever have to cast a single spell to be using magic in his own martial way.

Some games much more clearly have non-magical "hero" powers like what actors from action films can do.

Those "narrative fueled" action-hero-powers can IMO be the worst way to deal with the issue in most games, because they lack all grounding -- they're just-so powers that neither derive from nor feed back into the setting. "I'm The Hero, so I can do X!"

Sometimes they don't even involve the character doing anything, they're purely metagaming contrivances that allows the player to affect the setting and NPCs directly. See, the "Talent" in FFG's Star Wars that allows the player to decree that some mechanical device fails or malfunctions or "goes off" simply because the player wants it to, the character never has to even be aware of the device, let alone interact with it in any way.

I think it's true that people want to be super without actively admitting they do. I just admit I want the magic. I like the Pathfinder Bloodrager as its basically a Barbarian with clearly magical source of its Rage and outright casts spells. Ranger, Paladin, etc. they have magic.

Problem is that there are classes really are meant to be a Fighter, but better. The Fighter however keeps getting changed to something unique on its own.
[/QUOTE]

Splat proliferation results in the "fighter of the gaps" -- combine that with the insistence that there be at least one utterly "mundane" class, and the fighter might as well be an NPC class past a certain level.

Talakeal

2017-12-22, 12:12 PM

Except you are blatantly wrong. People have been play D&D with the arcane casters dominating at high levels FOR 40 YEARS. So going to have to say claiming it doesn't work just... doesn't work. Why has this worked for so long? You are projecting. Not everyone feels as you do.

I was talking about Cosi's feelings on the matter, not the actual implementation. Whether or not people can have fun playing an imbalanced game is irrelevant to my point, which was that if people want an imbalanced game* so that they can feel special / superior to other characters we are never going to have an objective discussion of balance and how to achieve it.

Of course an imbalanced game "works," it is just, IMO, less overall fun than a balanced game. And saying that just because people have been putting up with flaws for a long time means that they aren't flaws is a textbook example of the "is-ought fallacy".

*: Or in Cosi's case a game where people are balanced but forced to play within the thematic space he feels appropriate if I am reading him right.

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 12:21 PM

Talakeal

2017-12-22, 12:24 PM

I like the mechanic of squishy spellcasters at first barely contributing, but as they grow stronger the melee becomes less of a threat to them. I see no issue with that dynamic. It isn't unbalanced if the game spends equal time weak spell caster/strong spell caster.

That is a balance point that works ok, although I personally prefer one that is more consistent over time as at any point *someone* at the table is going to feel underpowered in that system and there is no guarantee that equal time will be spent at any given level.

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 01:56 PM

That is a balance point that works ok, although I personally prefer one that is more consistent over time as at any point *someone* at the table is going to feel underpowered in that system and there is no guarantee that equal time will be spent at any given level.

See, I like the whole brothers Majere thing. How long in that series did Raistlin rely on his brother? Many many years. That is, essentially, the mechanic that the martial/caster disparity is aiming for.
And it works rather well. At first level, sure maybe the caster might have a sleep spell prepared... so yeah that group of elves hunting you? Might as well be throwing pies at them... more effective. Your color spray will be so effective against those guys across the ravine shooting at you. So many times where the so called "optimized" caster is blatantly useless.
Even when he finally hits the spot where he can contribute, those 3rd level spell slots go really quick. Fly, haste and done at 5th lvl. So yeah, the casters should be struggling not just to contribute but to even stay alive.

To be fair, however, the sorcerer dynamic kind of alters that a bit. Basic optimization tactics can easily net you 2 extra 1st lvl spells per day (18 into caster stat, +2 racial for 20 total) effectively doubling the 1st lvl wizard output, and putting the sorcerer at a start of 6/day.
Remove the bonus spells from stats, and the dynamic changes drastically. To me, That's really the only fix we need to PF.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-22, 02:10 PM

See, I like the whole brothers Majere thing. How long in that series did Raistlin rely on his brother? Many many years. That is, essentially, the mechanic that the martial/caster disparity is aiming for.
And it works rather well. At first level, sure maybe the caster might have a sleep spell prepared... so yeah that group of elves hunting you? Might as well be throwing pies at them... more effective. Your color spray will be so effective against those guys across the ravine shooting at you. So many times where the so called "optimized" caster is blatantly useless.
Even when he finally hits the spot where he can contribute, those 3rd level spell slots go really quick. Fly, haste and done at 5th lvl. So yeah, the casters should be struggling not just to contribute but to even stay alive.

To be fair, however, the sorcerer dynamic kind of alters that a bit. Basic optimization tactics can easily net you 2 extra 1st lvl spells per day (18 into caster stat, +2 racial for 20 total) effectively doubling the 1st lvl wizard output, and putting the sorcerer at a start of 6/day.
Remove the bonus spells from stats, and the dynamic changes drastically. To me, That's really the only fix we need to PF.

That works very well...for single-author fiction. Most players don't want to spend the first large chunk of a campaign watching from the sidelines, or the last large chunk of a campaign watching from the sidelines. Level-averaged balance is a bad idea, because all it guarantees is that, in the ideal case, the suffering of being carried (and not contributing) is shared. In reality, restrictions get loosed to allow the "late-bloomer" characters to contribute early on, and no concern is payed to the "early-bloomer" who spends his time at best at parity, if not behind.

That paradigm (level-averaged balance) is also poorly implemented--a 3e druid starts in rough parity with a fighter and only gets better from there. A cleric is only slightly worse at level 1 than that fighter...and gets better quickly. Wizards are squishy, but the campaign gets bent around them so that their limitation (low spells/day) gets erased due to the 5 minute working day.

Tinkerer

2017-12-22, 02:29 PM

See, I like the whole brothers Majere thing. How long in that series did Raistlin rely on his brother?

... Like one book?

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 05:53 PM

... Like one book?

You didn't read too many of their stories did you? The first half of Raistlin's life he leaned heavily on Caramon, moreso after Fisty possessed him.

Tinkerer

2017-12-22, 06:24 PM

You didn't read too many of their stories did you? The first half of Raistlin's life he leaned heavily on Caramon, moreso after Fisty possessed him.

I was going real world chronologically when I said 1 book. In universe after Raistlin actually gets to 1st level it isn't too terribly long until he's moved beyond Cameron.

Calthropstu

2017-12-22, 06:44 PM

Eh, a discussion for another time perhaps. I'd rather not derail the thread.

ijon

2017-12-22, 07:18 PM

OK, but with what the high-level spellcasters are, you can never balance that purely-"mundane", absolutely-no-magic "knight in shining armor" with those spellcasting characters -- not in a fictional world that looks anything like the sort of quasi-medieval not-Eurasia of so many game settings.

It might work at low levels, but again we hit the problem that a D&D-like system needs to balance across all the levels, from 1 to 20+.

in 3.5-land, with the 10 minute adventuring day and where heroics and divine power let you outright steal a fighter's thunder, sure. in general, not so sure.

granted, being purely mundane does limit the breadth of abilities they can have, but I can easily see value in a warrior who can take an axe twice the size of him to the chest and shake it off, jump up a mountain with 100 foot strides, shoot a flying dragon in the eye with a bow from 500 yards away, stop a charging elephant dead in its tracks by blocking it, can pin down a towering giant, and has the willpower to see the job through under any circumstances, illusions and enchantments be damned. and none of those explicitly require magic. it could just be that with enough training, you do just become that strong, but it takes a lot of work to get there. that'd do a number on the setting's coherency, but it's not like D&D's setting is very coherent anyway.

the important thing is that if the wizard gets a bunch of options with magic, the fighter should get a bunch of options with BIG MUSCLES. the fighter should be good at everything that falls under the fighting domain by default, partly to keep up and partly so that the wizard can't just polymorph into some melee brute and replace the fighter entirely.

the wizard gets power where the fighter gets sustainability and durability. it could work. and even if it doesn't get us all the way there, it's still a whole lot better than what we have now.

Mechalich

2017-12-22, 10:19 PM

granted, being purely mundane does limit the breadth of abilities they can have, but I can easily see value in a warrior who can take an axe twice the size of him to the chest and shake it off, jump up a mountain with 100 foot strides, shoot a flying dragon in the eye with a bow from 500 yards away, stop a charging elephant dead in its tracks by blocking it, can pin down a towering giant, and has the willpower to see the job through under any circumstances, illusions and enchantments be damned. and none of those explicitly require magic. it could just be that with enough training, you do just become that strong, but it takes a lot of work to get there. that'd do a number on the setting's coherency, but it's not like D&D's setting is very coherent anyway.

the important thing is that if the wizard gets a bunch of options with magic, the fighter should get a bunch of options with BIG MUSCLES. the fighter should be good at everything that falls under the fighting domain by default, partly to keep up and partly so that the wizard can't just polymorph into some melee brute and replace the fighter entirely.

the wizard gets power where the fighter gets sustainability and durability. it could work. and even if it doesn't get us all the way there, it's still a whole lot better than what we have now.

None of those things are mundane. If training allows you to do things the human body cannot possibly do, then you're training in magic. It doesn't matter whether you're calling it Ki or Guts or whatever. There is a boundary space that encompasses the edge of human capabilities - it's a bit nebulous in some areas and many games are down with mundane characters being unreasonably good at a large number of fields (whether sports or sciences) but it does exist and all of your examples are blatant violations thereof.

If you want your martial characters to be boosted by some special power of their own, even if it's just super training, you can do that, and it can certainly help with balance issues between PCs, but what you have done is created an 'everyone is magic' world by fundamentally redefining what humans are in your setting, what a human body is capable of, and how physics work as a practical matter in your setting. Almost inevitably the ultimate result of this will be a world that doesn't hold together internally and becomes silly. The universe of Dragonball is like this, and it is utterly ridiculous (and to its credit doesn't even pretend to care).

Lord Raziere

2017-12-22, 11:22 PM

If you want your martial characters to be boosted by some special power of their own, even if it's just super training, you can do that, and it can certainly help with balance issues between PCs, but what you have done is created an 'everyone is magic' world by fundamentally redefining what humans are in your setting, what a human body is capable of, and how physics work as a practical matter in your setting. Almost inevitably the ultimate result of this will be a world that doesn't hold together internally and becomes silly. The universe of Dragonball is like this, and it is utterly ridiculous (and to its credit doesn't even pretend to care).

Yes and? who cares about holding it all together internally? thats the problem of every magical world it seems like, yet people keep complaining about what is completely normal for fantasy. and the two options for dealing with that are to either come up with enough explanations to fill the gaps until your satisfied or to just accept that a single human mind can't design an entire universe and roll with it.

Dragon Ball has it right: consistency is not needed to make a lovable vivid world that engages people and provides plots that people are interested in seeing. mostly because you get more humor from things making LESS sense. Earth: constantly gets ravaged by alien invasions, still thinks Hercule saves them every time despite it being blatantly obvious he is lying. does this in any way make sense or is at all consistent with real life (which would see through Hercule in two seconds), or the rest of the Dragon Ball world (which is actually full of ki using super-people that have already accepted ki as the norm?) NOPE. Why is it accepted? because Hercule is funny when he does ridiculous stuff to convince people he is the hero when he isn't so that the saiyans can have their privacy.

though to be fair my main DBZ character's entire schtick is "I realize on some level this entire world is absurd and doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but I'm going to fight for whats right and good anyways because that is what makes sense to me."

ijon

2017-12-22, 11:28 PM

None of those things are mundane. If training allows you to do things the human body cannot possibly do, then you're training in magic. It doesn't matter whether you're calling it Ki or Guts or whatever. There is a boundary space that encompasses the edge of human capabilities - it's a bit nebulous in some areas and many games are down with mundane characters being unreasonably good at a large number of fields (whether sports or sciences) but it does exist and all of your examples are blatant violations thereof.

If you want your martial characters to be boosted by some special power of their own, even if it's just super training, you can do that, and it can certainly help with balance issues between PCs, but what you have done is created an 'everyone is magic' world by fundamentally redefining what humans are in your setting, what a human body is capable of, and how physics work as a practical matter in your setting. Almost inevitably the ultimate result of this will be a world that doesn't hold together internally and becomes silly. The universe of Dragonball is like this, and it is utterly ridiculous (and to its credit doesn't even pretend to care).

I guess if you define that as magic, it counts. but that really depends on how broadly you define magic. it could just be that the setting's physics allow humans to get that much stronger, and it's perfectly normal and there's nothing magical about it. it's just what happens when you dedicate your life to beating things up as effectively as possible.

like on one point of the scale, there's getting stronger by just getting stronger - your fighters, barbarians, rogues, warblades, and so on.
on another point, there's getting stronger by tapping into magical energy mumbo jumbo - wizards, sorcerers, artificers, bards, etc.
and on a third point (this is a triangle), there's getting stronger by appealing to the gods or devils for power - clerics, druids, warlocks, and so forth.

but whatever. honestly, that's just arguing terminology. as long as the martials solves his things through being strong, being smart, and hitting things, I'm happy. I just don't want weird energy auras and laser beams to start appearing whenever I swing a sword or hammer or what-have-you, and calling out your moves should be firmly optional.

-----

on another note, I do think the tier system would work out pretty well, except for one thing: past the ANIMU POINT, where things start getting silly, there wouldn't be any mandatory advancement between levels. before that point, it makes perfect sense that you'd get better at doing what you're doing, and while it still makes sense after that point... the jumps between levels start getting pretty big. having a built-in "are you sure you want to level up?" mechanic in the game would help convey the idea that it's okay to just stay at one level for a given campaign.

maybe have an alternate, less dramatic advancement method available for when you want to stay at a certain power level, so you can still get Bigger Numbers without sudden jumps, like going from "oh I can teleport across the country" to "oh I can teleport to a different plane of existence".

Mechalich

2017-12-23, 01:55 AM

Yes and? who cares about holding it all together internally? thats the problem of every magical world it seems like, yet people keep complaining about what is completely normal for fantasy. and the two options for dealing with that are to either come up with enough explanations to fill the gaps until your satisfied or to just accept that a single human mind can't design an entire universe and roll with it.

Dragon Ball has it right: consistency is not needed to make a lovable vivid world that engages people and provides plots that people are interested in seeing. mostly because you get more humor from things making LESS sense. Earth: constantly gets ravaged by alien invasions, still thinks Hercule saves them every time despite it being blatantly obvious he is lying. does this in any way make sense or is at all consistent with real life (which would see through Hercule in two seconds), or the rest of the Dragon Ball world (which is actually full of ki using super-people that have already accepted ki as the norm?) NOPE. Why is it accepted? because Hercule is funny when he does ridiculous stuff to convince people he is the hero when he isn't so that the saiyans can have their privacy.

If your world is openly a joke - like the Dragonball universe is - then you can only tell stories within it that are compatible with having humor at the core. You can't invoke horror, or pathos, or do anything with substantial emotional depth. The amount of tension you can ultimately invoke is limited. In Dragonball death is quite explicitly meaningless and if characters are killed they are basically being put into storage for a while for use later (for the current Super arc they quite literally pulled Freiza out of storage so he could participate and it is extremely obvious that he's going back eventually). At the same time, nothing is ever truly accomplished, because a greater threat will always materialize. There are no conclusions, only endless power-ups. The world has no rules, so it cannot be changed.

The higher your story wishes to ratchet up dramatic tension, then the lower the tolerance for suspension of disbelief in your storytelling. Your world must be commensurately more robust as a result. If you to legitimately put a society in jeopardy and have that mean something and talk about the horror of war or show human suffering in the aftermath of conflict or anything like that your society has to be sufficiently well developed and reasonable so that the audience cares. In Dragonball the bad guys can blow up whole cities or even whole planets and it gets played largely for laughs. By contrast, when they blow up Alderaan in Star Wars the moment is played deathly serious.

Comedy is sufficient for a lot, especially in TTRPGs - since the actual group around a table is rarely being serious and gaming is mostly an excuse to hang out. However, there are certainly people who want to engage in more serious collaborative storytelling. White-Wolf became the industry's second biggest player by promising such an experience (they largely failed to deliver, but that was the pitch). Some people want game worlds and game systems capable of serious melodrama or even tragedy.

Only a slightly different note, worlds that are truly bizarre like the Dragonball universe or many other weird super-powered fantasy worlds often require a considerable amount of buy-in to get people to understand their quirky setups and to play by their implicit rules. In the Dragonball case, you could make PCs in some sort of Xenoverse-style setup and every last one of them would be able to destroy planets from chargen. This leaves the game very vulnerable to a player choosing to be a jerk and blowing up the Earth (or Namek or wherever) for the lols and forcing the GM to stop them via fiat. A universe that explicitly allows characters to ruin the game mechanically, while implicitly condemning anyone who so much as thinks about doing so has a fundamental weakness at its heart. There's a sidebar in the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting called 'The Role of the Mighty' that enunciates this indirectly by having Ed Greenwood admit that, yes, the resident epic-level casters could easily tear the realms apart but you are obligated to pretend that they have all collectively decided not too. Sometimes people will be down with this and role with it. Dragonball is vastly successful and has a huge audience willing to accept its conventions. It also has a giant horde of haters who think it represents everything wrong with anime in general and shounen anime specifically.

At the end of the day, very few fantasy worlds or TTRPG settings are willing to even dare the Dragonball route - where they outwardly admit to their ridiculousness. White-Wolf's Exalted, a setting that absolutely approaches DBZ levels of over-the-top absurdity, is so dripping with self-seriousness is hurts. The Forgotten Realms' failures are an open secret but no one is willing to cop to it explicitly. Naruto held onto the pretension that it wasn't an absolute joke in the world-building department to the bitter end and destroyed itself in consequence. People want to claim their fantasy is serious even when it's not, which I see as a strong argument for actually building serious worlds.

Lord Raziere

2017-12-23, 02:02 AM

I do not see where your getting any of that.

I enjoy Dragon Ball even to its highest levels of power even today and I still find things dramatic and serious about as well as funny. sure the world is ridiculous, but that doesn't mean the conflicts within, what the characters are feeling or the stakes are ridiculous. especially when the reset button is not a guaranteed thing.

So I can't agree with your assessment, simply because of my own experience.

Cosi

2017-12-23, 12:41 PM

We both get to play the character we want. That's compromise.

Then why are you complaining about the abilities my character has? If the compromise is "we both play whatever we want", then what ground do you have to complain about what I want being incompatible with what you want? But it seems like the compromise isn't really "we both play whatever we want" but "we both play something with the aesthetics of the character we want, but a power level compatible with Talakeal's character". Which, again, is not so much a compromise.

IMO PCs should be roughly balanced regardless of their archetype, and fighter who does not draw on an external power source has been a core PC archetype in every edition of D&D.

"Not drawing on an external power source" is different from "doesn't have a power source". Goku is totally acceptable as a high level character.

Now let me ask you a hypothetical question for a second; imagine for a second I only had fun playing as Pun-Pun, and told everyone who didn't want to play Pun-Pun that everyone else was being stupid for not wanting me to play Pun-Pun in every game and that D&D is, should be, and always has been, built around Pun-Pun and everyone else is just too dumb or dishonest to admit it. How would you respond to that?

Again, you are misrepresenting my position. I have never once said that every game should work the way I want. You are the one trying to kick concepts you don't like out of the game.

ignore his entire head being cut off because he's just that angry.

That's magic. You've literally just described a character with the same power source as the Hulk. If you do things that are impossible for humans, you must, by definition, be superhuman. Or, in a fantasy setting, magic.

It's so alien to me that in a world where wizards can literally rewrite the rules of reality, that martials are bound to the laws of this world.

Not martials, mundanes. And of course mundanes are bound to the laws of this world, that is what the word "mundane" means. It's like complaining that a fire mage uses fire blasts to solve their problems, or that a demon summoner summons demons. You picked a concept, you get to keep the implications of that concept.

Magic seems to have so many "no, you don't" buttons built in that can be thrown around, but any non-magical button that says "no" to a caster cannot exist.

Yes. How exactly do you plan to be "reality warping" with "reality"?

I don't get the latter myself. You can do fantastic things without being magic, magic is literally just a word. An overused one to be honest. and wizards being the catchall term for the people who do fantastic things, just as overused. there is more to fantasy than everything being a wizard using magic.

I think part of the problem (from both sides) is that "magic" has become erroneously synonymous with "spellcasting".

When I say "magic" I mean "anything superhuman". Which would include, for example, surviving wounds that humans can't survive (like beheading) or crafting things beyond human skill (like legendary weapons). I use "magic" that way because you need a word for that (as apposed to "mundane" for "not superhuman"), and "magic" is less clunky than anything else I've seen suggested. If someone has a better word for "spells, but also powers, maneuvers, vestiges, superhuman training, ki, superhuman rage, ancestor spirits, and whatever else people do", I would use that instead if people thought it was clearer.

"Dr. Strange" is not a character concept. It's a character goal, which may or may not be achievable in a particular setting, system, or campaign. Useful character concepts tell how a character does his job (which in D&D is adventuring), not what power they have (or don't have).

I can accept that, but at that point you're also booting out "mundane Fighter" as a character concept.

Well the only not-magic character I can recall being able to keep up with godlike people without going wuxia/anime or whatever is the batman and um......

how to say it?

Batman is a Wizard. He has a Wizard Tower Batcave where he prepares a bunch of Spells Gadgets that have arbitrary effects and discrete charges. He solves problems with the exact same kinds of tools a Wizard does (although he lives in a system where he swapped his default attack from "energy blast" to "bunch" and got Rogue skills), which is where the term "Batman Wizard" comes from. Batman has different fluff than a Wizard, but there are systems where ability fluff is variable.

Those "narrative fueled" action-hero-powers can IMO be the worst way to deal with the issue in most games, because they lack all grounding -- they're just-so powers that neither derive from nor feed back into the setting. "I'm The Hero, so I can do X!"

Narrative powers work in games where they are genre-appropriate and everyone has them (mostly, things that are trying to do comicbook superheroes). They don't really work as a tool for one character in a game that claims to operate on non-narrative logic.

I like the mechanic of squishy spellcasters at first barely contributing, but as they grow stronger the melee becomes less of a threat to them. I see no issue with that dynamic. It isn't unbalanced if the game spends equal time weak spell caster/strong spell caster.

That's not workable. "Power now for power later" is not a workable trade in either direction, because the fun of dominating and the not-fun of being dominated don't balance out. It also means your game is broken from first principles if people don't play the whole level range, which is adding fragility for no reason.

I guess if you define that as magic, it counts. but that really depends on how broadly you define magic. it could just be that the setting's physics allow humans to get that much stronger, and it's perfectly normal and there's nothing magical about it.

I don't think you understand how physics works. "The setting's physics" by definition allow all the things that are possible in the setting. That includes whatever level of physical strength humans have in the setting, but also whatever magic you can do. If your position is "it's possible in the game world, therefore it's mundane", then casting spells is mundane. Which is, I suppose, a consistent position, but not a very useful one.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-23, 01:04 PM

I can accept that, but at that point you're also booting out "mundane Fighter" as a character concept.

Sure. That was kind of the point--the whole "fighters can't use magic" debate is pointless. As is the "If I can't be a god then you're denying my character concept." To which I reply "Sure. Yup. That's a useless character concept. Go pick a better one." I specifically called out the "completely non-magical fighter" as a self-limiting type of concept that doesn't do much good in most games.

Good character concepts tell you how the character approaches situations, not what situations they can handle.

Edit: and apropos of your post--we (the posters in this thread) still don't have a mutually accepted definition of "magic" (or associated words like "mundane"). That's the root of the disagreement--people are using the same words with different meanings and wondering why people aren't agreeing with their clear (to them) logic.

Talakeal

2017-12-23, 01:06 PM

Then why are you complaining about the abilities my character has? If the compromise is "we both play whatever we want", then what ground do you have to complain about what I want being incompatible with what you want? But it seems like the compromise isn't really "we both play whatever we want" but "we both play something with the aesthetics of the character we want, but a power level compatible with Talakeal's character". Which, again, is not so much a compromise.

We both play a character with a rough mechanical power level that is the game is designed around. In D&D's case I am suggesting that such a thing should probably be the class which best follows the CR guidelines presented in the DMG, which most of the community (and the WoTC design team if you look at trends over time) considers to be what JaronK calls T3.

D&D has always had both Wizards and Fighters as archetypes, and they need to be playable in the same party. If we are talking about some other game like Exalted, or some high power variant of D&D like Immortals I would say the balance point should be in a different spot.

Ok, so snark aside, let me try another approach:

Earlier you used Teleport without Error at will as an ability that made mundane characters obsolete.

Let's assume this premise is true.

How would a super powered fighter, say someone like Hercules or The Incredible Hulk be any less irrelevant than a fighter with a purely mundane flavor? They can all kill stuff really well, take a lot of punishment, and perform incredible feats of strength, but not a whole lot else.

Likewise, would at will teleport without error not also make all of the casters who don't have access to it or a similar ability equally obsolete?

Furthermore, afaik the only ways to get at will-teleport without error is to either have an expensive custom magic item or use one of the abilities that lets you dig through the monster manual and pick whatever you want like shape-change, simulacrum, or gate.

In the former case magic items are not restricted to any one class so we are no longer talking about class disparity.

Likewise not every caster has access to those monster manual diving abilities, so this isn't really about the CMD so much as it is those who can employ the monster manuals and those who can't.

Now, IMO the easiest solution is to remove open ended abilities that let you dig through the monster manual and replace them with specific spells, which iirc is what Pathfinder did. But I get that you want to play a high power game where those abilities are available.

The easiest way I can see to do that is to simply let all classes buy SLAs. Maybe they get one every second level as an alternative to feats. Now, this would work, mechanically if not tonally, but it kind of trashes both the idea of a class based game and the idea of a sword and sorcery low magic world; and it requires a drastic rewriting of large portions of the game, the CR system at the very least. I was going to say at that point you are probably better of simply using the Mutants and Masterminds rules to play in a D&D setting, but then I realized there is an even easier solution.

What this sounds like to me is magic items, which are already in the game. If this is the type of game you want to run maybe the easiest solution would be to just chuck out the WBL system and let players craft their own custom magic items; say for example removing the crafting feats and casting ability prerequisites (or have NPC crafters in every town) and instead of using gold to buy magic items give everyone an arcana pool which is equal to their current XP and can be expended in place of XP when crafting an item (or having someone else craft it on your behalf).

This also gets rid of a lot of the economy problems which we talked about earlier which are caused by spells like fabricate + wall of iron.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-23, 02:07 PM

Yes and? who cares about holding it all together internally?

I do, for one.

thats the problem of every magical world it seems like, yet people keep complaining about what is completely normal for fantasy. and the two options for dealing with that are to either come up with enough explanations to fill the gaps until your satisfied or to just accept that a single human mind can't design an entire universe and roll with it.

For me, it's not enough to paper over a hole with excuses and retcons -- if there's a hole or a crack in what's showing, then the structural reason for that problem needs to be fixed.

Dragon Ball has it right: consistency is not needed to make a lovable vivid world that engages people and provides plots that people are interested in seeing. mostly because you get more humor from things making LESS sense. Earth: constantly gets ravaged by alien invasions, still thinks Hercule saves them every time despite it being blatantly obvious he is lying. does this in any way make sense or is at all consistent with real life (which would see through Hercule in two seconds), or the rest of the Dragon Ball world (which is actually full of ki using super-people that have already accepted ki as the norm?) NOPE. Why is it accepted? because Hercule is funny when he does ridiculous stuff to convince people he is the hero when he isn't so that the saiyans can have their privacy.

To some degree it's a matter of taste, but those are all reasons I dislike the Dragonball franchise.

lesser_minion

2017-12-23, 04:36 PM

There are problems with the idea of a non-magical fighter. We've gone some of them before, but to summarise:

Fighters and Bards

In 3rd edition D&D, a bard's exceptional skill with music becomes supernatural in nature and even results in spellcasting. One would expect a fighter to be at least as good at fighting as a bard is at music, so why doesn't this result in magical abilities by a similar mechanism?

Fighters, Warbeasts, and Warbeast Fighters

Why can a fighter's capabilities not be reproduced reliably by in-universe means, if they aren't magical in nature? Why can't the combat trainers of the setting use whatever they did with the fighter to augment whatever they want?

Wouldn't it be more effective in-universe to use these techniques to augment things that are naturally more threatening than humanoids? Could high-end enemies augment a bunch of livestock or giants or whatever and harvest their bones, hides, etc. as a source of ultra-strong, ultra-lightweight, ultra-resilient materials for vehicles, bases, weapons, and armour? If they did so, wouldn't this massively weaken the fighter against them and their minions?

Would D&D fighters even exist in a setting like this, or would they be replaced with beast tamers and riders?

Revenge of the Christmas Tree

Without magic, your sword is only as strong as it is, no matter how strong you might be. And your bow is only as accurate as it is, no matter how skilled you might be.

Do we want fighters who just dash their swords to pieces with the very first attack? Or who completely destroy their bow when they try to draw it and accidentally snap the string? Or who fire a perfect shot at a dragon only to miss anyway because the bow is simply not that accurate?

Do we want fighters who need to be wielding the "Ascended Gungnir of the Allfather" and decked out in "Impervious Indefatigable Armour of Indestructium" before they can be effective at high levels? Or would we end up with fighters who just run around completely stark naked and unarmed since any clothing, weaponry, or armour available is completely eclipsed by their innate capabilities?

ijon

2017-12-23, 06:55 PM

(regarding the headless barbarian)
That's magic. You've literally just described a character with the same power source as the Hulk. If you do things that are impossible for humans, you must, by definition, be superhuman. Or, in a fantasy setting, magic.

(regarding "yeah people are just super beefcakes")
I don't think you understand how physics works. "The setting's physics" by definition allow all the things that are possible in the setting. That includes whatever level of physical strength humans have in the setting, but also whatever magic you can do. If your position is "it's possible in the game world, therefore it's mundane", then casting spells is mundane. Which is, I suppose, a consistent position, but not a very useful one.
I really don't understand why you'd define another setting's magic by this world's human capabilities. sure they'd be superhuman (at least, super-our-human), but not necessarily magic.

clearly you define magic differently than I do. in my book, magic is how you break or ignore the laws of physics in the world. it's a set of specific exceptions to how the world works, and while it may have its own internal consistency, there's no need for it to be consistent with the rest of the world's physics. to be mundane then is to not use any of those physics-breaking exceptions.

if you really can just become strong enough to throw cars at people, that wouldn't be magic. if you aren't strong enough, but you can use MIND POWERS or something to ignore that limitation and throw cars, that's magic. or if you aren't strong enough, but someone does something to you so that you can throw cars despite your physical limitations, that's magic.

if adrenaline can let you can ignore your head being cut off because your body has just adapted itself to work without it for a short time, that's not magic. if sheer adrenaline alone wouldn't do it, but you tap into some weird voodoo junk and it lets you live on without your head, that'd be magic. or if you should've died without your head, but a local priest chanted some words and suddenly being headless isn't such a big deal, that's magic.

it's all about if the world has some purely physical explanation for it. even if it's a flimsy one, and it will be flimsy, because let's be honest: if the explanation wasn't flimsy, it'd probably hold in our world. and it doesn't.

so there, there's my definitions of magic and mundane. and can we skip the part where you tell me my definitions are WRONG AND BAD because you don't agree with them? because I really don't want to argue definitions; that'll go absolutely nowhere, and slowly at that.

Chaosticket

2017-12-23, 07:20 PM

Tanarii

2017-12-23, 07:53 PM

Edit: and apropos of your post--we (the posters in this thread) still don't have a mutually accepted definition of "magic" (or associated words like "mundane"). That's the root of the disagreement--people are using the same words with different meanings and wondering why people aren't agreeing with their clear (to them) logic.Accurate and insightful. But that's usually the root of disagreement in most threads.

lesser_minion

2017-12-23, 08:07 PM

People have different concepts of magic. I am confused in a game where there are many types of magic including magical warriors that its an argument that people with zero magic still are magical.

Where, exactly, is any base character class described as representing a "person with zero magic"?

In fact, the 3e rules assume that all player characters, including fighters, have at least latent magical talent, since any PC can multiclass into sorcerer, a class which revolves around using that talent.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-23, 09:14 PM

This has gone weird.

People have different concepts of magic. I am confused in a game where there are many types of magic including magical warriors that its an argument that people with zero magic still are magical.

It's not an argument that people with zero "magic" are still "magical".

It's one way to work through the "spellcasters vs martials" issue.

In D&D, and in the 3.x branch in particular, "spellcasters" tend to grossly outclass "martials" as character level increases.

You can conclude that this OK, or that it's a problem and needs to be address.

If you decide it's a problem, you can adjust "spellcasters" downwards or "martials" upwards.

If you decide adjust "martials" upwards, you have to figure out how it is that they accomplish acts that let them keep up with the reality-bending antics of "spellcasters".

You can decide to slide the scale of what's possible for people with no "magic" at all (spellcasting or otherwise) upwards, and follow through with all the implications for your fictional world (your game setting).

You can decide to just let some people do extreme and otherwise impossible things, forego any connection between this and the rest of the fictional reality you're working with, and say "screw it" to any sort of internal coherence and consistency in your setting.

You can decide that there are more ways to access "magic" (again, the broad sense, nothing to do with spellcasting) including channeling it into extreme and otherwise impossible physical acts via willpower or "righteousness" or ego or training or whatever.

That last one is might be mistaken for "even characters without magic have magic" if you ignore the distinction between "magic" in general and "spellcasting" specifically.

Edit: and apropos of your post--we (the posters in this thread) still don't have a mutually accepted definition of "magic" (or associated words like "mundane"). That's the root of the disagreement--people are using the same words with different meanings and wondering why people aren't agreeing with their clear (to them) logic.

Which is why I try to make it clear in every post now that I'm distinguishing the ability to do fantastic, exceptional, normally impossible-in-the-setting things in general -- things that go beyond "I just worked out harder" -- from spellcasting in particular.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-23, 10:34 PM

Which is why I try to make it clear in every post now that I'm distinguishing the ability to do fantastic, exceptional, normally impossible-in-the-setting things in general -- things that go beyond "I just worked out harder" -- from spellcasting in particular.

I agree that the distinction between "casts spells" (manipulates magical energy outside of themselves using patterns and resonant effects to create external effects) and "does things that the average commoner can't do, even with sufficient experience" is important. Specifically, the first is a limited subset of the second. I'm of the opinion that every D&D character intrinsically fits into the second category in some way. Even if it's just ability to survive (saves, hit points, etc).

AMFV

2017-12-23, 11:16 PM

It's not an argument that people with zero "magic" are still "magical".

It's one way to work through the "spellcasters vs martials" issue.

In D&D, and in the 3.x branch in particular, "spellcasters" tend to grossly outclass "martials" as character level increases.

I would argue that from around level 5 to around level 15, they tend to stay relatively proportionate in ability. Those are in-fact, the levels that the Tier system model is supposed to analyze. After level 15 everything gets super wonky. Before level 5, it's just a matter of campaign design over anything else and what particular abilities a particular class gets.

I've noticed a VERY VERY strong tendency for people on internet forums to grossly exaggerate the tier gap. Particularly when there are anti-D&D folks who are trying to make some kind of anti-D&D point. Most martial characters have some ability to contribute, with sufficient optimization, it makes it not so bad at all. I mean casters may have to watch their output and martials may have to optimize, but such is life.

You can conclude that this OK, or that it's a problem and needs to be address.

Again, I think that people who are mostly in bad games, or don't play that much 3.5 (or Pathfinder) tend to exaggerate this problem based on stuff that was on CharOp boards that aren't even on the Internets anymore. And based on a flawed understanding of that stuff.

If you decide it's a problem, you can adjust "spellcasters" downwards or "martials" upwards.

This would be true if it were a strict power gradient, but D&D is too complex for that to be the case.

If you decide adjust "martials" upwards, you have to figure out how it is that they accomplish acts that let them keep up with the reality-bending antics of "spellcasters".

Well in D&D 3.5, everybody is "bending reality" by level 5 or 6, and EVERYBODY is doing so by level 10. That's just from innate abilities, no magic items or what-not. In the same way that Daredevil's abilities are unrealistic, and he's considered a martial character.

You can decide to slide the scale of what's possible for people with no "magic" at all (spellcasting or otherwise) upwards, and follow through with all the implications for your fictional world (your game setting).

You can decide to just let some people do extreme and otherwise impossible things, forego any connection between this and the rest of the fictional reality you're working with, and say "screw it" to any sort of internal coherence and consistency in your setting.

You can decide that there are more ways to access "magic" (again, the broad sense, nothing to do with spellcasting) including channeling it into extreme and otherwise impossible physical acts via willpower or "righteousness" or ego or training or whatever.

Emphasis Mine

This right here is the critical flaw in your argumentation. Even in most fantasy fiction mundane characters can do things that are not very realistic and that doesn't shatter our immersion. We can have a dude win in a fight with six dudes. As a person that has been in real fights, that doesn't happen, you don't beat six guys in a fight, that doesn't work that way. But in fiction it's fine. You can have a guy lift an unrealistic amount of weight or use a ridiculous weapon, and that's fine.

That last one is might be mistaken for "even characters without magic have magic" if you ignore the distinction between "magic" in general and "spellcasting" specifically.

Which is why I try to make it clear in every post now that I'm distinguishing the ability to do fantastic, exceptional, normally impossible-in-the-setting things in general -- things that go beyond "I just worked out harder" -- from spellcasting in particular.

The things you're describing aren't "normally impossible" for heroic folk. I mean if commoners are your bar, or the city guard, then obviously even fairly low level folks are going to utterly wreck them in terms of superheroics.

Calthropstu

2017-12-23, 11:30 PM

ijon

2017-12-24, 12:03 AM

For those claiming martials don't get enough:
A character who buffs his strength to 39 can literally lift a truck and throw it. Seriously, you could use a truck as a throwing weapon.
If you can manage to get it to 49, you could lift a sherman tank.
59 and you can smack someone with a goddamn battleship.
Think about this for a second.
29 will allow you to lug around a volkswagon... and that is easy to get to. You can literally drop a car on someone. And you're complaining your martial is weak? Why aren't you picking giant **** up and dropping them on wizards?

those are 3.5 numbers, so there's a good few possible reasons it won't work (least likely to most likely):
- they're astral projecting
- they have a contingency teleport/dimension door/whatever
- they're in a resilient sphere or forcecage or whatever
- they're ethereal
- they're flying
- they're indoors
- there isn't anything 100 feet above them where you could drop a volkswagon
- they notice you lugging a volkswagon around and look up every now and then

that, it's not even a sure thing if it does hit. let's say you drop this volkswagon 100 feet onto a wizard. you're getting 9d6 damage from the object's weight (1800lb), and another 9d6 from falling 100 feet, or 18d6 damage (average 63).

a level 9, 18 CON wizard has 60 health on average (assuming he rolled a 4 on first level). false life will push him to 74 on average, and polymorph can raise that higher.

so in 3.5-land, an 1800 pound block of metal dropped from 100 feet can still manage to not kill that level 9 wizard. before he uses any spells. no it doesn't make any sense, but that's how it goes. for some reason, falling objects aren't all that lethal - I'm pretty sure a 200 pound rock falling 10 feet onto me would just straight up kill me, not just hurt me and maybe knock me unconscious. and yet in 3.5...

Mechalich

2017-12-24, 12:11 AM

This right here is the critical flaw in your argumentation. Even in most fantasy fiction mundane characters can do things that are not very realistic and that doesn't shatter our immersion. We can have a dude win in a fight with six dudes. As a person that has been in real fights, that doesn't happen, you don't beat six guys in a fight, that doesn't work that way. But in fiction it's fine. You can have a guy lift an unrealistic amount of weight or use a ridiculous weapon, and that's fine.

First of all, yes it is possible for one guy to win a fight with six others. It's not especially likely but it is possible. That's the difference between stylized and fantastical. In the former the improbable is exaggerated to the point where it happens regularly, in the latter that which is clearly impossible happens.

The boundary here can be admittedly somewhat vague and is often dependent upon genre conventions. The modern action movie presents itself as merely stylized, even as characters routinely perform outlandish feats of borderline impossibility and take such excessive amounts of punishment that a reasoned medical analysis would suggest that they die multiple times over (the Honest Trailer guys did this for Die Hard once upon a time). We can even see the progression from stylized to fantasy are characters grow in power and plots get bigger - the most notable current example is the Fast & Furious franchise. That started out as merely highly stylized - with dubious but possible chase sequences - but eventually accelerated into pure fantasy - like when they jumped the car between the buildings. In an example closer to RPGs, take martial arts films. There are those that are stylized but not fantasy - say Jet Li's Fearless - and then there are those that are clearly fantasy - like Hero, which also starred Jet Li.

There are many games that try to cap 'mundane' capabilities within the range where they still qualify as stylized. In the oWoD you could be really good at gunplay - Dex 5, Firearms 5, a couple specialties, and maybe even a complementary merit or two, and with a commensurate investment in Dodge and some decent tactics you could tear through common opponents like the Punisher. But it's not until you start stacking Vampire Disciplines, Werewolf Gifts, or Mage Sphere Magic on top that you hit clearly fantastical levels. At the same time, you can be a complete novice at something like gunplay and still use your supernatural abilities to do something utterly impossible with guns.

For those claiming martials don't get enough:
A character who buffs his strength to 39 can literally lift a truck and throw it. Seriously, you could use a truck as a throwing weapon.
If you can manage to get it to 49, you could lift a sherman tank.
59 and you can smack someone with a goddamn battleship.
Think about this for a second.
29 will allow you to lug around a volkswagon... and that is easy to get to. You can literally drop a car on someone. And you're complaining your martial is weak? Why aren't you picking giant **** up and dropping them on wizards?

Dealing damage is a single trait. In raw damage output properly optimized D&D martials can indeed compete with casters, but this is the only area where they remain competitive (and it's merely competitive, a mid-to-high levels a tier I caster can buff themselves up to the point where they match martial output more or less), and casters have all sorts of abilities to nullify damage (a Sherman tank is a nonmagical weapon, it is no more effective than a peanut as a throwing weapon against someone who has cast protection from nonmagical weapons on themselves), avoid being vulnerable to damage (can you throw you tank into the ethereal plane?), or a number of other options.

In any case, combat balance really isn't the problem. If you are only concerned with what happens between 'Fight!' and 'Finish him!' game balance is just a matter of juggling numbers for however many key variables you are implementing. And even when you mess up - and the designers of fighting games mess up all the time - the fanbase can usually notice can make simple houserules to adjust (the best example here is the 'no Oddjob' rule that was pretty much universal in group matches of the old Goldeneye shooter game, because Oddjob's character model was shorter than everyone else's and therefore more difficult to hit).

The trick, in TTRPGs, is to balance a character's ability to contribute outside of combat (or in combat and outside of combat together) and to do so in a way that allows different character types to still feel unique. 4e provided balance but everyone felt the same which is kind of beside the point in role-playing. Point-buy games aren't invulnerable to this either, since if you mess up the math and allow one true build to take form then everyone plays that and all the characters are going to be very similar.

so in 3.5-land, an 1800 pound block of metal dropped from 100 feet can still manage to not kill that level 9 wizard. before he uses any spells. no it doesn't make any sense, but that's how it goes. for some reason, falling objects aren't all that lethal - I'm pretty sure a 200 pound rock falling 10 feet onto me would just straight up kill me, not just hurt me and maybe knock me unconscious. and yet in 3.5...

Nobody bothered to change the calculations for falling damage from 2e to 3e, so they don't map properly onto the life totals produced by the HP inflation of the new edition.

Chaosticket

2017-12-24, 01:57 AM

Mechanically "martial" classes like the Fighter are meant to be early powerhouses but weak later on.
Magic Users trade off early effectiveness for later benefits.

Following the Pathfinder system
Tier 0 Magic Users(that is to say no magic at all) have to rely on class features. Physically its easy to make effective early. Versatility is way down as you lack even the most basic magic such as Detect Magic(traps).

Tier 4 magic spell users are very limited in the scope of what they can learn and use. Mostly the rely on buffing magic and using class features usually in conjunction to result in a superior warrior. Bloodrager, Paladin, Ranger.

Tier 6 Magic spell users have a greater variety. This allows more reliance on both magic and alternatives ways to use magic spells. Crowd Control becomes much more of a deciding factor. Bard, Inquisitor, Magus.

tier 9 magic users have the greatest variety and can learn the most powerful magic spells. They tend to have the most early weaknesses like Druid only using hide or wood armor or a Wizard having almost no armor and weapon proficiencies. Cleric, Wizard, Druid.
======================
Balancing magic is difficult as you have to use increasingly unbelievable things to not only magic magic possible, but also reason that magic is somehow weak. For Example yo can create fire from almost, or actually nothing, but why doesnt fire doesnt kill and or cripple every time its used?

So people are superpowered to have Hit Points.

Tanarii

2017-12-24, 10:49 AM

In raw damage output properly optimized D&D martials can indeed compete with casters, but this is the only area where they remain competitive You really needed to say "in 3.P D&D" for this statement to be correct.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-24, 11:04 AM

I would argue that from around level 5 to around level 15, they tend to stay relatively proportionate in ability. Those are in-fact, the levels that the Tier system model is supposed to analyze. After level 15 everything gets super wonky. Before level 5, it's just a matter of campaign design over anything else and what particular abilities a particular class gets.

I've noticed a VERY VERY strong tendency for people on internet forums to grossly exaggerate the tier gap. Particularly when there are anti-D&D folks who are trying to make some kind of anti-D&D point. Most martial characters have some ability to contribute, with sufficient optimization, it makes it not so bad at all. I mean casters may have to watch their output and martials may have to optimize, but such is life.

Again, I think that people who are mostly in bad games, or don't play that much 3.5 (or Pathfinder) tend to exaggerate this problem based on stuff that was on CharOp boards that aren't even on the Internets anymore. And based on a flawed understanding of that stuff.

"My experiences don't match your experiences, I don't see the problem you say you're having, therefore you must be doing something wrong."

Perhaps the problem is that you're not playing with people who are creative and resourceful enough to take full advantage of the system. /sarcasm

Meanwhile, plenty of people who do play that subfamily of systems do report this problem, before level 15, and consistently.

And there's the broader discussion of balance going on, as well.

This would be true if it were a strict power gradient, but D&D is too complex for that to be the case.

The only added complexity here is the need to balance across multiple levels. And as those levels go up, the "spellcasters" increasingly outstrip the "martials" in their ability to impact the game.

Well in D&D 3.5, everybody is "bending reality" by level 5 or 6, and EVERYBODY is doing so by level 10. That's just from innate abilities, no magic items or what-not. In the same way that Daredevil's abilities are unrealistic, and he's considered a martial character.

First, it's absolutely telling that people keep having to use superhuman comic book characters as examples for discussion of a fantasy RPG's balance issues. Daredevil is clearly superhuman. Yay.

Second, you're using "bending reality" in a way that diverges from the course of this ongoing discussion, in a way that appears only intended to obscure the issue through conflation. What you're doing here is the equivalent of saying "Going five miles over the speed limit is breaking the law, so it's the same as murder, since that's also breaking the law". It's a total scale error. "Martials", particularly fighters, don't actively bending reality in the same way that "spellcasters" do, especially as levels go up. A couple extra attacks, a few Feats, and more hit points don't match up to the spell catalogue. If the 10th level "martial" is Daredevil, then the 10th level "wizard" is a mashup of of Phoenix, Magneto, and Scarlet Witch.

Third, one of the solutions that's already been offered up REPEATEDLY is to go ahead and let "martials" follow the same power curve as "spellcasters", and forget any notion or hangup people have that "martials" are not and have no "magic" (again, "magic" and "spellcasting" are not interchangeable or synonymous in this context). So yes, in that solution, "Daredevil" is considered a "martial" character, but that means nothing -- "Daredevil" is clearly superhuman in both his senses and in his ability to endure/survive injuries. the question becomes one of "how does this sort of character do superhuman things (as defined by what is and is not superhuman within this setting)?" The wizard casts spells... what does the fighter do to exceed the normal limits of human beings?

This right here is the critical flaw in your argumentation. Even in most fantasy fiction mundane characters can do things that are not very realistic and that doesn't shatter our immersion. We can have a dude win in a fight with six dudes. As a person that has been in real fights, that doesn't happen, you don't beat six guys in a fight, that doesn't work that way. But in fiction it's fine. You can have a guy lift an unrealistic amount of weight or use a ridiculous weapon, and that's fine.

Speak for yourself.

When those sorts of things happen in fiction, without any underlying groundwork on how/why, then it does kick me completely out and into "what the hell just happened, I need to figure this out" mode. Against six opponents, either the "hero" needs to be established in the course of the fiction as exceeding what we'd expect normal limits to be, or they need to do something to set up such a victory (terrain / environment preventing being overwhelmed all at once, for example).

The things you're describing aren't "normally impossible" for heroic folk. I mean if commoners are your bar, or the city guard, then obviously even fairly low level folks are going to utterly wreck them in terms of superheroics.

What does "heroic folk?" even mean? (Rhetorical question, it means absolutely nothing, it's a meaningless obscurantist "distinction".)

Either the "martial characters" are bound by the same limits as everyone else (whatever those limits are), or they're doing something that most people can't do no matter what -- unless you're willing to just say "whatever, man, let's do cool stuff!"

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-24, 11:07 AM

Mechanically "martial" classes like the Fighter are meant to be early powerhouses but weak later on.
Magic Users trade off early effectiveness for later benefits.

That's not balance, that's two imbalances masquerading as balance.

Balancing magic is difficult as you have to use increasingly unbelievable things to not only magic magic possible, but also reason that magic is somehow weak. For Example yo can create fire from almost, or actually nothing, but why doesnt fire doesnt kill and or cripple every time its used?

So people are superpowered to have Hit Points.

"Superhuman" is a far better explanation for D&D-like ever-scaling Hit Points than any of the others that have ever been offered up. At least it's direct, doesn't overlap with other mechanics in the system, and just admits that it has nothing to do with reality.

Chaosticket

2017-12-24, 01:46 PM

I dont know if any games actually balances classes and characters well.

Look up the LinearWarriorsQuadriticWizards articles sometime to see situations where Magic Users may pull far ahead of Non-magical classes or possible the opposite where Magic never reaches the apex it is in 3rd/Pathfinder and instead physical becomes top.

Mechanically its often why Magic is limited by Mana or magic points. That is a limiter but everyone still wants magic. Final Fantasy series has its versions of Haste and Slow. Some games in that series focus on separating classes but others make it possible to make Magic Knights that can be martial and magical.

I dont know a lot about Psionics in dungeons and dragons but when I look up articles about them they are limited by Psionic points rather than Vancian Magic. I would have to do more research but compared to say a Wizard that ends up being able to cast 4-8 spells per day and multiply that by 9 tiers(not including tier 0) and you have dozens of options.

There are multiple versions of Invisibility, teleportation, buff spells, crowd control, direct damage.

I just go with using magic even if my character is mostly physical I multiclass or pick a class that is designed to be a magic user from level 1 like the Pathfinder Magus.

5th edition dungeons and dragons I know did something drastic to make martial characters better but also heavily reducing magic in every way.

Talakeal

2017-12-24, 02:58 PM

I would argue that from around level 5 to around level 15, they tend to stay relatively proportionate in ability. Those are in-fact, the levels that the Tier system model is supposed to analyze. After level 15 everything gets super wonky. Before level 5, it's just a matter of campaign design over anything else and what particular abilities a particular class gets.

I've noticed a VERY VERY strong tendency for people on internet forums to grossly exaggerate the tier gap. Particularly when there are anti-D&D folks who are trying to make some kind of anti-D&D point. Most martial characters have some ability to contribute, with sufficient optimization, it makes it not so bad at all. I mean casters may have to watch their output and martials may have to optimize, but such is life.

Again, I think that people who are mostly in bad games, or don't play that much 3.5 (or Pathfinder) tend to exaggerate this problem based on stuff that was on CharOp boards that aren't even on the Internets anymore. And based on a flawed understanding of that stuff.

This would be true if it were a strict power gradient, but D&D is too complex for that to be the case.

Well in D&D 3.5, everybody is "bending reality" by level 5 or 6, and EVERYBODY is doing so by level 10. That's just from innate abilities, no magic items or what-not. In the same way that Daredevil's abilities are unrealistic, and he's considered a martial character.

Emphasis Mine

This right here is the critical flaw in your argumentation. Even in most fantasy fiction mundane characters can do things that are not very realistic and that doesn't shatter our immersion. We can have a dude win in a fight with six dudes. As a person that has been in real fights, that doesn't happen, you don't beat six guys in a fight, that doesn't work that way. But in fiction it's fine. You can have a guy lift an unrealistic amount of weight or use a ridiculous weapon, and that's fine.

The things you're describing aren't "normally impossible" for heroic folk. I mean if commoners are your bar, or the city guard, then obviously even fairly low level folks are going to utterly wreck them in terms of superheroics.

Kind of. 3E is awfully stingy with skills and saving throws to the point where a low to mid level fighter often feels useless outside of combat, and the combat system itself is sufficiently restrictive (can't use maneuvers on things bigger than you, can't move and dual wield, can't charge over cluttered ground, etc.) that even in combat you are often struggling to find a way to do something.

But no, system isn't really that bad. I feel that it could be fixed with a single page of house rules, and isn't really broken unless you go out of your way to break it or utilize the small handful of "what the hell were they thinking?" options.

I have said as much before, but apparently me calling out infinite combos as cheese is offensive and worthy of mockery, so ymmv.

For those claiming martials don't get enough:
A character who buffs his strength to 39 can literally lift a truck and throw it. Seriously, you could use a truck as a throwing weapon.
If you can manage to get it to 49, you could lift a sherman tank.
59 and you can smack someone with a goddamn battleship.
Think about this for a second.
29 will allow you to lug around a volkswagon... and that is easy to get to. You can literally drop a car on someone. And you're complaining your martial is weak? Why aren't you picking giant **** up and dropping them on wizards?

Getting your strength that high is some serious business though. With the same amount of resource investiture imagine what a caster could do?

To quote someone about the old White Wolf games:

According to XP costs vampire Potence and mage Forces are about equal.

With Forces 9 I can control, negate, sense, and create heat, sound, light, gravity, acceleration, electricity, radioactivity, and more up to the point where I can literally move continents, planets, or even dimension, and I can alter laws of physics universally up to the point of creating entirely new fundamental forces.

With Potence 9 I can punch someone really, really, really, hard.

Cosi

2017-12-24, 04:21 PM

Good character concepts tell you how the character approaches situations, not what situations they can handle.

I disagree, or rather, I don't think this stance gets you anywhere. Personally, I think there are meaningful differences between skirmish and strategic conflicts, even if your power source or personality doesn't change. But if you don't believe that, you're basically arguing that power level is an aesthetic preference, and the grounds for excluding that aesthetic from a kitchen sink fantasy game seem pretty nonexistent.

D&D has always had both Wizards and Fighters as archetypes, and they need to be playable in the same party.

But D&D has not made the promise that Fighters (or Fighting Men) are specifically mundane. It says "there will be a Fighter class". Not "there will be a Fighter class that never exceeds the capabilities of a normal human".

How would a super powered fighter, say someone like Hercules or The Incredible Hulk be any less irrelevant than a fighter with a purely mundane flavor? They can all kill stuff really well, take a lot of punishment, and perform incredible feats of strength, but not a whole lot else.

Once you accept "superpowers" as a thing the Fighter has, they are no longer limited to "stab people really hard" as a solution to problems. You can simply give them whatever superpowers they happen to need. For example, in the Codex Alera your Fighter-ish types would get some combination of Earth, Air, and Metal magic depending on exactly how they were kitted out. Or you could be the Flash and just run faster than a teleporter (apparently something he has actually done). Or you could have some kind of shadow ninja powers which allowed you to send out shadow duplicates. Sky's the limit.

Likewise, would at will teleport without error not also make all of the casters who don't have access to it or a similar ability equally obsolete?

Well sure, but isn't that the nature of any game-changing ability? If you can fly, and other people can't fly, the people who can't fly are going to have trouble keeping up. Even purely mechanical abilities can have this effect. If I can push you off the RNG, you don't really matter any more. That doesn't make the ability inherently problematic, it means that the game will be different at different levels. This is a good thing because it makes character advancement feel meaningful.

Now, IMO the easiest solution is to remove open ended abilities that let you dig through the monster manual and replace them with specific spells, which iirc is what Pathfinder did. But I get that you want to play a high power game where those abilities are available.

Actually, no. I think those abilities are totally broken. I want to play a game where you can do things like that, but in ways that do not have broken implications. I would like for characters to eventually gain abilities that obviate low level encounters, but I would like that to happen in a controlled and predictable way that is consistent across classes.

The easiest way I can see to do that is to simply let all classes buy SLAs.

I'm not going to quote the whole thing, because I think you're missing the point. I don't need to figure out how to get 3e to do what I want. I can already mostly do that. I want there to be another edition of the game that is designed to do these things from the word go.

I do, for one.

I agree, though I'm probably not quite as hardcore about it as Max. The problem, in my mind, is that if the world is not consistent you cannot have meaningful interactions with it. If the kingdom has a king because that is narratively necessary, the only answer to questions like "what happens if the king dies" or "what happens if we help out the kingdom's religious leaders" or "what happens if we depose the local baron" are "the DM makes something up", which leads to a game where the value of player action is depreciated. There should be some kind of system you can turn to that adjudicates the effects of PC actions on the broader political landscape (or economic landscape, or military landscape). And that system is going to have real trouble working if you leave gaping holes in the system.

I really don't understand why you'd define another setting's magic by this world's human capabilities. sure they'd be superhuman (at least, super-our-human), but not necessarily magic.

So Superman is mundane? He's superhuman, but not magic. If your definition of "mundane" includes Superman, I don't think it's a useful definiton.

magic is how you break or ignore the laws of physics in the world.

You cannot do that. That is not how physics works. Physics is "how the universe operates", and "how the universe operates" necessarily includes all the things you can do, because you are a part of the universe and your actions a part of its operation. If you can do something, that thing cannot break your laws of physics. The only perspective from which "breaking the laws of physics" makes sense is one from another universe with different physical laws. But from that perspective, surviving having your head chopped off is magic.

and can we skip the part where you tell me my definitions are WRONG AND BAD because you don't agree with them? because I really don't want to argue definitions; that'll go absolutely nowhere, and slowly at that.

No. Because your definitions are not coherent. If you wanted to define magic aesthetically as "things that look like Harry Potter", that would be fine. But you have defined magic in a way that does not work, so your definition is useless.

Mechanically "martial" classes like the Fighter are meant to be early powerhouses but weak later on.
Magic Users trade off early effectiveness for later benefits.

As mentioned, this is a bad paradigm. Not only is "you suck now, I suck later" not as much fun as people seem to think it is, this paradigm also means the game is immediately broken the second someone runs a campaign that does anything but the full level range. That's not practical (because campaigns simply are going to end early whether you like it or not) and it's stupid (because people are going to like 3rd level or 12th level or 7th level more than other levels).

You really needed to say "in 3.P D&D" for this statement to be correct.

Did Fighters have some kind of serious non-combat utility in earlier editions?

PhoenixPhyre

2017-12-24, 05:01 PM

Did Fighters have some kind of serious non-combat utility in earlier editions?

Since 99% of non-combat utility was non-mechanical (as in, no skill checks, etc), the answer is absolutely yes. And the ability of magic to bypass a large range of things was significantly more limited. In some editions fighters got (or were presumed to have) castles and armies at certain levels. If that's not non-combat utility, I don't know what is.

And power level is a negotiated thing that depends on campaign, table, and setting. Building a character concept that is intrinsically tied to a narrow range of power makes that a less useful concept. If you insist on doing so, you have no standing to demand that others play at power levels that allow for that concept. Same with a character concept that has no combat utility for a mostly combat campaign. Not all concepts are valid for every campaign, and it's better (more useful, more flexible, nicer to your fellow players, etc) to make broad concepts that can adapt to settings/campaigns than self-limiting ones that require everything to bend to them.

For me, the most important thing is respecting the table's consensus. If everyone else wants to play demigods, then the one who insists on being Joe Average is doing it wrong. If everyone wants to play more grounded characters, then the one insisting on playing a demigod is in the wrong. You don't have the right to a specific character concept.

Next in priority is respecting the setting's limits (either implicit or explicit). If most of the setting's NPCs are "poorly optimized" (say blaster wizards), then that's a signal that coming with a PO or TO character is probably a bad fit. Basically, apply the Categorical Imperative--if the NPCs optimized like you're planning to, would the setting still look similar? If so, then you're in bounds. This principle also cautions against splat diving for cross-setting material--no FR specific PRCs in Eberron, and no dragonshards in FR. And so on.

Third is respecting the campaign. If it's a dark and gritty campaign where you're playing as agents of the thieves association, maybe your fanatic paladin doesn't fit so well. If it's an undead heavy campaign, maybe your diplomancer is a bad fit.

Parallel to these is a concern for the system you're using (including supported genres, themes, and power levels). Very few systems handle a large disparity in power levels very well. Those that do tend to be more abstract and narrative (and have meta-game mechanics to share the ability to affect scenes). 3e has the problem that the intended power of characters and the realized power of characters is widely and unevenly different. They expected monks and fighters to actually be useful against appropriate CR creatures (without tricks). They're subpar at best, especially when not heavily optimized. They expected clerics to do lots of healing (they don't) and arcane casters to do lots of blasting (they generally don't). That is, the designers screwed up the implementation. The entire system as it exists is a result of unintended consequences that have become ossified and have replaced the original intent.

Chaosticket

2017-12-24, 06:09 PM

I honestly think there is no way to alter the infamous paradigm without killing what some people find the most interesting and/or most powerful part of Dungeons and Dragons. That and its already been done in 5th edition.

Compare other games and who plays Star Wars and never wants to use the Force?

If you could balance things then really the only way would be to have every character have every option available and make it so the player chooses. Basically everyone becomes a 5th edition Bard. You have huge potential which goes away gradually as you make choices to improve your character and gradually specialize into fewer areas.

That would change the paradigm to be more balanced but also mean the amounts of you can keep would need to be higher. More feats, stats, etc. otherwise you end up with a "cookie cutter" character.

Im not a medieval fantasy fan as much as science fiction and technology. Something like Starfinder would be more boring without special powers but at least you can play as various aliens with powered armor and lasers. The Less fantastic a game gets the more it becomes like a life simulator.

If you want Martial to beat magic then try something like Dark Sun setting where magic is far rarer. If you want to balance things to a World of Warcraft way, 5th edition works. Youre going to have trouble though with anyone who actually likes magic.

ijon

2017-12-24, 08:04 PM

You cannot do that. That is not how physics works. Physics is "how the universe operates", and "how the universe operates" necessarily includes all the things you can do, because you are a part of the universe and your actions a part of its operation. If you can do something, that thing cannot break your laws of physics. The only perspective from which "breaking the laws of physics" makes sense is one from another universe with different physical laws. But from that perspective, surviving having your head chopped off is magic.

No. Because your definitions are not coherent. If you wanted to define magic aesthetically as "things that look like Harry Potter", that would be fine. But you have defined magic in a way that does not work, so your definition is useless.

thank you for demonstrating why I said "let's avoid the YOUR DEFINITION IS WRONG arguments". I knew you'd automatically go YOUR DEFINITION IS WRONG. because if something doesn't fit your stringent ideas of what works or what doesn't, which cannot be swayed under any circumstances (seriously, I've never seen it happen), it's wrong, it's useless, and the person who suggested it is an idiot.

you can't accept that magic can operate outside physics and muck up the rules when the two do interact. that since physics only cares about how matter and energy interact, that there is room for something to operate outside it, and magic can fill that gap. it makes it a whole lot easier to reconcile all those spells that don't make any sense when you look into them - like how glitterdust is the only thing that is visible on an invisible person (it explicitly outlines them), or how evocation magic creates something from nothing and manages to shape force into an object. and how do you physically explain the gods? how do you physically explain the beings that can outright alter physics?

or go look at the world of elder scrolls. it has a huge physics break in the form of CHIM, which is basically "someone in the universe learns how to pull up the developer console". it's how all the dwemer (save one) just disappeared in an instant, and it's how cyrodiil changed from a rainforest to a temperate forest by nothing but the will of talos. there is absolutely no way you're fitting that into any laws of physics.

CHIM is the most explicit example I can think of of something that exists outside physics in its universe. and yet that universe still exists, despite your insistence that everything has to be explained by physics.

but no. even though the vast majority of magic defies physical explanation, and despite just about anyone else being able to accept "oh magic breaks physics, I kinda figured that anyway", this cannot be. it's just straight up WRONG.

what really gets me is the useless part. I'VE BEEN USING IT TO DEFINE WHAT I WANT IN A MARTIAL. but nope, useless. there is absolutely no way the mundane/magic distinction I've been using could possibly be useful. there is absolutely no way that clarifying what I want could possibly be useful.

god, I hate talking to you.

oh, and as for your superman argument? isn't his super strength outright explained away with contact telekinesis? don't they explain why his clothes don't fall apart with "oh he emits a 3mm (or whatever) aura of invincibility" - which has its own host of problems? is his flight and heat vision and powering up from the sun given physical explanations? I'm not very familiar with comics, but seriously, that is some weak garbage you're throwing out there.

Cluedrew

2017-12-24, 08:56 PM

To ijon: Alert, I am 98% sure this thread is done and has been for several pages. And by done I mean that I don't think any productive conversation is going to come out of it. I actually stopped posting in it for that reason. But I have been keeping up with it just in case I was wrong. (I might be still but I don't think I am yet.) Anyways I just wanted to say, since I don't recall you participating in pervious versions of this thread and you seemed to come in a bit late, you might want to wait for the next round. This thread will either die down or get locked, then time passes, heads clear and the first section of the next thread has good conversation again. Because you have said some interesting things this thread and I would hate to see them wasted when the only question is how viscously they will get shot down.

Now you may disagree with me, I seem to have a high threshold for productive conversation, but I just thought I would let you know. Cosi can be much more fun to talk to than he is right now.

... No I have nothing to say on the main topic, and probably will not until the next thread.

Talakeal

2017-12-24, 08:59 PM

Cosi

2017-12-24, 09:40 PM

And power level is a negotiated thing that depends on campaign, table, and setting. Building a character concept that is intrinsically tied to a narrow range of power makes that a less useful concept. If you insist on doing so, you have no standing to demand that others play at power levels that allow for that concept.

I think I disagree? Or maybe I don't? I think you clearly have a right to make demands (requests is probably a better term) of the group. Everyone does. You don't have more or a right because your concept is narrow, but you don't have less of right either.

For me, the most important thing is respecting the table's consensus. If everyone else wants to play demigods, then the one who insists on being Joe Average is doing it wrong. If everyone wants to play more grounded characters, then the one insisting on playing a demigod is in the wrong. You don't have the right to a specific character concept.

Solidly agreed. My argument with Talakeal is more about what the system should support. If the system doesn't support demigods, you can't play it even if everyone wants to.

Next in priority is respecting the setting's limits (either implicit or explicit). If most of the setting's NPCs are "poorly optimized" (say blaster wizards), then that's a signal that coming with a PO or TO character is probably a bad fit.

Disagree. Setting should reflect mechanics. If playing legal characters breaks the setting, it is a bad setting.

thank you for demonstrating why I said "let's avoid the YOUR DEFINITION IS WRONG arguments". I knew you'd automatically go YOUR DEFINITION IS WRONG. because if something doesn't fit your stringent ideas of what works or what doesn't, which cannot be swayed under any circumstances (seriously, I've never seen it happen), it's wrong, it's useless, and the person who suggested it is an idiot.

Yes, you can't say "magic is the set of things that can't be done", because then you've defined magic as the empty set. Because that's what "things that the laws of physics don't allow" means. It's like suggesting "the set of living things that are dead" as a useful category. Some definitions are dumb, and yours happens to be one of them.

that since physics only cares about how matter and energy interact

Physics also studies space and time. It doesn't study magic, but that is because magic is not real. If there was magic that people could do, physics would study it.

like how glitterdust is the only thing that is visible on an invisible person (it explicitly outlines them)

Alright? I don't see how you are confused by that. You can but visible things near things that aren't visible.

how evocation magic creates something from nothing and manages to shape force into an object

The only reason you can't create something from nothing is the laws of physics. If you could do that, there would be different laws of physics (just as there would be different physics if you could travel faster than light, or reverse entropy).

how do you physically explain the gods?

Which part? Zeus is just a dude who lives on Mount Olympus and can create lightning bolts. If you buy some land in Greece and a Telsa Coil, you too can have those powers.

how do you physically explain the beings that can outright alter physics?

Altering the behavior of physics is not altering physics. Their powers still have limits.

CHIM is the most explicit example I can think of of something that exists outside physics in its universe. and yet that universe still exists, despite your insistence that everything has to be explained by physics.

Everything has to be explained by physics because physics is what we call the set of explanations for things in the universe.

ImNotTrevor

2017-12-25, 12:40 AM

I
Yes, you can't say "magic is the set of things that can't be done",
Not how he defined it. Go reread.

because then you've defined magic as the empty set. Because that's what "things that the laws of physics don't allow" means.
The laws of physics don't allow FTL travel inside the 40k universe. For realsies. They don't. Hence why you go to The Warp, where the laws of physics DO allow FTL travel. (Although saying The Warp follows any kind of laws is an asenine proposition at best. The Warp LITERALLY runs on whims. Canonically.)

This argument is so flimsy it was crushed in the 80's by a scifi wargame. You can have physics and physics-breaking exist in the same setting.

It's like suggesting "the set of living things that are dead" as a useful category. Some definitions are dumb, and yours happens to be one of them.

You really showed that strawman what for.

Physics also studies space and time. It doesn't study magic, but that is because magic is not real. If there was magic that people could do, physics would study it.
Space and Time are functions of mass and energy, though. And only

The only reason you can't create something from nothing is the laws of physics. If you could do that, there would be different laws of physics (just as there would be different physics if you could travel faster than light, or reverse entropy).

I refer you back to 40k for an example of a setting where "Does not operate via physical laws" is a common problem.

Take Orks who can run a tank off a drawing of an engine so long as they're all convinced it will work, because what they think is true causes warp energy to screw up reality in just the right way.

Which part? Zeus is just a dude who lives on Mount Olympus and can create lightning bolts. If you buy some land in Greece and a Telsa Coil, you too can have those powers.

This is where you become a dismissive douchelord, ironic since you dislike when people do this to you.

Altering the behavior of physics is not altering physics. Their powers still have limits.

What. If their powers include "alters physics" then that's what they do. You don't get to redefine it.

Everything has to be explained by physics because physics is what we call the set of explanations for things in the universe.

Physics doesn't explain MANY things in our universe. If it did, there would not be other branches of science.

This whole post is so laughably bad and based on 90% opinion and 10% misquoting.

Max_Killjoy

2017-12-25, 01:21 AM

From another thread...

Picture a D&D campaign with no spellcasters and no spell-like or supernatural abilities. One of the party members is a Rogue with the Educated feat, and maybe the ACF that trades sneak attack for fighter feats.

When you're wandering through ancient ruins, he can sense the magic of ancient wards and unravel them so that his companions can pass safely. He has knowledge on many arcane topics, including history, mystic languages, and the denizens of other planes. He likely carries a magic wand or staff that's powerless in the hands of the fighter or barbarian, and his understanding of the craft is such that even if handed an elven item that were designed to prevent humans from using it, he can still bend its power to his will. Added to that, he's a mysterious sort who has a habit of stepping out of nowhere or pulling off a disguise to reveal he was watching you all along. He's very perceptive, has a silver tongue, and every time someone's tried to capture him he's disappeared within five minutes.

Such a character is more than entitled to call himself a wizard. It's just that D&D's actual wizard class is operating on a way higher power level.

Just something to think about when it comes to presumptions about magic, degrees of power, and such, in D&D, and something that might be done to fix the caster/martial disparity other than making "martials" into ubermench.

Cosi

2017-12-25, 01:35 AM

Not how he defined it. Go reread.

That's exactly how he defined it. He wants magic to mean "breaking the laws of physics". Since physics is our model of how the universe behaves, "breaking" it necessarily means doing something outside that model, which would be something you can't do because the model is (notionally) a full model of the universe*.

Honestly, there are a lot of definitions that do what he apparently wants. You could have an aesthetic definition where "mundane" characters did things that were "muscle-y" or "brain-y" and magical characters did things that were "ritual-y" and "eldritch-y". But that definition would be talking about a different issue, so you would end up with even worse Wittgenstein-esque problems than we have already.

The laws of physics don't allow FTL travel inside the 40k universe. For realsies. They don't. Hence why you go to The Warp, where the laws of physics DO allow FTL travel. (Although saying The Warp follows any kind of laws is an asenine proposition at best. The Warp LITERALLY runs on whims. Canonically.)

It's interesting how you think "go some place with different laws of physics" represents "breaking the laws of physics". It's like suggesting I'm shoplifting whenever I go to a store that sells the same thing for cheaper. Or that I am evading French taxes by living in the United States. And "reality responds to emotions" is still a set of physical laws. It's a weird set of physical laws, but so are (arguably) quantum mechanics or any laws that allow FTL. You can't "break physics". We know this, because there is a long history of people displacing models with better models when they did experiments that produced conclusions incompatible with existing models.

Newton didn't "break physics" by discovering that objects of different sizes fall at the same speed. He discovered a flaw in the Aristotelean model of physics, which we then replaced with a Newtonian model that fit reality better. And then we replaced it again with Einstein's model. At no point did those observations "break physics". They simply indicated that our models of physics were incomplete. Similarly, if we discovered that some people could make things move without apparent expenditure of energy, that wouldn't "break physics", it would just mean we needed a model that accounted for that behavior.

"Physics" is not the specific set of models we have written down to describe the world. It is the process of constructing models that describe the world. It can't be "broken" any more than you could "break" language by producing a new concept or "break" economics by finding an empirical counterexample to some theory.

Physics doesn't explain MANY things in our universe. If it did, there would not be other branches of science.

Wat. This is trivially true (in that, yes, there are other branches of science), but meaningfully false (in that those branches of science are not contradicting physics so much as studying different stuff). Our physical models aren't incompatible with our biological models or our chemical models. It's like saying that Ontology isn't a real branch of Philsophy because Epistemology also exists. It's not so much wrong as a total non-sequitor.

*: The fact that Warhammer 40k has a parallel universe is mostly you trying to pull slight of hand and failing. Ecology studies the biosphere, but it wouldn't suddenly stop working if we were to discover another biosphere.

Calthropstu

2017-12-25, 02:06 AM

That's exactly how he defined it. He wants magic to mean "breaking the laws of physics". Since physics is our model of how the universe behaves, "breaking" it necessarily means doing something outside that model, which would be something you can't do because the model is (notionally) a full model of the universe*.

Honestly, there are a lot of definitions that do what he apparently wants. You could have an aesthetic definition where "mundane" characters did things that were "muscle-y" or "brain-y" and magical characters did things that were "ritual-y" and "eldritch-y". But that definition would be talking about a different issue, so you would end up with even worse Wittgenstein-esque problems than we have already.

It's interesting how you think "go some place with different laws of physics" represents "breaking the laws of physics". It's like suggesting I'm shoplifting whenever I go to a store that sells the same thing for cheaper. Or that I am evading French taxes by living in the United States. And "reality responds to emotions" is still a set of physical laws. It's a weird set of physical laws, but so are (arguably) quantum mechanics or any laws that allow FTL. You can't "break physics". We know this, because there is a long history of people displacing models with better models when they did experiments that produced conclusions incompatible with existing models.

Newton didn't "break physics" by discovering that objects of different sizes fall at the same speed. He discovered a flaw in the Aristotelean model of physics, which we then replaced with a Newtonian model that fit reality better. And then we replaced it again with Einstein's model. At no point did those observations "break physics". They simply indicated that our models of physics were incomplete. Similarly, if we discovered that some people could make things move without apparent expenditure of energy, that wouldn't "break physics", it would just mean we needed a model that accounted for that behavior.

"Physics" is not the specific set of models we have written down to describe the world. It is the process of constructing models that describe the world. It can't be "broken" any more than you could "break" language by producing a new concept or "break" economics by finding an empirical counterexample to some theory.

Wat. This is trivially true (in that, yes, there are other branches of science), but meaningfully false (in that those branches of science are not contradicting physics so much as studying different stuff). Our physical models aren't incompatible with our biological models or our chemical models. It's like saying that Ontology isn't a real branch of Philsophy because Epistemology also exists. It's not so much wrong as a total non-sequitor.

*: The fact that Warhammer 40k has a parallel universe is mostly you trying to pull slight of hand and failing. Ecology studies the biosphere, but it wouldn't suddenly stop working if we were to discover another biosphere.

Extremely well argued. Very well written, and highly accurate. Chemistry, biology et al actually all have a basis in physics at their core. They exist because the physical exists forming measurable and observable reactions. Physics really is the basest of sciences.

Magic, by its definition, is not science. It calls upon unexplainable powers to bend or even break the physical laws of the universe. In the basest form, I suppose magic could function in any way we want it to. Muscle magic could totally be a thing. D&D and all the other RPGs out there are, after all, merely products of and fuel for imagination right?
So if we want crouching tiger hidden dragonball z fights we can have em. If we want magic masters who can mop the floor with martials, we can have that too. If we want a guy who can cast Tenser's Neutron Bomb we can have that as well. If we want magical furbies, we can do that too. If we want teleporting hamburger meat, sure why not?

Magic is not science, it's imagination. We really shouldn't need degrees in chem and physics to play a game. So suspending physics should be no problem. And if something in the rules breaks physics? Well, magic.
Right?

ijon

2017-12-25, 02:27 AM