Why don't high level non-casters get cool anime abilities?

[Greywander]

I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I mean, imagine the BBEG gives an order to their underling, and the fighter just straight up cuts the order so the underling doesn't hear it. Stuff like that.

I know martials are meant to be more mundane, but high level is anything but mundane. "Mundane" is 10th level or lower. After 11th level, you're treading into heroic, larger-than-life territory, where warriors become superhuman. I think there's room for abilities that look a lot like spells (e.g. cutting sound), but aren't, and are just the result of mundane ability taken up to 11 and honed beyond the normal human limits. This is how, for example, One Piece characters like Zoro or Sanji are able to compete on an even footing with characters who have devil fruit abilities, despite not being devil fruit users themselves (although let's be honest, Luffy kind of falls into this camp, too; he may be a devil fruit user, but he's also freakishly strong, which has nothing to do with his devil fruit power).

I'm really not sure how you'd implement this into D&D, though. You could make it essentially an alternate spellcasting system, though you'd call it something else (e.g. "Skill Tricks" or "Masterful Arts" or something). Maybe instead of spell slots, you'd spend hit dice on these, something that martials get a larger size of. Initially, you'd probably only get versions of these that do fairly mundane stuff, but at a very high level. For example, being able to slice through a medium-sized tree in a single swing (comparable to 1st and 2nd level spells?). Then later you'd upgrade to implausible-but-still-believable abilities, like cutting through stone and metal (comparable to 3rd to 5th level spells?). Then you'd start getting to stuff like cutting intangible concepts (comparable to 6th+ level spells?). Not sure if that would be the best way to do it, though, and I'd worry it would feel too similar to spellcasting.

[Psyren]

There's nothing stopping you/your GM giving them those kinds of abilities at your table.

If you're asking why WotC doesn't do it, I suspect it has to do with their desire to sell the books they write to a majority of their audience.

[Kane0]

Even at high level the mundane warrior often provides the 'grounding' to the traditional fantasy adventure.

Also, like, inertia.

[Foolwise]

If you're asking why WotC doesn't do it, I suspect it has to do with their desire to sell the books they write to a majority of their audience.

I wouldn't begin to think what the majority of D&D audience wants, and you probably shouldn't either.

[JackPhoenix]

Because D&D isn't an anime. And thanks Gygax for that.

[Greywander]

Because D&D isn't an anime. And thanks Gygax for that.
I just used "anime" as a shorthand. As noted in the OP, folklore and mythology is full of this kind of stuff, so it's not limited to anime.

Honestly, it's a bit strange that nobody has a problem with all the crazy stuff a wizard can do, but a fighter who can cut a ship in half (or perform similarly ridiculous feats) is too much.

[Tanarii]

As far as I'm concerned, they do.

[Lord Raziere]

I wouldn't begin to think what the majority of D&D audience wants, and you probably shouldn't either.

Yeah I've asked this question multiple times for years. The answer always boils to some phantom silent majority not wanting it that the poster supposedly speaks for and just happens to have strong opinions about being against the change but supposedly has nothing to do with the "fact" they are stating.

At this point, I'd encourage everyone to just stop trying to use DnD for everything to give actual systems designed to do specifically anime stuff a chance. There is multiple ones out there and I can tell what they are and what they're like, even if I haven't played them. Otherwise your just going to butt heads with people who claim to speak for the silent majority who aren't going to discuss anything that isn't already "popular enough" to care about.

[JonBeowulf]

Yeah I've asked this question multiple times for years. The answer always boils to some phantom silent majority not wanting it that the poster supposedly speaks for and just happens to have strong opinions about being against the change but supposedly has nothing to do with the "fact" they are stating.
I don't have any data to back it up, but I'm sure WotC does market research to maximize their revenue. They don't add stuff that they don't think will sell (or would damage the brand).


At this point, I'd encourage everyone to just stop trying to use DnD for everything to give actual systems designed to do specifically anime stuff a chance. There is multiple ones out there and I can tell what they are and what they're like, even if I haven't played them. Otherwise your just going to butt heads with people who claim to speak for the silent majority who aren't going to discuss anything that isn't already "popular enough" to care about.
THIS! SO MUCH THIS!!

[Lucas Yew]

I always suspect a sizable dose of malicious anti-jock wish fulfillment as the true culprit for this topic. :smallannoyed:

On that point, I think it's mentally much healthier for PCs to feel relative superiority (provided they're desperately craving it for assured self esteem) against the NPC population (so no real person will be hurt), not against other common PC archetypes...

[crayzz]

Yeah I've asked this question multiple times for years. The answer always boils to some phantom silent majority not wanting it that the poster supposedly speaks for and just happens to have strong opinions about being against the change but supposedly has nothing to do with the "fact" they are stating.

Isn't Tome of Battle widely controversial, in part, for the anime-esque abilities it gives martials? Albeit ToB was 3.5e, it certainly seems to be widely criticized and I can understand WotC being under the impression that giving martials quasi supernatural powers is something they need to be really careful about.

[Lord Raziere]

Isn't Tome of Battle widely controversial, in part, for the anime-esque abilities it gives martials? Albeit ToB was 3.5e, it certainly seems to be widely criticized and I can understand WotC being under the impression that giving martials quasi supernatural powers is something they need to be really careful about.

I mean you can claim that. But all I have for evidence is people on this very forum arguing about it. One forum does not a fandom this large make. and I dare not guess what goes on in WotC's minds.

[Sigreid]

I think it's simply to have classes to play that will be enjoyed by whatever percentage of the potential player base that doesn't want to play a magic man or super human. It's good to have options for all kinds.

[Waazraath]

As far as I'm concerned, they do.

This, very much this. We had this, what you ask OP, in 3.5, Tome of Battle / book of 9 swords, which was very much anime flavored. Some of these moves are almost 1 on 1 ported over to 5e. The 6th level 'maneuver' Iron Heart Endurance is litterally the same as the 5e fighters Second Wind. The 9th level maneuver Time Stands Still is Action Surge. The fifth level Iron Heart Focus is exactly the same as Indomitable. And this is only for the fighter, there is much more: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already&highlight=tome%20of%20battle for many more examples.

What the designers of 5e did very smart (imo) is that they replaced the specific anime flavor with a more neutral flavor. This anime flavor was (in my view) something that made people dislike Tome of Battle, much more than that it gave more options to martials (something needed in 3.5 much more than in 5e), I've seen mostly praise for that.


Isn't Tome of Battle widely controversial, in part, for the anime-esque abilities it gives martials? Albeit ToB was 3.5e, it certainly seems to be widely criticized and I can understand WotC being under the impression that giving martials quasi supernatural powers is something they need to be really careful about.

So I think this is partly correct - critsism was mostly about the fluff, not as much about the powers per se. And as a side note, I think ToB was more popular than disliked to begin with, judging both from fora, my own tables, and how damn expensive the book was/became when printing stopped (70 euro's for a new ToB compared to 5 euro's for Magic of Incarnum at game fairs).

Thing is, in 5e a table can deceide for themselves if second wind represents a gritty normal warrior clenching his or her teeth and continue fighting despite the pain, or whether it's inner ki makes the received wounds close themselves; whether action surge is moving in a blur and bullet time, or represents just very efficient and good fighting.

[SociopathFriend]

Yeah I've asked this question multiple times for years. The answer always boils to some phantom silent majority not wanting it that the poster supposedly speaks for and just happens to have strong opinions about being against the change but supposedly has nothing to do with the "fact" they are stating.

I have very definitely played with at least two different groups where at least one member insisted they weren't happy with Fighters, Rangers, and Barbarians all getting magic mixed into their subclasses so heavily. There was a particular emphasis on Barbarian by one of those players and how he was not at all happy about the animal-speaking ritual.

A majority? No- a majority simply play the game as-is and don't actually have a particular push for/against given features in my experience. They won't say, "I wish the Fighter had more magic" they will say, "Fighter doesn't have much magic and I want magic this campaign- I won't play a Fighter".

I've pointed out you can do just about anything via fluff so long as it mechanically holds up- this is seldom received well. It's not enough to 'say' it's magic apparently or vice versa it's not enough to say a Spell per the game's rules is NOT magic but instead skill or martial prowess.

While I'm wary of silent majority arguments it DOES bear mentioning that D&D is, at its core, a game you typically play IRL with people sitting next to you. It is very, very possible to know a great many D&D players but also know none of them have an online D&D presence. I think I'm sitting at a 1/30 ratio of online/offline, 2/30 if you count Discord and 3/30 if I count myself. That's a **lot** of players all with their own opinions and AFAIK none of which make them known in any forum or online thread. Certainly the two I know that hate on magic in the subclasses have never indicated they have anything to do with D&D online.

[tokek]

It kind of sounds like you want to play a paladin

I mean that's the class that most closely does anime stuff at high level like cutting through almost anything in a single blow etc. I'm pretty sure you could flavour your spells - so long as your anime style includes a clear shout and gesture before doing your amazing thing.

Ultimately adding a whole new mechanism to cut off sounds etc etc that does not use the existing magic system will just add a large amount of complexity to the game for little real reward. You can just flavour your paladin spells how you want.

[GeoffWatson]

4e had plenty of high-level cool abilities for Fighters.
But the Pathfinder anti-4e propaganda worked well enough that WotC is scared of making anything that "feels" like 4e, so high-level Fighter abilities are totally boring.

[Bjarkmundur]

Epic Destinies in 4e did this!!!! (https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Epic_destiny)

If you were trained in theivery and stealth you could take the Thief of Legend Epic Destiny. Its capstone allowed you to steal intangible things, like childhood memories or the color of your eyes! It was so cool!

This is definitely something i'd like to add, if my campaigns ever go past 8th level. We always have some people new to ttrpgs, so we start at 1st level. Even though we power through the first three levels, campaigns usually still end before the newbies get good enough to deal with the complexity of higher tier play. Skipping levels has been tried, like the time skips in One Piece, but it didn't help. I usually wait with level up until the new folk have gotten comfortable with their existing class features.

Paragon Paths were introduced to characters at 1/3d their max level in 4e, and basically were "you're the best at what you specialize in" such as being an arena Fighter, a pirate or something like that. These are pretty much baked into 5e. But at 2/3 max level you'd start your epic Destiny, where each character would start on their journey as a demigod, and end up as a godlike figure. This is something i'd love to design for whichever group gets to 11th or 13th level in my games. I'd custom make each one for each character, and as long as the features are balanced within the group, it should be pretty easy.

I started homebrewing boons in 4e, to help my players hit their character concepts, and then just kept on doing it. I love boons, especially as a reward for finishing a big story arch.

The last boon I ever made in 4e was when our group helped an ancient gold dragon rid the land of a fierce red dragon who had been slowly breeding up a massive army of young red dragons. The red dragons had terrorized the players forEVER, destroying towns and entire cities. We used a special item to track them, but were always one step behind.
When we finally met the gold dragon he gave us the Staff of the Dragon, which allowed us to "unlock our dragon aspect". After the ritual we were all turned into our corresponding type of dragon and had an epic aerial battle with the red dragons.

After we transformed back, some of our draconic aspect remained, and we all got a dragon themed boon, corresponding with the type of dragon we turned into. It rreeaaallly made everyone feel like superheroes. I mean, come on, we had DRAGON POWERS!!!

[Azuresun]

I have very definitely played with at least two different groups where at least one member insisted they weren't happy with Fighters, Rangers, and Barbarians all getting magic mixed into their subclasses so heavily. There was a particular emphasis on Barbarian by one of those players and how he was not at all happy about the animal-speaking ritual.

A majority? No- a majority simply play the game as-is and don't actually have a particular push for/against given features in my experience. They won't say, "I wish the Fighter had more magic" they will say, "Fighter doesn't have much magic and I want magic this campaign- I won't play a Fighter".

I've pointed out you can do just about anything via fluff so long as it mechanically holds up- this is seldom received well. It's not enough to 'say' it's magic apparently or vice versa it's not enough to say a Spell per the game's rules is NOT magic but instead skill or martial prowess.

While I'm wary of silent majority arguments it DOES bear mentioning that D&D is, at its core, a game you typically play IRL with people sitting next to you. It is very, very possible to know a great many D&D players but also know none of them have an online D&D presence. I think I'm sitting at a 1/30 ratio of online/offline, 2/30 if you count Discord and 3/30 if I count myself. That's a **lot** of players all with their own opinions and AFAIK none of which make them known in any forum or online thread. Certainly the two I know that hate on magic in the subclasses have never indicated they have anything to do with D&D online.

For some more data points: In the games I've run, I had one player who played a Vengeance Paladin, got overwhelmed with the options, and switched to a Barbarian where their decision making in combat was "hit stuff", "hit stuff recklessly" and "hit stuff in a masterful way", and they liked that just fine. Also an archer who looked over the options for their Fighter and went with Champion because there was less stuff to remember. The more optimised people in the group have played an Eldritch Knight, an Ancients Paladin and Bladesinger Wizard to get their "warrior with supernatural abilities" fix. The first two do not, as far as I know, spend much time on D&D forums.

[Cheesegear]

Not sure if that would be the best way to do it, though, and I'd worry it would feel too similar to spellcasting.

Something, something. Remember Tome of Battle? I hated ToB.

But seriously. A Fighter is swinging a Greatsword five times in six seconds. That's...Inhuman.

You're talking about giving non-casters...Basically magic.

[Lord Raziere]

I have very definitely played with at least two different groups where at least one member insisted they weren't happy with Fighters, Rangers, and Barbarians all getting magic mixed into their subclasses so heavily. There was a particular emphasis on Barbarian by one of those players and how he was not at all happy about the animal-speaking ritual.

A majority? No- a majority simply play the game as-is and don't actually have a particular push for/against given features in my experience. They won't say, "I wish the Fighter had more magic" they will say, "Fighter doesn't have much magic and I want magic this campaign- I won't play a Fighter".

I've pointed out you can do just about anything via fluff so long as it mechanically holds up- this is seldom received well. It's not enough to 'say' it's magic apparently or vice versa it's not enough to say a Spell per the game's rules is NOT magic but instead skill or martial prowess.

While I'm wary of silent majority arguments it DOES bear mentioning that D&D is, at its core, a game you typically play IRL with people sitting next to you. It is very, very possible to know a great many D&D players but also know none of them have an online D&D presence. I think I'm sitting at a 1/30 ratio of online/offline, 2/30 if you count Discord and 3/30 if I count myself. That's a **lot** of players all with their own opinions and AFAIK none of which make them known in any forum or online thread. Certainly the two I know that hate on magic in the subclasses have never indicated they have anything to do with D&D online.

And you can claim all that. I even have faith you truly believe what you are saying.

But I have to remember that this is a random online person speaking about their subjective experiences. Even if what you say is true, it doesn't mean what you say is representative or indicative. For all I know it only indicates what you think its like. I have no way to determine whether your judgment of your own experiences is an accurate one. Your thirty friends may be the only thirty friends with that particular composition.

But I will believe a general apathy to these issues one way or another, because you can always count on that when talking about large groups of humanity. They may not be all for martials but I doubt they are all for caster supremacy and no-brain fighter purism either.

Regardless I will keep advising people to give anime systems a chance. Every time I've seen this, I've only seen people push back against it, and you can do things with some other systems that a paladin or a fighter with a couple extra features can only dream of. I mean sure they're okay at doing it, but you could have more anime, purer anime, undiluted by DnD stuff and why settle for less? there are anime systems that let you play a giant mecha pilot at starting level. you can play Gundam or TTGL with them. or Neon Genesis Evangelion if you want to play that for some reason, who cares. You could be an ordinary high school student amidst weirdness (no really no joke this an archetype I've seen put into anime systems more than once) or an idol, archetypes that have no violence attached to them. and of course there are options for classic goku and naruto stuff, but not just emulating them- some of them have options beyond that, you could be your own shonen protagonist with your own special power that is unlike anything Goku or Naruto or whatever has, create your own world where everyone is an X and you do something special with X to be a master of X. Or maybe you just want to play like a member of a sentai and act like power rangers or the ginyu force, they can do that to.

[JackPhoenix]

I just used "anime" as a shorthand. As noted in the OP, folklore and mythology is full of this kind of stuff, so it's not limited to anime.

Folklore and mythology usually ascribes that to supernatural or divine powers, though, which is where the problem lies. People want to play badass normals.


Honestly, it's a bit strange that nobody has a problem with all the crazy stuff a wizard can do, but a fighter who can cut a ship in half (or perform similarly ridiculous feats) is too much.

Because wizard explicitly does magic, and all bets are off when magic is concerned. People have problem when someone tries to claim blatantly magical deeds are not actually magic, or if they try to force magical powers on everyone.

[Nadan]

For some more data points: In the games I've run, I had one player who played a Vengeance Paladin, got overwhelmed with the options, and switched to a Barbarian where their decision making in combat was "hit stuff", "hit stuff recklessly" and "hit stuff in a masterful way", and they liked that just fine. Also an archer who looked over the options for their Fighter and went with Champion because there was less stuff to remember. The more optimised people in the group have played an Eldritch Knight, an Ancients Paladin and Bladesinger Wizard to get their "warrior with supernatural abilities" fix. The first two do not, as far as I know, spend much time on D&D forums.
This, there is a reason why Fighter and Barbarian's main class features are so simple and why we have Champion. Not everyone want to have complex ability and too many options may overwhelming some casual player. IIRC WotC have explain that some people just want to sit down and start roleplaying insteal spend hours (or days) read through book to make their first character. And Champion Fighter (and to some extent, Barbarian) is their answer

[Lord Raziere]

This, there is a reason why Fighter and Barbarian's main class features are so simple and why we have Champion. Not everyone want to have complex ability and too many options may overwhelming some casual player. IIRC WotC have explain that some people just want to sit down and start roleplaying insteal spend hours (or days) read through book to make their first character. And Champion Fighter (and to some extent, Barbarian) is their answer

I get that. I just wish it wasn't confined to a certain aesthetic or archetype, thus leading to the complex stuff also being confined to a certain aesthetic and archetype.

[Neoh]

The problem with D&D is that it doesn't make any sense.

At level 20, everyone is basically some kind of demi-god.
They can all deal incredible damage and take even more damage.

Your typical Fighter has around 180 HP.
Your typical Commoner has 4 HP. With a 10 in every stats.
A typical Fighter is worth 45 civilians in terms of HP.

Now, everything would be fine for a High Fantasy setting if your physical feats would actually match your demi-god levels. But they don't. With a 20 Strength, you can long jump, high jump and lift weight at the same level as our current world records.

So you're there, fighting Gargantuan monsters, taking an ungodly amount of damage that would surely halve the population of a city, you also deal an absurd amount of damage to this living titan with your tiny sword. But you can't cut down a wall (or even a door) in a single strike or jump over a 30 feet long chasm.

This creates a sort of dissonance for some players and the more they play, the more they are annoyed by it. I think that's partially why we see so many topics talking about how bad melee feels.


I see some people claiming that making melees very simple is to make the game beginner-friendly. Honestly, I say this is bullsh*t. This is a roleplaying game and there are as many people wanting to play melees as there are that wants to play with magic. If anything, I met more beginners that wanted to play a mage than anything else. And just because it's a bit "hard" you don't force them to play a basic Champion Fighter, they just learn little by little, making mistakes every now and then like we all did in every single game we played.

[loki_ragnarock]

I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I mean, imagine the BBEG gives an order to their underling, and the fighter just straight up cuts the order so the underling doesn't hear it. Stuff like that.

I know martials are meant to be more mundane, but high level is anything but mundane. "Mundane" is 10th level or lower. After 11th level, you're treading into heroic, larger-than-life territory, where warriors become superhuman. I think there's room for abilities that look a lot like spells (e.g. cutting sound), but aren't, and are just the result of mundane ability taken up to 11 and honed beyond the normal human limits. This is how, for example, One Piece characters like Zoro or Sanji are able to compete on an even footing with characters who have devil fruit abilities, despite not being devil fruit users themselves (although let's be honest, Luffy kind of falls into this camp, too; he may be a devil fruit user, but he's also freakishly strong, which has nothing to do with his devil fruit power).

I'm really not sure how you'd implement this into D&D, though. You could make it essentially an alternate spellcasting system, though you'd call it something else (e.g. "Skill Tricks" or "Masterful Arts" or something). Maybe instead of spell slots, you'd spend hit dice on these, something that martials get a larger size of. Initially, you'd probably only get versions of these that do fairly mundane stuff, but at a very high level. For example, being able to slice through a medium-sized tree in a single swing (comparable to 1st and 2nd level spells?). Then later you'd upgrade to implausible-but-still-believable abilities, like cutting through stone and metal (comparable to 3rd to 5th level spells?). Then you'd start getting to stuff like cutting intangible concepts (comparable to 6th+ level spells?). Not sure if that would be the best way to do it, though, and I'd worry it would feel too similar to spellcasting.

I think the game you are looking for is Exalted.

[Lord Raziere]

I think the game you are looking for is Exalted.

Oh yeah if anime is shorthand for mythology/folklore in this case, then yes, Exalted is also an option. like you can be real anime/mythological with just Solar Exalted who both core book Exalt and the strongest Exalt in the setting, so if you go for that you get the power ceiling from the get go. Just take Dawn Caste, look which combat skill charms to find what appeals to you and it will work. all other four Solar Exalted castes aren't as combat focused, so if you want to be a martial arts or sword master Dawn Caste is the way to go. But whenever your mythological desires go beyond combat there is a lot else you can do with them.

Stealing/destroying intangibles....though....hm....Night Caste Solars with a certain skill can take a take a charm to steal intangibles, but its very deep investment. you can still get it at character creation its just a lot of charm prereqs, its called Null Anima Gloves, it allows to steal things like: initiative, motes (this worlds version of mana), steal inertia to block an attack and steal a weapon, and steal an artifact and attune it for free so you can wield it effectively.

[Nikushimi]

The answer is honestly simple imo. A balance between suspension of disbelief and realism. TL;DR at the bottom.

The main focus of most lore in the DnD world is Swords and Magic (least that's how I see it). You have your mundane, everyday types of people who can do amazing feats of strength and dexterity, but is still grounded in realism (to a point). Then, you have you mystical. Your magic. The things that can bend reality and rewrite the world. Yet, you have people even in lore who are "mundane" and are martial classes, yet do great feats with their weapons or strength...How?

Why, Magic Items of course. Weapons, Armor, Trinkets, odds and ends, that sort of thing (yes that was a reference, yes I know it was kinda dumb...shush). They also often get blessings from gods and the like to perform such feats.

Why there is no "anime abilities" is because...well, there sort of are? Arcane Archer for example. Your arrows literally do some crazy stuff. The Samurai is rather crazy as is the Soul Knife and even Psychic Warrior. Archetypes and re-flavoring can easily make "Anime abilities". There are several martial classes that cross the line into anime abilities. Maybe not world ending stuff, but even Wizards can't do that anymore (not after that one wizard got our 10th level and above spells taken away *shakes fist*) though they can come close.

You want a sword that can cut anything? Vorpal Weapons can do that.

You want a lightsaber? Sunsword/Sun Blade's got you.

In DnD when you start cutting ships in half, vaporizing the sea with a swing of your sword...you're entering the territory of magic. You are no longer a martial class. Least, that's my thoughts.

Even in Mythology peoples powers and abilities often come from their magical items. King Arthur's Excalibur is a perfect example of this. The weapons Masamune creates as well with the legends surrounding them. Hercules and his strength (well, one he's a demi-god) two the Nemean Lion Pelt granted him some abilities.

So asking about Mythology and Lore stuff "People cutting stone" and everything else...is often the actual weapon and not the person itself. Sure, the person is skilled, but without the weapon they wouldn't be able to.

Thus, Magical Weapons fill that niche.
-----

Now, with that being said there's no reason why you CAN'T create something like this for your game, but it will be homebrew. Unless WotC creates anime themed campaigns, I don't think we'll be seeing that kind of stuff anytime soon for Martial Classes except in Magical Items.

That being said...Sun Soul Monk. You're literally Goku. Granted, you can't blow up the planet...unless? Nah...Well maybe....nah. I mean...

But yeah, the Monk is 100% the Anime type of martial. Same with Paladin. It's all in how you flavor things as well.

Hope this helped explain it. At least, this is what I personally think on the matter.

On top of that....you can technically "cut" and destroy stone with your sword. There are rules for destroying/cutting/however you want to flavor it when it comes to destroying objects. I believe it's in the DMG under "Objects" but I don't know specifically.

You and your DM can work together to figure out how you would "Cut" such things and your sword or whatnot is "fine" afterwards.

TL;DR: Go out there, create what makes the game fun for you. That is the beauty of DnD, but this is why I personally think and believe there is no "anime abilities" in the game. Because they already exist in one form or another. Often certain archetypes or martial classes already fit an "anime" flavored class. Monk and Paladin are great examples of this. Followed by Magical Items.

[False God]

It was called 4th edition, and it was brilliant.

If you're looking for that kind of gameplay.

Most players of D&D weren't, so it didn't go over well. There's still a pretty strong belief that mundanes should be mundane from start to finish, and WotC pretty much let playtesters and surveys determine what 5E was going to look like, soooo....that's basically the story.

[MeimuHakurei]

The fact that martials can't do anything in D&D but stare in awe at how much better casters are at everything is a central and important design decision from Wizards of the Coast. Allowing martials any foothold in the game is counter to the design intent.

I refuse to believe the imbalance is anything but intentional at this point.

[strangebloke]

Well, its interesting.

I would say the monk is already pretty ""anime"" as far as things go, what with the catching bullets and astral projection and super speed. If you gave them TOB style maneuvers they 100% would be anime characters, complete with katana and shirtless combat.

Paladins get extremely strong at high levels but they're not remotely 'anime,' they're grounded very solidly in the holy warrior archetype like Richard Spenser's take on the Red Cross Knight who can regenerate from charcoal.

Which leaves fighters, barbarians, rangers, and rogues. I'd argue pretty strongly that all of these need more flexibility and out of combat options, but I'd further argue they don't really need animesque abilities. It doesn't fit their archetype and its really unneeded. All four of these classes are on the weaker end (except ranger, arguably) but combat is the area where they're closest to being balanced. Noncasters IMX actually are the best combat classes in the game in T1, are roughly even in T2 where most people play, and only fall off somewhere in T3 if they fall off at all. In low-op campaigns or campaigns that only use the PHB I'd argue the noncasters hold up even longer.

It's purely an issue of out-of-combat utility, and you frankly don't need anime powers to add that to martials. People massively overrate the out of combat utility of spellcasters imo. They're far ahead of non-casters, but its not some unbridgeable gulf. A lot of what casters do out of combat is either pretty low level in actuality (setting alarm) or is massively overrated by your average forum-goer because they barely play at high levels and they only remember how plane shift worked in 3.5e and don't remember that the DM needs to give you a tuning fork in this edition and that this shouldn't be assumed. Something like reading an enemies mind shouldn't be beyond the pale for something like an inquisitive rogue, for example, and I feel like that's not outside the bounds of western fiction.

[GreyBlack]

I mean, the monk exists. It's just that the monk sucks.

In all seriousness, D&D tends to hew closer to Western traditional fantasy than Eastern. Given how tied up in IRL mythology anime tends to get, it makes sense that the creators of D&D aren't hewing towards the anime non-caster stuff.

What I do want is for D&D non-casters to actually be able to accomplish the feats of mythological non-casters. I want my barbarian to be able to redirect a river like Heracles, my ranger to be able to find their way out of a labyrinth that is constantly changing like Theseus, my fighter to be able to change the tide of battle by his mere presence like Achilles, my rogue to be able to deceive monsters like Odysseus... stuff like that.

But, no. We have to keep them grounded. :smallmad:

[Psyren]

I wouldn't begin to think what the majority of D&D audience wants, and you probably shouldn't either.

Shonen anime has been around for decades. If as many people wanted D&D to be that as you believe, they'd have done it by now.


I mean you can claim that. But all I have for evidence is people on this very forum arguing about it. One forum does not a fandom this large make. and I dare not guess what goes on in WotC's minds.

WotC themselves have acknowledged the "too anime" criticism (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/frcc/20070911) (their words not mine), so no, it isn't just some Playground fever dream. They even recommended reworking the ToB classes as magical gishes to make them fit into the game better as one approach to dealing with said criticism.



At this point, I'd encourage everyone to just stop trying to use DnD for everything to give actual systems designed to do specifically anime stuff a chance. There is multiple ones out there and I can tell what they are and what they're like, even if I haven't played them.

For once we agree.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean monk can kind of work, but when you've read systems with things like a martial art that you learn by falling in love in your mentor so you can can trick people into thinking your innocent while you fighting until you can get close enough to poison them with claws that your martial arts gives you then when they're weak or off-guard you tear their heart out, or martial art that starts with learning how to use teacups, sashes chopsticks as weapons, reinforcing your dress with your energies to use it as armor and ends with transforming into a giant beautiful chimera of a bird, a gazelle and a carp as a form of enlightenment that allows you to attack with dream like ephemera of whatever you can imagine and smoke-teleport between places, at the risk of making you vanish from the world caught up in your enlightened bliss if you suffer too much damage, or just use iaijutsu to parry spells, its kind of hard to go back to Goku/Aang/Drunk people slapped on top of 1980's kung fu flick.

and sure you can say the paladin is kind of anime from a certain point of view. But its a gamble whether anyone will LET you refluff your sword as a katana or some big buster sword or whether the GM will just go "get that anime stuff out of my game" because if all this anime stuff is as unpopular in DnD as other people say, then it doesn't really matter if you can refluff like that now does it, because if they don't like Tome of Battle, why would they like you trying to be ToB-like with what exists? However an anime system thats a guarantee on the fluff. you can either roll the dice on whether you get a DnD group that will let you get away with it or you can try an anime system and get additional mechanical benefits on customizing it outside of an archetype so its more than just a monk, its the kind of anime character you want. and what if you don't want a divine flavor to any your awesome abilities? the anime systems won't force you into that. Exalted still will though, its technically separate, but its a very different kind of divine than DnD's idea of it.

[Abracadangit]

Boy -- maneuver thread, melee-is-boring thread, now why-can't-martials-do-anime-things thread -- bit of a theme, these days!

I'll just make my usual statement that I think it's fine (and I endorse) that martials have access to more options, some of which should be cool and tropey in ways that echo what martials can do fiction. Does it necessarily need to be anime-scale, i.e. shooting "razor winds" out of your sword with a slash, moving so fast that it looks like blink-teleporting, etc? I don't personally think so, but I don't begrudge people who like that at their tables.

There's a larger problem that I think all of these threads have touched down on, but not quite addressed. D&D has this odd marketing problem where if they innovate too much/give martials anything more exciting to do than Grapple/Shove, they end up with another 4e problem where a lot of their old veterans run for the hills or play Pathfinder instead, or whatever. They did that once, it almost torpedoed the brand, they're either never doing that again or waiting for 6e/7e.

D&D's always been a game about capturing this old-timey fantasy novel feel, right. So why would they incorporate that newfangled anime stuff, it's silly and over-the-top and hey, this is a serious fantasy game.

But here's the kicker: younger audiences aren't reading that much old-timey fantasy anymore. I know, I know, Name of the Wind, Game of Thrones, fantasy as a genre is still out there. But younger players aren't consuming it like they used to. When I was younger (haroom, harumph), there was this blanket assumption that if you were nerdy and into nerdy pursuits, you also read a lot of this dorky fantasy stuff. Came with the territory. Anime/manga, superhero stuff, similar things are now bleeding into the general fantastical zeitgeist, though. I don't mean like novels, I mean the general collective cultural consciousness about fantastical things.

But now...? I don't think younger players that would be the normal TTRPG crowd are reading that much fantasy, anymore. It's mostly anime/manga or superhero stuff, and when the old-timey fantasy stuff appears, it's in the form of an MMO or Diablo or whatever. So when those newer players come to D&D and find out the fighter has two buttons, they're bored and find something else.

"Well we don't need them anyway," the old guard says. Sure, you don't need them at your table, but WotC needs them to get into the hobby, and keep them there, and they're not doing it. Something something COViD lockdown is exploding the brand, but I just don't know about that.

So I wish D&D well -- obviously I love it or I wouldn't be here on this forum. But D&D has some choices to make about growing the brand and attracting new people (and simultaneously causing the old players to throw a tantrum), or sitting there while others out-innovate them. I mean, heck -- that ENworld "5e Advanced" or whatever is adding maneuvers, exploration, and a crafting system (and reworking classes, granted), and their Kickstarter's made over half a million dollars, when all they needed was $40,000 or so. You put something like D&D out there, but with the holes filled in, things punched up, some pizzazz thrown in so newer players are drawn in? D&D better hope their "5.5e" thing in 2024 does them some favors.

[Dienekes]

This, very much this. We had this, what you ask OP, in 3.5, Tome of Battle / book of 9 swords, which was very much anime flavored. Some of these moves are almost 1 on 1 ported over to 5e. The 6th level 'maneuver' Iron Heart Endurance is litterally the same as the 5e fighters Second Wind. The 9th level maneuver Time Stands Still is Action Surge. The fifth level Iron Heart Focus is exactly the same as Indomitable. And this is only for the fighter, there is much more: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already&highlight=tome%20of%20battle for many more examples.

What the designers of 5e did very smart (imo) is that they replaced the specific anime flavor with a more neutral flavor. This anime flavor was (in my view) something that made people dislike Tome of Battle, much more than that it gave more options to martials (something needed in 3.5 much more than in 5e), I've seen mostly praise for that.

Iron Heart Endurance? Yeah, with slightly worse scaling, but yeah.

Time Stands Still? Theoretically the same, but since 3.5 Warblades can deal a lot more damage over a full attack action than a 5e Fighter can (relative to hp of level appropriate enemies) the end result is drastically weaker.

Iron Heart Surge? No. That's just no. The fluff of the abilities overlap, admittedly, but the effect and usefulness are in two entirely different leagues.

Which is a lot of 5e, when compared to ToB. Is a Battlemaster Fighter supposed to represent the type of crunchy warrior like the Warblade? Oh, yes, obviously.

Does it do it well? Meh. Better than nothing.

[strangebloke]

I mean, the monk exists. It's just that the monk sucks.

In all seriousness, D&D tends to hew closer to Western traditional fantasy than Eastern. Given how tied up in IRL mythology anime tends to get, it makes sense that the creators of D&D aren't hewing towards the anime non-caster stuff.

What I do want is for D&D non-casters to actually be able to accomplish the feats of mythological non-casters. I want my barbarian to be able to redirect a river like Heracles, my ranger to be able to find their way out of a labyrinth that is constantly changing like Theseus, my fighter to be able to change the tide of battle by his mere presence like Achilles, my rogue to be able to deceive monsters like Odysseus... stuff like that.

But, no. We have to keep them grounded. :smallmad:
The monk is a bit weak (most martials are) but its not that bad.

Agreed completely. As I've pointed out elsewhere you can't even really simulate the broad range of abilities someone like Aragorn has. You can make someone who's tireless (level 10 Tasha's ranger) and you can make someone who's "the greatest swordsman alive" (Samurai) and you can make someone who's an incredible diplomat and statesman (bard, maybe rogue) but you really can't do them all at the same time.

[Lord Raziere]

Agreed completely. As I've pointed out elsewhere you can't even really simulate the broad range of abilities someone like Aragorn has. You can make someone who's tireless (level 10 Tasha's ranger) and you can make someone who's "the greatest swordsman alive" (Samurai) and you can make someone who's an incredible diplomat and statesman (bard, maybe rogue) but you really can't do them all at the same time.

But there is a system that can.

Exalted! Behold:
Tireless: Resistance 3, Boundless Endurance Merit: 2
Greatest swordsman alive: Melee 5
incredible diplomat and statesman: Socialize 3, Bureaucracy 3

total, thats 12 points plus 2 bonus points out of 28 skill points total, not even a full Exalted starting characters skillset.

and thats before you add in Exaltation. you can have a mortal thats broad in their range of abilities. Exalting just makes them better. so not only can Exalted give you anime like characters and abilities, it can also do it from a base of characters that are more well-rounded and aren't constrained by archetypes. now sure its not premade, your going to have to put it together yourself a bit, but thats a small price to pay for greater freedom of character customization and the cool anime stuff it allows you to do in my book.

[Psyren]

I definitely think there is room for shonen-level antics in D&D. But I can easily see the disconnect if you try to make it innate to class.

Take a shonen character like Luffy for example. At the very beginning of his journey, entire armies of regular pirates were no challenge to him at all. Even elites like Alvida couldn't scratch him. That's fun when you're taking on dragons and sorcerers and whatnot, but it effectively cuts an entire tier of play out of the game. His power also relies on something outside of his own character (eating an artifact-level fruit that wholly supplants his very biology) that the class system can't adequately replicate.

Personally I think Pathfinder already came up with the perfect solution for those who want anime characters in D&D - Mythic.
Mythic is essentially a secondary progression that gives characters awesome power that is tied to their class, but not necessarily their level. You can be a mythic character even at level one,and access abilities that even level 10 or 15 characters would struggle to replicate. Mythic is a great way to represent a martial that can do things like cut through light and sound, or flex/shout dead people back to life etc.

It also works perfectly with most anime protagonists. Whether your power comes from eating a magic fruit, being impaled on a psychopomp's blade, or being the secret child of a demigod and reaching puberty, any of those can qualify as a Mythic Ascension event. If 5e adopted their own, optional version of PF mythic, I think it could be the best of both worlds and allow both sides to reach an accord.

Or you can convince your playgroup to switch to another system like Exalted. And, genuinely, more power to you if you pull that off.

[GreyBlack]

But there is a system that can.

Exalted! Behold:
Tireless: Resistance 3, Boundless Endurance Merit: 2
Greatest swordsman alive: Melee 5
incredible diplomat and statesman: Socialize 3, Bureaucracy 3

total, thats 12 points plus 2 bonus points out of 28 skill points total, not even a full Exalted starting characters skillset.

and thats before you add in Exaltation. you can have a mortal thats broad in their range of abilities. Exalting just makes them better. so not only can Exalted give you anime like characters and abilities, it can also do it from a base of characters that are more well-rounded and aren't constrained by archetypes. now sure its not premade, your going to have to put it together yourself a bit, but thats a small price to pay for greater freedom of character customization and the cool anime stuff it allows you to do in my book.

But then you're playing Exalted, and not D&D 5e.

And, if you want to play Exalted, why aren't you playing Exalted?

[strangebloke]

His power also relies on something outside of his own character (eating an artifact-level fruit that wholly supplants his very biology) that the class system can't adequately replicate.

I disagree with this. You absolutely can have classes represent innate power that is trained to be stronger over time. That's what the sorcerer is and what some barbarians are. A lot of people refluff the hexblade patron as actually being a powerful cursed sword that unlocks more of its ability as you use it. If a fighter wants to claim that he was a sickly boy until miraculous alchemical treatments gave him his current body, that's fine, completely workable. That's whats already in the game, and if you wanted to create a "you ate a devil fruit" monk subclass you totally could.

[GreyBlack]

I definitely think there is room for shonen-level antics in D&D. But I can easily see the disconnect if you try to make it innate to class.

Take a shonen character like Luffy for example. At the very beginning of his journey, entire armies of regular pirates were no challenge to him at all. Even elites like Alvida couldn't scratch him. That's fun when you're taking on dragons and sorcerers and whatnot, but it effectively cuts an entire tier of play out of the game. His power also relies on something outside of his own character (eating an artifact-level fruit that wholly supplants his very biology) that the class system can't adequately replicate.

Personally I think Pathfinder already came up with the perfect solution for those who want anime characters in D&D - Mythic.
Mythic is essentially a secondary progression that gives characters awesome power that is tied to their class, but not necessarily their level. You can be a mythic character even at level one,and access abilities that even level 10 or 15 characters would struggle to replicate. Mythic is a great way to represent a martial that can do things like cut through light and sound, or flex/shout dead people back to life etc.

It also works perfectly with most anime protagonists. Whether your power comes from eating a magic fruit, being impaled on a psychopomp's blade, or being the secret child of a demigod and reaching puberty, any of those can qualify as a Mythic Ascension event. If 5e adopted their own, optional version of PF mythic, I think it could be the best of both worlds and allow both sides to reach an accord.

Or you can convince your playgroup to switch to another system like Exalted. And, genuinely, more power to you if you pull that off.

I also think there's a disconnect between the concept of your _character_ becoming stronger and your character _gaining power_.

In Western fantasy, there's an expectation that your person remains the same, but you gain magical items that make you stronger and stronger. Arthur of Camelot might have been a good fighter, but much of his power came from his sword. This is mirrored in 5e where you gain magic items that increase your character's power level.

In Eastern fantasy, such as with Luffy that you mentioned, the characters tend to not gain magic items, but learn lessons and improve their personal abilities. In 5e terms, they gain boons and new class features instead of gaining new gear which grant them magic powers.

This isn't to say I'm opposed to this; I think giving characters boons instead of magic items is a great idea and one that we should adopt more often! That said, it is incongruent with the current design philosophy of 5e, which is fundamentally Western fantasy rather than Eastern fantasy.

[Psyren]

I disagree with this. You absolutely can have classes represent innate power that is trained to be stronger over time. That's what the sorcerer is and what some barbarians are. A lot of people refluff the hexblade patron as actually being a powerful cursed sword that unlocks more of its ability as you use it. If a fighter wants to claim that he was a sickly boy until miraculous alchemical treatments gave him his current body, that's fine, completely workable. That's whats already in the game, and if you wanted to create a "you ate a devil fruit" monk subclass you totally could.

But "eating a devil fruit" isn't innate, that was my point. Luffy is nothing like a sorcerer, except perhaps for dumping Int.



This isn't to say I'm opposed to this; I think giving characters boons instead of magic items is a great idea and one that we should adopt more often! That said, it is incongruent with the current design philosophy of 5e, which is fundamentally Western fantasy rather than Eastern fantasy.

Items and boons are both just rules elements that are indexed to character level. Even in PF1 where items made your character a christmas tree, you could replace them entirely with a boon system like Automatic Bonus Progression and still keep up. And if you stacked Mythic on top of that you'd absolutely feel much more like a shonen protagonist.

[strangebloke]

But "eating a devil fruit" isn't innate, that was my point. Luffy is nothing like a sorcerer, except perhaps for dumping Int.

And my point was that DND class systems can simulate pretty much any origin story you like, as long as the result is you getting some sort of power that you can develop over time.

Warlocks for example only get a onetime gift of power from their patron, it isn't innate or trained or even constantly supplied, just something they get and then work to develop. But people refluff them as a more cleric-like ongoing support and it doesn't actually change anything because most class features are origin-agnostic.

[Lord Raziere]

But then you're playing Exalted, and not D&D 5e.

And, if you want to play Exalted, why aren't you playing Exalted?

Yes. they would be. Is there something wrong with that?

I don't know, why are you responding some random person online instead of playing DnD 5e this very instant?

[Abracadangit]

This isn't to say I'm opposed to this; I think giving characters boons instead of magic items is a great idea and one that we should adopt more often! That said, it is incongruent with the current design philosophy of 5e, which is fundamentally Western fantasy rather than Eastern fantasy.

I agree with your point, but something worth pointing out: wizards can find spells in the game world, and then learn those spells themselves, thus increasing their abilities using things they discover via exploration.

This isn't meant to be a "gotcha" (you're still right), but rather, I've always wondered why wizards are the only class with a mechanic like this. Why can't bards find songs or stories, druids find cool ribbon abilities, monks find techniques in scrolls, martials find maneuvers in manuals or instructors, etc. There's no reason this needs to be wizards only, other than something something legacy.

[Brookshw]

But then you're playing Exalted, and not D&D 5e.

And, if you want to play Exalted, why aren't you playing Exalted?

Or if you're looking for Anime, why not just lean into it fully? BESM comes to mind, and I recall there being other explicitly anime focused games out there.

[Spiritchaser]

I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I mean, imagine the BBEG gives an order to their underling, and the fighter just straight up cuts the order so the underling doesn't hear it. Stuff like that.



I remember some shinanigans like this with death’s scythe in the Pratchet novels.

There’s nearly unlimited conceptual space for stuff like this and it sounds brilliant.

I (and likely most of us) don’t have the time or energy to to the hard work to balance it but… yeah. Hey wizards: you balance it, I’ll just buy the book

[Lord Raziere]

Or if you're looking for Anime, why not just lean into it fully? BESM comes to mind, and I recall there being other explicitly anime focused games out there.

I am also talking about those yes. But Exalted has its merits as well, because I like it

[Ignimortis]

Oh boy, here we go again.

Long story short: both WotC and the majority of 5e's audience don't want them to. In fact, they don't want the games to go beyond level 9 or so, where everything stays relatively grounded. The sheer majority of published adventures are written for lower levels, too.

Why is that, you ask? The reason is twofold.
1) People like being grounded. That's literally what most of the media shows. Hell, even most fighting anime series are just "ok, we can teleport around like nothing and fire laser beams" level of power, which are basically "move and attack at high speeds" — very few of them actually start playing with conceptual powers, like cutting off death or purposefully stealing luck. There's basically no representation for crazy anime stuff like that, outside of people who actually go outside of mainstream.

2) Designing content for such campaigns is hard. It's comparatively easy to make a dungeon map — I myself, being a rather bad GM all things considered, made quite a few decent ones. Now imagine what you would do if your players could cut walls and doors at-will, teleport behind closed bars, and intimidate/persuade most monsters to either switch sides or walk away? And that's not even very high-level, those things are, spell-wise, somewhere around spell level 4 to 6.

Now imagine that players are actually capable of feats that rival Wish or something. Imagine that a player can walk through walls like they don't even exist, their relation to gravity is pretty much non-existent if they so choose, and that they could literally take a villain's dice roll and turn it to 1. Oh, wait...

Now imagine that not only Wizards can do that, but the whole party, at no real cost to their resources. What could a challenge to such people even look like, outside of "bigger numbers" or "this dungeon turns most of your cool abilities off"? What would the dungeon map look like? That's hard.

Side note: the most fun I've ever had with 5e was had with a Monk Kensei with rather busted numbers, like 32 for passive perception and 28 AC, as well some custom magic items (including a reaction that let me just say "no" to any attack, even a nat20, once per turn).

Side note 2: I so sorely wish that any of my peer groups would actually play Exalted...

[GreyBlack]

Yes. they would be. Is there something wrong with that?

I don't know, why are you responding some random person online instead of playing DnD 5e this very instant?

......... because this is a D&D 5e forum asking why the 5e system doesn't allow something while another system does?

You don't _have_ to play 5e. 5e is, IMNSHO, a "Baby's First RPG" system. If another system suits your desires better, then I wholeheartedly recommend using that other system instead. There's nothing wrong with it.


I agree with your point, but something worth pointing out: wizards can find spells in the game world, and then learn those spells themselves, thus increasing their abilities using things they discover via exploration.

This isn't mean to be a "gotcha" (you're still right), but rather, I've always wondered why wizards are the only class with a mechanic like this. Why can't bards find songs or stories, druids find cool ribbon abilities, monks find techniques in scrolls, martials find maneuvers in manuals or instructors, etc. There's no reason this needs to be wizards only, other than something something legacy.

Actually, that may work out really well. We have old fencing manuals that we can study to learn various fencing or swordfighting techniques nowadays; it's the basis of the HEMA community. I think that, having a martial character go out into the world and discover old and forgotten techniques like that would be super neat.

And, if I were to get my homebrewing hat on, you wouldn't even have to change any of the classes; you just make an item called a "Fencing Manual" that acts as a Spellbook, but only allows characters with proficiency in a certain weapon or weapon type to scribe the techniques into the book. You turn it into a universal item (everyone can use it), but you turn most of these fencing techniques into Strength/Dexterity based Saves or Attacks.

......... excuse me while I start some homebrewing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_of_fencing#/media/File:Cod_Winob_10825.jpg

[Lord Raziere]

......... because this is a D&D 5e forum asking why the 5e system doesn't allow something while another system does?

You don't _have_ to play 5e. 5e is, IMNSHO, a "Baby's First RPG" system. If another system suits your desires better, then I wholeheartedly recommend using that other system instead. There's nothing wrong with it.


Yes. I know. Thats why I'm recommending those other systems to other people as well. I'm glad you understand.

[goodpeople25]

This, very much this. We had this, what you ask OP, in 3.5, Tome of Battle / book of 9 swords, which was very much anime flavored. Some of these moves are almost 1 on 1 ported over to 5e. The 6th level 'maneuver' Iron Heart Endurance is litterally the same as the 5e fighters Second Wind. The 9th level maneuver Time Stands Still is Action Surge. The fifth level Iron Heart Focus is exactly the same as Indomitable. And this is only for the fighter, there is much more: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already&highlight=tome%20of%20battle for many more examples.

What the designers of 5e did very smart (imo) is that they replaced the specific anime flavor with a more neutral flavor. This anime flavor was (in my view) something that made people dislike Tome of Battle, much more than that it gave more options to martials (something needed in 3.5 much more than in 5e), I've seen mostly praise for that.



So I think this is partly correct - critsism was mostly about the fluff, not as much about the powers per se. And as a side note, I think ToB was more popular than disliked to begin with, judging both from fora, my own tables, and how damn expensive the book was/became when printing stopped (70 euro's for a new ToB compared to 5 euro's for Magic of Incarnum at game fairs).

Thing is, in 5e a table can deceide for themselves if second wind represents a gritty normal warrior clenching his or her teeth and continue fighting despite the pain, or whether it's inner ki makes the received wounds close themselves; whether action surge is moving in a blur and bullet time, or represents just very efficient and good fighting.
And if the anime flavour of that book was an exaggeration? For example when the subject of ToB as anime comes up quite often the blasting of desert wind is also brought up but the fluff for that discipline is so unconnected that the titular sword for it came from a different book.

[Abracadangit]

Actually, that may work out really well. We have old fencing manuals that we can study to learn various fencing or swordfighting techniques nowadays; it's the basis of the HEMA community. I think that, having a martial character go out into the world and discover old and forgotten techniques like that would be super neat.

And, if I were to get my homebrewing hat on, you wouldn't even have to change any of the classes; you just make an item called a "Fencing Manual" that acts as a Spellbook, but only allows characters with proficiency in a certain weapon or weapon type to scribe the techniques into the book. You turn it into a universal item (everyone can use it), but you turn most of these fencing techniques into Strength/Dexterity based Saves or Attacks.

......... excuse me while I start some homebrewing.

Yeah, bingo. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Put fun stuff out there for players to find, and they'll go crazy for it.

I homebrewed this myself some time ago -- had a different "book" item for each class, that might have a spell, a ribbon ability, a maneuver, etc, each with a different number of pages. Players could start reading a "book" during any rest or downtime. As soon as you start the book, you get to use the ability, but if you start reading a different book before finishing the current one, you lose the old ability. Every rest/downtime, players can toll a d20 to see how many pages they get through. If you finish the book, your character learns the ability permanently.

It was a lot of fun, people enjoyed it! And more to the point, it got people looking under every single rock for books. Because hiding gold/treasure/magic items in the world is one thing -- but hiding abilities? You'll see players explore like never before.

Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread. Brb making the One Piece TTRPG

[Azuresun]

The answer is honestly simple imo. A balance between suspension of disbelief and realism. TL;DR at the bottom.

The main focus of most lore in the DnD world is Swords and Magic (least that's how I see it). You have your mundane, everyday types of people who can do amazing feats of strength and dexterity, but is still grounded in realism (to a point). Then, you have you mystical. Your magic. The things that can bend reality and rewrite the world. Yet, you have people even in lore who are "mundane" and are martial classes, yet do great feats with their weapons or strength...How?

Why, Magic Items of course. Weapons, Armor, Trinkets, odds and ends, that sort of thing (yes that was a reference, yes I know it was kinda dumb...shush). They also often get blessings from gods and the like to perform such feats.

Heck, my model for a high-level fighter is Guts from Berserk, who is amazingly strong and freakishly tough, but goes toe to toe with much more powerful monsters using skill, determination and some gadgets and magical items while never doing anything overtly supernatural himself. There's a panel where he's walking out of an alley to face hundreds of demon-goblin-things while assuring his allies "I won't be reckless."

He's also an anime character.

[GreyBlack]

Yeah, bingo. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Put fun stuff out there for players to find, and they'll go crazy for it.

I homebrewed this myself some time ago -- had a different "book" item for each class, that might have a spell, a ribbon ability, a maneuver, etc, each with a different number of pages. Players could start reading a "book" during any rest or downtime. As soon as you start the book, you get to use the ability, but if you start reading a different book before finishing the current one, you lose the old ability. Every rest/downtime, players can toll a d20 to see how many pages they get through. If you finish the book, your character learns the ability permanently.

It was a lot of fun, people enjoyed it! And more to the point, it got people looking under every single rock for books. Because hiding gold/treasure/magic items in the world is one thing -- but hiding abilities? You'll see players explore like never before.

Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread. Brb making the One Piece TTRPG

I don't even think you need a new "book" item for each class; you literally just make the one item and then make a bunch of universal maneuvers that martial classes can learn, but limit them based on weapon. For example, you could have a technique called the Whirl Twirly Death for the Halberd, but you can't learn or use it unless you're proficient with the Halberd.

This also makes it super interesting for characters like the Rogue, who are proficient with the Longsword but not with Martial weapons.

If you wanted to do "Schools," just make 2-3 techniques for a school and group them together like that. Action costs could be "1 Action", "1 Bonus Action," "1 Attack" etc. Then, you literally don't have to change anything in the classes themselves, and you could just create random techniques that are not affiliated with a particular school.

Hmm...

[loki_ragnarock]

Heck, my model for a high-level fighter is Guts from Berserk, who is amazingly strong and freakishly tough, but goes toe to toe with much more powerful monsters using skill, determination and some gadgets and magical items while never doing anything overtly supernatural himself. There's a panel where he's walking out of an alley to face hundreds of demon-goblin-things while assuring his allies "I won't be reckless."

He's also an anime character.
Makes sense.

That would be alot of attacks to provide advantage to.

[Abracadangit]

I don't even think you need a new "book" item for each class; you literally just make the one item and then make a bunch of universal maneuvers that martial classes can learn, but limit them based on weapon. For example, you could have a technique called the Whirl Twirly Death for the Halberd, but you can't learn or use it unless you're proficient with the Halberd.

This also makes it super interesting for characters like the Rogue, who are proficient with the Longsword but not with Martial weapons.

If you wanted to do "Schools," just make 2-3 techniques for a school and group them together like that. Action costs could be "1 Action", "1 Bonus Action," "1 Attack" etc. Then, you literally don't have to change anything in the classes themselves, and you could just create random techniques that are not affiliated with a particular school.

Hmm...

Word -- it was just fluff to distinguish them for fun's sake. The artificer found blueprints, the monk found kung fu scrolls, etc.

Sure, you can link 'em to whatever you want. Finally make the Hurricane Jab spear move you always wanted. Dash Slice for swords. Cool whip stuff! Sky's the limit.

[loki_ragnarock]

Cool whip stuff!
Kinky.

But not the way expected.

[GreyBlack]

Word -- it was just fluff to distinguish them for fun's sake. The artificer found blueprints, the monk found kung fu scrolls, etc.

Sure, you can link 'em to whatever you want. Finally make the Hurricane Jab spear move you always wanted. Dash Slice for swords. Cool whip stuff! Sky's the limit.

So, I've taken all of about 30 seconds to Google some historical texts and review some of the stances and attacks, and here's what I came up with:

Ox Stance
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: You may change your damage type from Slashing to Piercing until the end of the round.

Plow Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until the beginning of your next turn, you gain +2 AC against all melee attacks.

Fool Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until the end of your next turn, if an enemy attacks you, you may gain advantage on your next attack against that enemy.

Roof Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until your next turn, all attacks you make deal +1 Slashing damage.

Fire and Stones Cut:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar
- Action Cost: 1 Attack
- Effect: Make a Strength Attack roll. If you hit, you may make an additional Unarmed Attack Roll for free.

Covering Strike
- Required Proficiency: Glaive, Halberd, Pike
- Action Cost: 1 Reaction
- Effect: When one of your allies within 10 feet is attacked, you can make an Opportunity Attack against the attacker. If you do, your ally gains +2 AC against attacks from that attacker.

[Abracadangit]

Kinky.

But not the way expected.

Ha ha!! And hey, you could have that stuff in the aforementioned system too, if you want! I don't judge.

It's the magic of homebrew.

[JackPhoenix]

The monk is a bit weak (most martials are) but its not that bad.

Agreed completely. As I've pointed out elsewhere you can't even really simulate the broad range of abilities someone like Aragorn has. You can make someone who's tireless (level 10 Tasha's ranger) and you can make someone who's "the greatest swordsman alive" (Samurai) and you can make someone who's an incredible diplomat and statesman (bard, maybe rogue) but you really can't do them all at the same time.

Tireless: Proficiency in Con saves and good Con.
"Greatest swordsman alive": that comes naturally with level. Not that Aragorn is one.
"Incredible" diplomat and statesman: good Cha, proficiency in relevant skills. Expertise is bonus, but not necessary

Sounds like mid-level character who rolled well on ability scores. Exact class is debatable, but can be done with fighter, rogue or ranger (though Aragorn didn't use magic). You absolutely can do it all at once, it's just that you propably have skewed perspective and think that the character isn't good at something if he doesn't have the absolutely best bonuses possible.

[Abracadangit]

So, I've taken all of about 30 seconds to Google some historical texts and review some of the stances and attacks, and here's what I came up with:

Ox Stance
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: You may change your damage type from Slashing to Piercing until the end of the round.

Plow Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until the beginning of your next turn, you gain +2 AC against all melee attacks.

Fool Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until the end of your next turn, if an enemy attacks you, you may gain advantage on your next attack against that enemy.

Roof Stance:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Greatsword
- Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action
- Effect: Until your next turn, all attacks you make deal +1 Slashing damage.

Fire and Stones Cut:
- Required Proficiency: Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar
- Action Cost: 1 Attack
- Effect: Make a Strength Attack roll. If you hit, you may make an additional Unarmed Attack Roll for free.

Covering Strike
- Required Proficiency: Glaive, Halberd, Pike
- Action Cost: 1 Reaction
- Effect: When one of your allies within 10 feet is attacked, you can make an Opportunity Attack against the attacker. If you do, your ally gains +2 AC against attacks from that attacker.


You're on a roll!! Don't stop there, make as many of these as you can and hide them in cool places.

When you get enough of these together, take 'em to the Homebrew Design forum and let 'em loose.

[Elves]

Because D&D isn't an anime. And thanks Gygax for that.

It's an anime in everything but the art style, and increasingly so in that

[GreyBlack]

Tireless: Proficiency in Con saves and good Con.
"Greatest swordsman alive": that comes naturally with level. Not that Aragorn is one.
"Incredible" diplomat and statesman: good Cha, proficiency in relevant skills. Expertise is bonus, but not necessary

Sounds like mid-level character who rolled well on ability scores. Exact class is debatable, but can be done with fighter, rogue or ranger (though Aragorn didn't use magic). You absolutely can do it all at once, it's just that you propably have skewed perspective and think that the character isn't good at something if he doesn't have the absolutely best bonuses possible.

Aragorn is a Paladin 5 in 5e.

"Great Swordsman": Can use Extra Attack
"Incredible Diplomat": Proficiency in Persuasion
Tireless: Resilient feat at level 4 and/or V. Human feat.

Outlander background.

Maybe give him Ranger 1, if you really want to model his tracking abilities.

[Dienekes]

Aragorn is a Paladin 5 in 5e.

"Great Swordsman": Can use Extra Attack
"Incredible Diplomat": Proficiency in Persuasion
Tireless: Resilient feat at level 4 and/or V. Human feat.

Outlander background.

Maybe give him Ranger 1, if you really want to model his tracking abilities.

Don’t remember him ever calling down divine power to smite anyone or channel divine energy to do… anything really.

Truth is, Aragorn is Aragorn. He’s just a warrior guy playing a game in a system with a much much more robust mundane exploration pillar than D&D has, filled with advanced tracking rules, a list of plants and what effects they have in specific medicinal use, and charts upon charts of environmental effects and rules on how to survive them.

And maybe. Maybe. The fact he was trained as a healer by Elrond can give him a magic spell that lets him heal diseases better than others.

Admittedly, the actual mechanics of that healing appear to be using the exact same medicinal herbs the healer was using just much better than the healer. So… possibly it just gave him Expertise to the healer’s Proficiency.

[strangebloke]

Literally ran almost 200 miles in three days without getting winded and they say "con save proficiency". Fights off a trio of death knights and they say "mid level fighter with extra attack." Breaks an evil curse with explicitly magical abilities and they say "expertise in healers kit." Repels entire formations of orcs with his fearful countenance and they say "I only saw the movies." Tracked Gollums non metaphorically across a continent years after Gollum had passed and they say "first level ranger."

This is my basic problem in these discussions. People just aren't aware of what the "martials" in fantasy are capable of and then make wild claims about how Western fantasy martials are inherently limited and we need anime features to improve on these archetypes to make them viable at high level.

And while you can simulate some amount of Aragorns abilities with a tenth level ranger or even a fifth level fighter, you could also make a character who had significantly more capabilities than a twentieth level fighter or ranger does without breaking Aragorn as an archetype.

To take this to the extreme, imagine a character with 24 in every stat, expertise in every skill, advantage and proficiency on every save, immunity to exhaustion and all the bm maneuvers and infinite superiority dice. Imagine we also gave this character rage and sneak attack scaling and a load of random out of character abilities, as well as the monk's enhanced movement and five attacks in a round. Would such a character be truly "anime"? Would they be "weak"?

No. So clearly the issue isn't that there's a hard conceptual limit. It's that the current design of martials is relatively uninspired and boring.

[Tanarii]

Any character with 20 Str is jumping 10ft on a standing jump and 20ft with a 10ft run up. While carrying 300 lbs of gear.

That's pretty anime right there.

[Kane0]

Any character with 20 Str is jumping 10ft on a standing jump and 20ft with a 10ft run up. While carrying 300 lbs of gear.

That's pretty anime right there.

Good point, a lot of the time a high str character can just clear a wall by jumping instead of climbing, up to about 10' or so befofe Athletics checks get involved

[GreyBlack]

Literally ran almost 200 miles in three days without getting winded and they say "con save proficiency". Fights off a trio of death knights and they say "mid level fighter with extra attack." Breaks an evil curse with explicitly magical abilities and they say "expertise in healers kit." Repels entire formations of orcs with his fearful countenance and they say "I only saw the movies." Tracked Gollums non metaphorically across a continent years after Gollum had passed and they say "first level ranger."

This is my basic problem in these discussions. People just aren't aware of what the "martials" in fantasy are capable of and then make wild claims about how Western fantasy martials are inherently limited and we need anime features to improve on these archetypes to make them viable at high level.

And while you can simulate some amount of Aragorns abilities with a tenth level ranger or even a fifth level fighter, you could also make a character who had significantly more capabilities than a twentieth level fighter or ranger does without breaking Aragorn as an archetype.

To take this to the extreme, imagine a character with 24 in every stat, expertise in every skill, advantage and proficiency on every save, immunity to exhaustion and all the bm maneuvers and infinite superiority dice. Imagine we also gave this character rage and sneak attack scaling and a load of random out of character abilities, as well as the monk's enhanced movement and five attacks in a round. Would such a character be truly "anime"? Would they be "weak"?

No. So clearly the issue isn't that there's a hard conceptual limit. It's that the current design of martials is relatively uninspired and boring.

Honestly, I think you're overvaluing Aragorn's abilities.

Let's start with the endurance thing. "Literally ran almost 200 miles in three days without getting winded." Well, yeah; any character can do that. Doing the math, that works out to about 3 miles per hour assuming no sleep. By RAW, that works out to a "normal" pace of overland movement.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Movement#content

Again, this is assuming no breaks or sleep. If they were to travel at a Fast pace for 16 hours per day, that would be 4 miles per day, bringing you shockingly close to 200 miles (192 miles). To run for 16 hours per day, that would be 8 cumulative Constitution saving throws, so then DC is set to 18, at which point he then gets a long rest for 8 hours before running again.

An 18, while high, isn't a shockingly high number and could theoretically be achieved by your average humanoid doing a forced march for that long. However, that's only a 10% chance of happening if you have a +0 Constitution saving throw.

If Aragorn at level 5 (+3 Proficiency) had a good Constitution (say, 14, so +2 modifier) and was proficient, that improves his odds of not suffering any exhaustion dramatically to 35%. Even then, he can still fail once per day and not need to slow down at all.

Regarding the "Death Knight" thing... I honestly think you're overvaluing the Nazgul. The Nazgul, in Tolkien:
- Have Light Sensitivity
- Possess the Black Breath which can kill living creatures (some kind of aura which deals necrotic damage)
- Fear fire
- Had steel weapons
- Resistant to non-magical attacks

Honestly, these don't sound like the CR 17 Death Knight and sound, at least to my ears, more like a Wight, the CR 3 creature. In fact, the MM even states that "Wights are intelligent undead humanoids that resemble armed and armored corpses. They never tire in pursuit of their goal of making eternal war against the living." Draining life from the living? Resistant to non-magical attacks? Sensitive to the light? Intelligent, undead humanoids? That certainly sounds a lot like a Wight to me. These Nazgul/Wights could probably kill whole villages of commoners, but a level 5 Paladin? Well, said Paladin could make 2 attacks against one and a fire attack with a torch using their bonus action/off hand. Would it be challenging for a level 5 Paladin? Absolutely, but not overwhelming. At least, that's how I'd model them; YMMV, but I've never seen a Nazgul throw a big orb of fire at anybody.

Tracking Gollum? Well, Ranger 1 would give him Advantage on Survival checks to track, Outlander gives him Survival as a skill, and he probably has a pretty good Wisdom (let's again say a +2). Even assuming a 25 DC, he can still make that check, and I'd even say that the 25 is too high for this type of check.

Killing Orcs? Well, Orcs have a CR 1/2, so those are pretty trivial at level 5 for a Paladin. I'd say he could probably kill 10 or so before even breaking a sweat, assuming good tactics and effective use of team strategies.

I don't think the problem is that we're unaware of what "martials" in fantasy are capable of; I think the problem is that most fantasy is more low powered than we are generally accustomed to thinking.

The way I think of it is as follows:
Levels 1-5: You're saving a village to a county.
Levels 6-10: You're saving a county to a country.
Levels 11-15: You're saving a country to a region.
Levels 16-20: You're saving a region to the world.

[strangebloke]

Any character with 20 Str is jumping 10ft on a standing jump and 20ft with a 10ft run up. While carrying 300 lbs of gear.

That's pretty anime right there.

Simultaneously, most cannot run faster than 60 feet in six seconds. :smallyuk:

[JackPhoenix]

Literally ran almost 200 miles in three days without getting winded and they say "con save proficiency".

135 miles (45 leagues, a league is 3 miles). That means about 45 miles per day. Fast travel pace is 30 miles per day. Forced march at fast pace adds 4 miles per hour, with DC 10 + 1 per extra hour Con save to avoid exhaustion. 4 extra hours of travel are needed per day to reach that distance, and it's DC 14 Con save to avoid exhaustion (and they were getting weary, so it's likely they've failed at least one of the check and lost the exhaustion through long rest). Ranger level is useful here, to be able to keep tracking the orcs even at fast pace, and to avoid being slowed down by difficult terrain... who would've guessed the Natural Explorer is good for something!


Fights off a trio of death knights and they say "mid level fighter with extra attack."

The most powerful of said "death knights" was later killed by a barely trained woman and a hobbit with a magic weapon. Not very impressive. Not that Aragorn really defeated them (or indeed, even could defeat them) either... they've simply fled from the fire.


Breaks an evil curse with explicitly magical abilities and they say "expertise in healers kit."

Using the power of a magical herb the other healer was unaware of.


Repels entire formations of orcs with his fearful countenance and they say "I only saw the movies."

Good Intimidate check.


Tracked Gollums non metaphorically across a continent years after Gollum had passed and they say "first level ranger."

More like "Was looking for Gollum in a general area with no results, gave up and by sheer luck (or the GM throwing the player a bone) stumbled over Gollum's tracks on his way back."

[strangebloke]

Honestly, I think you're overvaluing Aragorn's abilities.

Let's start with the endurance thing. "Literally ran almost 200 miles in three days without getting winded." Well, yeah; any character can do that. Doing the math, that works out to about 3 miles per hour assuming no sleep. By RAW, that works out to a "normal" pace of overland movement.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Movement#content

Again, this is assuming no breaks or sleep. If they were to travel at a Fast pace for 16 hours per day, that would be 4 miles per day, bringing you shockingly close to 200 miles (192 miles). To run for 16 hours per day, that would be 8 cumulative Constitution saving throws, so then DC is set to 18, at which point he then gets a long rest for 8 hours before running again.

An 18, while high, isn't a shockingly high number and could theoretically be achieved by your average humanoid doing a forced march for that long. However, that's only a 10% chance of happening if you have a +0 Constitution saving throw.

If Aragorn at level 5 (+3 Proficiency) had a good Constitution (say, 14, so +2 modifier) and was proficient, that improves his odds of not suffering any exhaustion dramatically to 25%. Even then, he can still fail once per day and not need to slow down at all.
Wrong. You make the save each hour.


For each additional hour of Travel beyond 8 hours, the Characters cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour.

So its 8 saves, DC 11, DC 12, DC 13, DC 14, DC 15, DC 16, DC 17, DC 18. Roughly a 0.0000001 chance with a +5 modifier. With a +11 modifier this jumps to a lofty 0.0078 chance, or 0.7%. Yay.

EDIT: its been brought to my attention that the actual distance is 135 miles. That's 45 miles per day, which with the ranger's favored terrain (also needed to avoid difficult terrain here) can be moved in at 4 miles per hour. So 12 hours, or default + 4. so DC 11,12,13,14. With a +5 that puts Aragorn's chances over three days at 0.3% or 38% with a +11. Of course, he wasn't going alone and Legolas similarly showed no signs of fatigue. Gimli did but obviously never got more than two stacks of exhaustion in any day because he would have halved their speed if he did.


Regarding the "Death Knight" thing... I honestly think you're overvaluing the Nazgul. The Nazgul, in Tolkien:
- Have Light Sensitivity
- Possess the Black Breath which can kill living creatures (some kind of aura which deals necrotic damage)
- Fear fire
- Had steel weapons
- Resistant to non-magical attacks

Honestly, these don't sound like the CR 17 Death Knight and sound, at least to my ears, more like a Wight, the CR 3 creature. In fact, the MM even states that "Wights are intelligent undead humanoids that resemble armed and armored corpses. They never tire in pursuit of their goal of making eternal war against the living." Draining life from the living? Resistant to non-magical attacks? Sensitive to the light? Intelligent, undead humanoids? That certainly sounds a lot like a Wight to me. These Nazgul/Wights could probably kill whole villages of commoners, but a level 5 Paladin? Well, said Paladin could make 2 attacks against one and a fire attack with a torch using their bonus action/off hand. Would it be challenging for a level 5 Paladin? Absolutely, but not overwhelming. At least, that's how I'd model them; YMMV, but I've never seen a Nazgul throw a big orb of fire at anybody.

I disagree. They're immune to nonmagical weapons, and Frodo's attempt at stabbing one causes his blade to shatter after passing through the Nazgul to no effect. Aragorn even says that 'saying the name of [a god] probably hurt him more.' Eowyn's sword could be magical (the royalty of rohan have many magical pieces taken from the hoard of scytha) but it is only able to hurt the witchking because Merry first stabbed him with a weapon specifically enchanted to kill the witch king. The nazgul's screams turn the tides of entire battles, and the witch king is able to match gandalf in a battle of wills, is said to be a terrible and powerful sorcerer, and we see this magic both in the cursed magical defenders of Minas Morgul and in his entrance at the siege of Minas Tirith


The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.

"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.


Wait. "a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark"

That sounds familiar. Could it be...

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/66/Monster_Manual_5e_-_Death_Knight_-_p47.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200313170741

....yeah. I would probably say that the Witch King at least is clearly the direct inspiration for the death knight, and the other Nazgul though lesser are still a high tier opponent.

And they own it. They repeatedly cut down swathes of people in their way and are generally treated as unstoppable engines of war. Like sorry, a Wight is not landing in any king's royal guard and slaughtering everyone who doesn't immediately flee. They have some magic weapons, the flaming sword and the morgul blade at least. Gandalf, can fight a few of them at once although its a test of his strength (though not as much as the balrog) and squares up against the witch king as though they're something like near peers. Aragorn himself tried to get into melee with the Balrog but Gandalf blows up the bridge before Aragorn gets to him. Tolkien when asked about this moment does say that Aragorn would have probably died fighting the balrog, but only because he isn't familiar with how to fight it.


Tracking Gollum? Well, Ranger 1 would give him Advantage on Survival checks to track, Outlander gives him Survival as a skill, and he probably has a pretty good Wisdom (let's again say a +2). Even assuming a 25 DC, he can still make that check, and I'd even say that the 25 is too high for this type of check.
I rather doubt most DMs would even let their players attempt to track someone who passed by the region a year ago, shunning all human society and contact. I further doubt that if they did that they would set it with range where almost anyone with survival proficiency could get it.

EDIT: importantly this wasn't a 'lucky roll' on Aragorn's part. He was asked to track Gollum because it was known he could, because he's the greatest tracker of this age.

Killing Orcs? Well, Orcs have a CR 1/2, so those are pretty trivial at level 5 for a Paladin. I'd say he could probably kill 10 or so before even breaking a sweat, assuming good tactics and effective use of team strategies.
He's caught alone on Amon Hen. In the movie, he kills something like 30 of them without breaking a sweat all by himself before facing against some kind of warlord figure, in the books the attacking party is several hundred in number, mostly regular orcs and fifty or so Urukhai. Boromir is caught by the main thrust of this several hundred person raiding party and still kills at least twenty before falling. Legolas, fighting on the fringes, also kills a solid twenty or so and then starts cutting them down with his knives. (He also one-shots a fell beast that was scouting them out) Later in Helm's Deep, Gimli and Legolas each kill 40 Uruks apiece (which are enhanced orcs, so not basic CR 1/2 orcs) with most of Gimlis kills coming from him fighting alone in the caves.

Several times Aragorn is mentioned as causing entire armies of orcs to flee in sheer terror of him, almost like the humans do in the presence of the nazgul, and its further mentioned that after the battle of pellenor fields which goes from dawn to dusk
[Eomer, Imrahil, and Aragorn] were unscathed, for such was their fortune and the skill and might of their arms, and few indeed had dared to abide them or look on their faces in the hour of their wrath.

These are not fifth level characters. You can simulate aspects of them as 5th level characters, but they have items, abilities, and achievements far in excess of what early t2 characters have. You can simulate most of these abilities with something like a 12th level character, but even then there are significant gaps and speaking favorably, it would be easy to justify statting them even higher if you like.

And this is just one example. Western myth is full of stuff that blows this out of the water, like Roland killing hundreds of enemies with a blow of his horn, or Hercules wrestling a river and winning, or Cu Chullain's numerous absurdities, or the Red Cross Knight regenerating from a cinder.

We don't need 'anime' powers, the western fantasy that DND is trying to emulate is full of stuff that works for high level.

[Tanarii]

Simultaneously, most cannot run faster than 60 feet in six seconds. :smallyuk:
They can do 30ft of wind sprints of 10ft with 180 degree change in direction 2 times while carrying 300 lbs and still make 2-4 attacks somewhere in that.

I agree they should be able to do better in a straight line wearing nothing but a loincloth and not attacking. :smallamused:

[Second Wind]

Later in Helm's Deep, Gimli and Legolas each kill 40 Uruks apiece (which are enhanced orcs, so not basic CR 1/2 orcs) with most of Gimlis kills coming from him fighting alone in the caves.
In the movies, 'orcs' are more like goblins (CR 1/4) and uruks are like orcs (CR 1/2). Although, the uruks wore better armor than the monster manual's default orc.

[Kane0]

Or, LotR isn't a good analogue for D&D anymore. Maybe try Star Wars or something?

[tokek]

In the movies, 'orcs' are more like goblins (CR 1/4) and uruks are like orcs (CR 1/2). Although, the uruks wore better armor than the monster manual's default orc.

In the game Uruk are Orog - CR2 elite orcs in heavy armour.

The films had goblins, they were different to the orcs.

But its beside the point because the books are the source material and the characters so some pretty epic things - as described earlier in the thread.

As for anime style? I still think you can reflavour a paladin for it - but if you absolutely must have pure anime then it needs to be a homebrew class because what anime characters do does not fit the mould of what D&D martial classes do. They are just different, they support different types of fantasy.

[Brookshw]

I am also talking about those yes. But Exalted has its merits as well, because I like it

No one's suggesting you shouldn't, go ahead and like what you like, though someone liking something isn't indicative of it's merits (or, inversely, indicative of flaws[1]). The original point I was replying to was suggesting those games exist, so people who want that style of game would enjoy themselves more for playing them. Incidentally, the demand and interest in such games (and their related revenue) tells us how much appeal there is in them compared to how D&D handles things, I guess that's a silent majority since dollars don't talk :smallbiggrin:.


[1] I recall once seeing a game where the players are waifu maids trying to make their master happy, I'm not sure anyone liking it is indicative of any merit as opposed to players sometimes have a very particular taste. :smallconfused:

[GreyBlack]

Wrong. You make the save each hour.

*snip*
EDIT: its been brought to my attention that the actual distance is 135 miles. That's 45 miles per day, which with the ranger's favored terrain (also needed to avoid difficult terrain here) can be moved in at 4 miles per hour. So 12 hours, or default + 4. so DC 11,12,13,14. With a +5 that puts Aragorn's chances over three days at 0.3% or 38% with a +11. Of course, he wasn't going alone and Legolas similarly showed no signs of fatigue. Gimli did but obviously never got more than two stacks of exhaustion in any day because he would have halved their speed if he did.


So you're saying they had a lucky dice day? A 14 isn't a terrible check to make at a +5; on each roll, you'd have a greater than 50% chance of making each roll. Sure, making each roll multiple times would be tough, but we've already agreed they'd have to only make 3 rolls per day to continue at that pace.



I disagree. They're immune to nonmagical weapons, and Frodo's attempt at stabbing one causes his blade to shatter after passing through the Nazgul to no effect. Aragorn even says that 'saying the name of [a god] probably hurt him more.' Eowyn's sword could be magical (the royalty of rohan have many magical pieces taken from the hoard of scytha) but it is only able to hurt the witchking because Merry first stabbed him with a weapon specifically enchanted to kill the witch king. The nazgul's screams turn the tides of entire battles, and the witch king is able to match gandalf in a battle of wills, is said to be a terrible and powerful sorcerer, and we see this magic both in the cursed magical defenders of Minas Morgul and in his entrance at the siege of Minas Tirith


Wait. "a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark"

That sounds familiar. Could it be...

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/66/Monster_Manual_5e_-_Death_Knight_-_p47.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200313170741

....yeah. I would probably say that the Witch King at least is clearly the direct inspiration for the death knight, and the other Nazgul though lesser are still a high tier opponent.

And they own it. They repeatedly cut down swathes of people in their way and are generally treated as unstoppable engines of war. Like sorry, a Wight is not landing in any king's royal guard and slaughtering everyone who doesn't immediately flee. They have some magic weapons, the flaming sword and the morgul blade at least. Gandalf, can fight a few of them at once although its a test of his strength (though not as much as the balrog) and squares up against the witch king as though they're something like near peers. Aragorn himself tried to get into melee with the Balrog but Gandalf blows up the bridge before Aragorn gets to him. Tolkien when asked about this moment does say that Aragorn would have probably died fighting the balrog, but only because he isn't familiar with how to fight it.



Could Aragorn fight the Balrog? Genuine question here. I'm more than willing to give Gandalf around a CR15-16 creature template, given how wizards work in Tolkien. If, however, you think that the Witch King is a CR 17 creature and that Aragorn could go toe to toe with it, then that tells me he'd at least be able to survive an encounter with the Balrog.

Because, here, we have an even better D&D power level scaling than anything; is the Balrog on par with the Balor? Personally? I'd argue yes.

The Witch King, in your argument, is only slightly below the power of a Balor, which really doesn't seem to be the case on my reading. If the Witch King can be killed by Merry and Pippin (who, let's agree, are not on the same level as a Aragorn and certainly not on the same level as a Balrog), that indicates to me that the Witch King is significantly less powerful than a CR17 Death Knight.

ETA: Perhaps we should also include the general degeneration that Tolkien builds into his worlds; the Nazgul and Witch King that we see in the Lord of the Rings are not on the same power level as the Witch King and Nazgul in the Silmarillion. Tolkien intentionally evokes this idea that, as time goes on, things degrade and become weaker. Sauron is a shadow of the power of what he once was, which is a shadow of the power of his master, Morgoth. Could we, potentially, be talking about these creatures at different points in the timeline? Perhaps, at one point, the Witch King was a Death Knight, but over time degraded and is now only a Wight Lord?

And then there's the fact that the Death Knight lacks sunlight sensitivity, lacks any sort of immunity to normal weapons where a Wight has said resistance, doesn't throw big orbs of fire, and more, and it points me towards the fact that the Witch King isn't a Death Knight; it means we need to scale the power differently, and a Wight is probably right where a Nazgul should be. Perhaps the Witch King isn't a regular Wight, though; perhaps he can be some kind of homebrew boss monster of a Wight Lord or something?



I rather doubt most DMs would even let their players attempt to track someone who passed by the region a year ago, shunning all human society and contact. I further doubt that if they did that they would set it with range where almost anyone with survival proficiency could get it.

EDIT: importantly this wasn't a 'lucky roll' on Aragorn's part. He was asked to track Gollum because it was known he could, because he's the greatest tracker of this age.


Have you read the Ranger's ability?


Natural Explorer
You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.

While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:

Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level.

We're not talking about just a +5. As long as he's in favored terrain, he's an expert in tracking/has expertise on Survival. That's at least a +8. We've talked about feats; what would prevent him from taking Prodigy of Survival to get even better? That's a +14 (+3 Proficiency, +3 Favored Terrain, +6 Prodigy, +2 Wisdom) Survival check as a Paladin 5/Ranger 1.

As to DM's allowing it... this is a previous edition, granted, but in 3.5, the DC to "Track a goblin that passed over hard rocks a week ago, and it snowed yesterday" was 43. Obviously, this was without the bounded accuracy restrictions imposed by 5e. The highest you could get your Survival in 3.5 was around a +33 without significant cheese (which there was plenty of) at level 20, so that makes it a roughly 50/50 chance to be able to track said Goblin.

In 5e, we're looking around a +18 assuming no cheese like stacking Prodigy on top of Natural Explorer. So we can call said Goblin tracking around a nice 28 DC for 5e. So all Aragorn has to do is roll over a 14 to get this check (30% chance). That's actually not terrible odds when you do that to your build for this specific thing and the DC is that ridiculously high.


He's caught alone on Amon Hen. In the movie, he kills something like 30 of them without breaking a sweat all by himself before facing against some kind of warlord figure, in the books the attacking party is several hundred in number, mostly regular orcs and fifty or so Urukhai. Boromir is caught by the main thrust of this several hundred person raiding party and still kills at least twenty before falling. Legolas, fighting on the fringes, also kills a solid twenty or so and then starts cutting them down with his knives. (He also one-shots a fell beast that was scouting them out) Later in Helm's Deep, Gimli and Legolas each kill 40 Uruks apiece (which are enhanced orcs, so not basic CR 1/2 orcs) with most of Gimlis kills coming from him fighting alone in the caves.


Does he? Best reference I'm seeing is that he killed around twenty orcs, while Boromir killed "many" in the skirmish in which Merry and Pippin were abducted, 3 being Uruks. I went into this earlier, but 10 Orcs can probably go down without breaking a sweat, so then that's 3 Uruks (orogs) to really contend with. That's a CR 6 encounter in which, importantly, he fails the encounter! This is probably considered a "Difficult" encounter, but still within level range for the Fellowship; one of the party members get killed, 2 get abducted, but between Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn, they are able to repel their attackers.



Several times Aragorn is mentioned as causing entire armies of orcs to flee in sheer terror of him, almost like the humans do in the presence of the nazgul, and its further mentioned that after the battle of pellenor fields which goes from dawn to dusk

Usually when drawing his sword. Maybe the sword is just enchanted to project an aura of fear?


These are not fifth level characters. You can simulate aspects of them as 5th level characters, but they have items, abilities, and achievements far in excess of what early t2 characters have. You can simulate most of these abilities with something like a 12th level character, but even then there are significant gaps and speaking favorably, it would be easy to justify statting them even higher if you like.

Disagree as above.


And this is just one example. Western myth is full of stuff that blows this out of the water, like Roland killing hundreds of enemies with a blow of his horn, or Hercules wrestling a river and winning, or Cu Chullain's numerous absurdities, or the Red Cross Knight regenerating from a cinder.

We don't need 'anime' powers, the western fantasy that DND is trying to emulate is full of stuff that works for high level.

I agree; we don't need anime powers; we just need to be able to better simulate mythic fantasy without absurd levels of system mastery. Still, once you adjust your expectations, I think you'll find that characters in 5e are still capable of doing some absolutely tremendous feats.

[Tanarii]

Or, LotR isn't a good analogue for D&D anymore. Maybe try Star Wars or something?
Neither of these were ever a good analogue for D&D, or versa. D&D isn't a book or movie r TV show, and book or movie or TV shows characters and especially plots don't translate well in either direction when it comes to D&D.

LOTR was just one of many inspirations for the design of various things in D&D, but especially many humanoid races.

But I agree insofar as WotC D&D is designed to accelerate you into mid to high levels (Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively in 5e), and how flashy and common/easy magic is for many characters, it's especially a bad fit for the relatively low-level primary characters and subdued Magic of the LOTR books & movies. If WotC wanted to explicitly create an adventure path emulating the world-changing adventures of Frodo and crew, it could probably wrap near the end of Tier 2, as opposed to the mid Tier 3 they currently favor for such world-shattering event adventure paths.

[Lord Raziere]

No one's suggesting you shouldn't, go ahead and like what you like, though someone liking something isn't indicative of it's merits (or, inversely, indicative of flaws[1]). The original point I was replying to was suggesting those games exist, so people who want that style of game would enjoy themselves more for playing them. Incidentally, the demand and interest in such games (and their related revenue) tells us how much appeal there is in them compared to how D&D handles things, I guess that's a silent majority since dollars don't talk :smallbiggrin:.


What am I supposed to say to this?

You act like me liking what I like is fine, then talk about as if it doesn't matter, then you go back saying its fine, then you pretty much imply that its not fine to like things that aren't popular at all and not to try to change whats popular because what I like is not popular or that its hopeless and I should give up. What are you saying?

[Cheesegear]

Barbarian:
7. Advantage on Initiative, and can't really be surprised.
11. DC 10/15/20/25 CON save to not drop to 0. Resets on Short Rests.
15. Stay mad.
18/20. Passive Strength Checks become 24...Not superhuman. But very strong.

14. Eagle. Barbarian leap.

Fighter
5/11/20. Swing a sword up to four times in six seconds. Use Action Surge to attack up to 8 times in six seconds. With a Greatsword! Do you know how heavy those are!?

18. Champion. Start regenerating at low health.

Monk
...Did someone say anime?

Rogue
14. Gain echolocation for some reason.
18. Dodge everything.
20. Actually, I passed.

17. Thief. You get two turns.


High level non-casters have the potential for a lot of cool abilities (I only used the PHB, I guarantee Xan's and Tasha's have far more stupid things)
What they don't have, is spells.

[Brookshw]

What am I supposed to say to this?

You act like me liking what I like is fine, then talk about as if it doesn't matter, then you go back saying its fine, then you pretty much imply that its not fine to like things that aren't popular at all and not to try to change whats popular because what I like is not popular or that its hopeless and I should give up. What are you saying?

My statement was clear.

[JackPhoenix]

EDIT: its been brought to my attention that the actual distance is 135 miles. That's 45 miles per day, which with the ranger's favored terrain (also needed to avoid difficult terrain here) can be moved in at 4 miles per hour. So 12 hours, or default + 4. so DC 11,12,13,14. With a +5 that puts Aragorn's chances over three days at 0.3% or 38% with a +11. Of course, he wasn't going alone and Legolas similarly showed no signs of fatigue. Gimli did but obviously never got more than two stacks of exhaustion in any day because he would have halved their speed if he did.

Legolas doesn't really count, because Tolkien's elves are not a balanced playable race. Just like NPCs don't use the same rules as players in 5e.



I disagree. They're immune to nonmagical weapons, and Frodo's attempt at stabbing one causes his blade to shatter after passing through the Nazgul to no effect. Aragorn even says that 'saying the name of [a god] probably hurt him more.' Eowyn's sword could be magical (the royalty of rohan have many magical pieces taken from the hoard of scytha) but it is only able to hurt the witchking because Merry first stabbed him with a weapon specifically enchanted to kill the witch king. The nazgul's screams turn the tides of entire battles, and the witch king is able to match gandalf in a battle of wills, is said to be a terrible and powerful sorcerer, and we see this magic both in the cursed magical defenders of Minas Morgul and in his entrance at the siege of Minas Tirith

While I agree that wight doesn't fit Nazgul perfectly, it's still closer than death knights are. Nazguls are incorporeal, only given form through the armor and clothing they wear (after they've been washed away at Rivendell, they had to flee back to Mordor as mere spirits to get geared up again. They are immune to non-magic weapons, though fire and works work well against them, but most importantly, are vulnerable to the power of plot.


Wait. "a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark"

That sounds familiar. Could it be...

Incorporeal spirit sounds like a skeleton in an armor to you?


I rather doubt most DMs would even let their players attempt to track someone who passed by the region a year ago, shunning all human society and contact. I further doubt that if they did that they would set it with range where almost anyone with survival proficiency could get it.

EDIT: importantly this wasn't a 'lucky roll' on Aragorn's part. He was asked to track Gollum because it was known he could, because he's the greatest tracker of this age.

It literally was. From rumors, Gandalf knew Gollum moved in the direction of Mordor. Aragorn was lurking around the Black Gate in hope he'll catch him. When he finally had enough and was about to return, he got lucky: "I, too, despaired at last, and I began my homeward journey. And then, by fortune, I came suddenly on what I sought: the marks of soft feet beside a muddy pool. But now the trail was fresh and swift, and it led not to Mordor but away. Along the skirts of the Dead Marshes I followed it, and then I had him. Lurking by a stagnant mere, peering in the water as the dark eve fell, I caught him, Gollum."


He's caught alone on Amon Hen. In the movie, he kills something like 30 of them without breaking a sweat all by himself before facing against some kind of warlord figure, in the books the attacking party is several hundred in number, mostly regular orcs and fifty or so Urukhai. Boromir is caught by the main thrust of this several hundred person raiding party and still kills at least twenty before falling.

In the books, Aragorn doesn't kill anything at Amon Hen, he arrives after the battle is over. Gimli and Legolas were "hunting the orcs in the woods", which sounds more like a skirmish than pitched battle. And orcs are notably weaker in sunlight. Boromir also wasn't alone, he had two hobbits with him, who, while not very good combatants, still helped.


Several times Aragorn is mentioned as causing entire armies of orcs to flee in sheer terror of him, almost like the humans do in the presence of the nazgul, and its further mentioned that after the battle of pellenor fields which goes from dawn to dusk

The orcs who are cowardly and notoriously afraid of anything associated with Aragorn's bloodline, especially his legendary sword?


These are not fifth level characters. You can simulate aspects of them as 5th level characters, but they have items, abilities, and achievements far in excess of what early t2 characters have. You can simulate most of these abilities with something like a 12th level character, but even then there are significant gaps and speaking favorably, it would be easy to justify statting them even higher if you like.

I agree they are not 5th level, but at 5th level, you can replicate most, if not all, of their accomplishments. Anything beyond t2 is entirely unnecessary.


In the game Uruk are Orog - CR2 elite orcs in heavy armour.

Tolkien's orcs and goblins are the same thing. Smaller, weaker and generally inferior to men. Even Uruks, considerably superior to normal orcs, are merely comparable to men, but their most notable advantage over normal orc is that they don't fear the sun. Considering their better equipment, better combat ability and larger size, you can say Uruk-Hai are CR 1/2 hobgoblins compared to orc/goblin's CR 1/4 goblins.

[GreyBlack]

Barbarian:
7. Advantage on Initiative, and can't really be surprised.
11. DC 10/15/20/25 CON save to not drop to 0. Resets on Short Rests.
15. Stay mad.
18/20. Passive Strength Checks become 24...Not superhuman. But very strong.

14. Eagle. Barbarian leap.

Fighter
5/11/20. Swing a sword up to four times in six seconds. Use Action Surge to attack up to 8 times in six seconds. With a Greatsword! Do you know how heavy those are!?

18. Champion. Start regenerating at low health.

Monk
...Did someone say anime?

Rogue
14. Gain echolocation for some reason.
18. Dodge everything.
20. Actually, I passed.

17. Thief. You get two turns.


High level non-casters have the potential for a lot of cool abilities (I only used the PHB, I guarantee Xan's and Tasha's have far more stupid things)
What they don't have, is spells.

Disagree on Barbarian. The fact that their Strength and Constitution can go to 24 is, by definition, super-human given that all stats are capped at 20. That is to say, your strength is literally beyond human.

[Rater202]

My statement was clear.

I have to say no, it really wasn't. Reading your post it very much feels wishy-washy, like you're trying to say something without saying anything.

That was probably not your intent, but when someone asks you what you mean insisting that you were clearly the first time doesn't help.

Could you please try to rephrase your point in a way that comes across more clearly?

[Carlobrand]

I wouldn't begin to think what the majority of D&D audience wants, and you probably shouldn't either.

That's not about what the majority audience wants. That's about his inference of what WOTC believes the majority of the audience wants, based on the evidence of what they publish. Whether WOTC is correct or not is another question.

[Amechra]

Incidentally, the demand and interest in such games (and their related revenue) tells us how much appeal there is in them compared to how D&D handles things, I guess that's a silent majority since dollars don't talk :smallbiggrin:.

This would mean something if D&D didn't have absurd amounts of advertising in comparison with your average tabletop game. So good job laughing at games produced by small companies because they didn't luck out and get a wildly popular actual play series or tons of marketing money from Daddy Hasbro?

[Dienekes]

Fighter
5/11/20. Swing a sword up to four times in six seconds. Use Action Surge to attack up to 8 times in six seconds. With a Greatsword! Do you know how heavy those are!?


About 7 lbs more or less… I own one. Honestly swinging a sword faster than one strike a second is not all that hard. I can do that. I am not level 20. I doubt I’m level 2.

I admittedly can’t do it while also running 30 feet in plate armor. But in the realm of action hero… meh.

[Foolwise]

About 7 lbs more or less… I own one. Honestly swinging a sword faster than one strike a second is not all that hard. I can do that. I am not level 20. I doubt I’m level 2.

I admittedly can’t do it while also running 30 feet in plate armor. But in the realm of action hero… meh.

I can see it being easy to swing a greatsword freely in the air faster than one swing per second, sure. But when those swings connect and sink into armor/flesh/etc which then necessitate removing the blade... 8 swings in 6 seconds is absurd.

[Tanarii]

I can see it being easy to swing a greatsword freely in the air faster than one swing per second, sure. But when those swings connect and sink into armor/flesh/etc which then necessitate removing the blade... 8 swings in 6 seconds is absurd.
I've trained at a basic level in Chinese broadsword katas (in other words swinging in the air) and multiple strikes under a second isn't happening at that level of training even without an opponent. OTOH hopefully we've all seen epee and Sabre competitions.

The really fun one is those with the Crossbow expert feat and a Heavy Crossbow and action surge :smallamused:

[Psyren]

That's not about what the majority audience wants. That's about his inference of what WOTC believes the majority of the audience wants, based on the evidence of what they publish. Whether WOTC is correct or not is another question.

Correct. And I find the idea that WotC doesn't make "anime D&D" simply because they've never once considered it in the past 40-50 years - well, except for 4e I suppose? - to not hold water.


And my point was that DND class systems can simulate pretty much any origin story you like, as long as the result is you getting some sort of power that you can develop over time.

Warlocks for example only get a onetime gift of power from their patron, it isn't innate or trained or even constantly supplied, just something they get and then work to develop. But people refluff them as a more cleric-like ongoing support and it doesn't actually change anything because most class features are origin-agnostic.

You're correct that classes represent a wide possibility space of power sources, but that's not the issue I was highlighting when I brought up Luffy. Rather, the issue with shonen protagonists as a benchmark is that a lot of them start that progression at a degree of power that is almost incompatible with D&D low-level play - heck, maybe not even mid-level. If you put even season-1-episode-1 Luffy up against almost anything below CR 7 (maybe even 10) he's going to stomp it silly, and he only goes up from there. So what does a "level 1 Devil Fruit User" look like, and how would that compare to a level 20 one? How do you design for that? The likely answer is that you need a completely different system.

[Dienekes]

I can see it being easy to swing a greatsword freely in the air faster than one swing per second, sure. But when those swings connect and sink into armor/flesh/etc which then necessitate removing the blade... 8 swings in 6 seconds is absurd.

In part, but it has little to do with how heavy the greatsword is.

But I would say:

1) I’ve carved up pig carcasses with swords before, blood and bone doesn’t slow you down near as much as you might expect with good technique. Armor is of course a different matter, but you’ll just be bouncing off steel armor for the most part. Now there is a chance of your weapon getting stuck, but the game doesn’t model that anywhere.

2) I’m pretty certain the PHB even states damage isn’t actual damage. It’s some strange amalgamation of your meat, your luck, and your ability to evade all rolled up together. Ignore the fact that evasion and luck are modeled elsewhere in the same system, please and thank you.

Now part of the reason why attacking so fast isn’t really done is because honestly, it’s stupid to. Now there are moments in a fight you can swing three or four times in about two seconds. But is usually followed by breaking apart a bit and making sure you’re not dead, or getting into grapple range where everything gets screwy.

But that goes back to an earlier point, if we take D&D to model combatants (and let me be clear here it doesn’t, but let’s pretend they’re trying to) then all it really models are people who are very bad at fighting.

But that’s all ok. D&D doesn’t model reality. At all, it models nothing but D&D in all it’s janky glory. So if we all agree that D&D isn’t trying to be realistic (and let’s hope we are), then why do we keep getting these weird arguments about granting these clearly not realistic people not realistic abilities? It’s very odd.

[Kane0]

So if we all agree that D&D isn’t trying to be realistic (and let’s hope we are), then why do we keep getting these weird arguments about granting these clearly not realistic people not realistic abilities? It’s very odd.

Ludonarrative dissonance or some other such pretentiousness.

[Valmark]

From what I know a lot of people didn't like ToB in 3.5 because it was anime-ish- I'm not surprised WotC doesn't risk it that much again.

Don't remember enough about 4e to know how anime-y it was.

That said, a feel like some abilities they have are more anime then it looks- yell ARROW STORM the next time your samurai fighter action surges for seven attacks or gets an immediate turn upon getting to 0 hp.

[strangebloke]

snip
To cut this short: I think my largest issue here beyond some of the basic disagreements is that you make everything come back to lucky dice or magic items or other externalities. To me, something that could be simulated by a 6th level character with a lot of luck and GM support is what I mean when I say "simulate some elements of a character."

But I'm really just trying to make the argument that its possible to imagine Aragorn's adventures happening at a lot of levels, including very high levels.


I agree; we don't need anime powers; we just need to be able to better simulate mythic fantasy without absurd levels of system mastery. Still, once you adjust your expectations, I think you'll find that characters in 5e are still capable of doing some absolutely tremendous feats.
They can do things. This certainly isn't 3.5. But its frustrating that a lot of what they can do is contingent on getting good magic items and a DM who allows high level ability checks to do 'impossible' things.

Neither of these were ever a good analogue for D&D, or versa. D&D isn't a book or movie r TV show, and book or movie or TV shows characters and especially plots don't translate well in either direction when it comes to D&D.

LOTR was just one of many inspirations for the design of various things in D&D, but especially many humanoid races.

But I agree insofar as WotC D&D is designed to accelerate you into mid to high levels (Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively in 5e), and how flashy and common/easy magic is for many characters, it's especially a bad fit for the relatively low-level primary characters and subdued Magic of the LOTR books & movies. If WotC wanted to explicitly create an adventure path emulating the world-changing adventures of Frodo and crew, it could probably wrap near the end of Tier 2, as opposed to the mid Tier 3 they currently favor for such world-shattering event adventure paths.

I know you have a major bee in your bonnet about how the goal of DND is not to write a novel and I agree. However, it is also true that the archetypes and setting details are completely modeled on western fantasy archetypes. Being able to play someone like Aragorn or even Gandalf is a core part of the appeal of the game. The main difference between LOTR characters and DND characters is that the latter are a much broader category. Magic users like dnd wizards aren't in lotr and neither are monks.


Legolas doesn't really count, because Tolkien's elves are not a balanced playable race. Just like NPCs don't use the same rules as players in 5e.
Elves in LotR aren't born superpowered, they just live longer and tend to be higher level as a result.

The orcs who are cowardly and notoriously afraid of anything associated with Aragorn's bloodline, especially his legendary sword?
Where the power comes from is irrelevant. I want to see martials be able to do it without the DM handing it to them.

This would mean something if D&D didn't have absurd amounts of advertising in comparison with your average tabletop game. So good job laughing at games produced by small companies because they didn't luck out and get a wildly popular actual play series or tons of marketing money from Daddy Hasbro?
I'll go on the record as someone who genuinely thinks 5e is one of the best systems on the market for what it does even irrespective of the community built up around it. But even I would genuinely agree with you that its basically incorrect to call things like Exalted or even L5R or BESM 'unsuccessful.' They're very very successful when compared with anything that isn't DND or a DND knockoff.

Correct. And I find the idea that WotC doesn't make "anime D&D" simply because they've never once considered it in the past 40-50 years - well, except for 4e I suppose? - to not hold water.
Let me put it this way.

3.5 had TOB, which was insultingly called "an anime book." And some people hated it, but most everyone I know who actually played those classes loved it, and it certainly had a bigger impact than a lot of other stuff they tried.
4e was similarly "too anime" and it "failed" but it had loads of other problems and also didn't actually fail that hard. Like people played this game and loved it.
Loads of people played/play Exalted and love that stuff, or have never played it but love the concept.
Now we're in 5e, and subtle though it may be things are as anime as ever. We have tons of rapid heal abilities, the monk occupies a huge corner of the design space and is a very popular class, the most popular warlock subclass is a cool sword boy with a cursed (?) sword....


yeah.

And it makes sense. In ye olden days someone who was big into gundam or whatever was a weeb, but the generation that grew up on DBZ and Naruto and the like is currently in their 30s.


You're correct that classes represent a wide possibility space of power sources, but that's not the issue I was highlighting when I brought up Luffy. Rather, the issue with shonen protagonists as a benchmark is that a lot of them start that progression at a degree of power that is almost incompatible with D&D low-level play - heck, maybe not even mid-level. If you put even season-1-episode-1 Luffy up against almost anything below CR 7 (maybe even 10) he's going to stomp it silly, and he only goes up from there. So what does a "level 1 Devil Fruit User" look like, and how would that compare to a level 20 one? How do you design for that? The likely answer is that you need a completely different system.

You're being intensely literal about what the translation of such a character concept would look like. It's perfectly easy - trivial, even - to create a scaled down version of "rubber monk" that doesn't really start feeling like Luffy until about 9th level or so. The fact that the scaled down version never shows up in the manga is irrelevant.

[Brookshw]

I have to say no, it really wasn't. Reading your post it very much feels wishy-washy, like you're trying to say something without saying anything.

That was probably not your intent

I think what's probably throwing you is that I made several points without drawing a conclusion; that's intentional, I made exactly the points I intended to and, to avoid discussing anyone's personal preference, walked away.


This would mean something if D&D didn't have absurd amounts of advertising in comparison with your average tabletop game. So good job laughing at games produced by small companies because they didn't luck out and get a wildly popular actual play series or tons of marketing money from Daddy Hasbro?

No one's laughing at any small game producer, not sure where you got that. If anything, it's great that we have them so there are games out there for a variety of tastes. Kickstarter is great for this as many companies, which likely couldn't otherwise fund their projects, are able to obtain funding without having to worry about investors. I know Monte Cook has some new Planescape-esque thing he's doing through Kickstarter, and Kobold Press has put it to great use.

As to the rest, (1) you have the chronology backwards, D&D was a success so Hasbro/WoTC bought it, and people started doing play series, it's not a success because Hasbro/WoTC bought it and people started doing play series [1], and (2) deep pockets alone won't guarantee a systems popularity, Games Workshop has Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Dark Heresy and similar, all set in the already popular 40k universe, and is a company with the fund to advertise those products - heck, a lot of the people who play 40k also play D&D - yet they have never caught on in the same way (and you can find plenty of play series to watch/listen to for those RPGs if you're looking for them).

[1] TSR's issue was they over-diversified the product line and saturated their market, D&D was otherwise successful aside from the poorly managed market.

[ecarden]

For the same reason Captain America doesn't learn magic from Doctor Fate.

Sometimes I want to play Doctor Fate. Sometimes I want to play Captain America. I'd very much prefer I wasn't required to turn my Captain America into Doctor Fate at some point in gameplay.

[Psyren]

Let me put it this way.

3.5 had TOB, which was insultingly called "an anime book." And some people hated it, but most everyone I know who actually played those classes loved it, and it certainly had a bigger impact than a lot of other stuff they tried.
4e was similarly "too anime" and it "failed" but it had loads of other problems and also didn't actually fail that hard. Like people played this game and loved it.
Loads of people played/play Exalted and love that stuff, or have never played it but love the concept.
Now we're in 5e, and subtle though it may be things are as anime as ever. We have tons of rapid heal abilities, the monk occupies a huge corner of the design space and is a very popular class, the most popular warlock subclass is a cool sword boy with a cursed (?) sword....


yeah.

And it makes sense. In ye olden days someone who was big into gundam or whatever was a weeb, but the generation that grew up on DBZ and Naruto and the like is currently in their 30s.

So what's the problem then? If 5e is as "anime as ever" then why do these threads keep popping up like weeds?

And neither ToB nor 5e, nor even 4e to my dim recollection, do anything like what the OP is desiring, where martials are capable of "cutting sound/light/metaphysical concepts" "stealing your dreams/memories" etc. Maybe Exalted has that stuff, I wouldn't know.



You're being intensely literal about what the translation of such a character concept would look like. It's perfectly easy - trivial, even - to create a scaled down version of "rubber monk" that doesn't really start feeling like Luffy until about 9th level or so. The fact that the scaled down version never shows up in the manga is irrelevant.

I'm fine with a "scaled down version" of these concepts, but again, I don't see the difference between that and what we already have. And what the OP wants doesn't sound "scaled down" at all.

[Tanarii]

I know you have a major bee in your bonnet about how the goal of DND is not to write a novel and I agree. However, it is also true that the archetypes and setting details are completely modeled on western fantasy archetypes. Being able to play someone like Aragorn or even Gandalf is a core part of the appeal of the game. The main difference between LOTR characters and DND characters is that the latter are a much broader category. Magic users like dnd wizards aren't in lotr and neither are monks.
They're only 'like' Aragorn or Gandalf in the broadest strokes though. D&D is a war game with a paint of LOTR fantasy on top moved to individual characters perspective then another layer of different inspirations layered on top. That's still reflected in the various sacred cows, but especially the way classes are designed and the way combat and non-combat works.

It's not a story media fiction emulator. And when you try to 'build' a character from a favorite book or movie there are limits and a lot of translation and tons of stuff has to give and artistic licenses abound. Similarly, whenever they try and turn D&D into a book or a movie, either the same happens or it's a disaster.

[Lord Raziere]

And neither ToB nor 5e, nor even 4e to my dim recollection, do anything like what the OP is desiring, where martials are capable of "cutting sound/light/metaphysical concepts" "stealing your dreams/memories" etc. Maybe Exalted has that stuff, I wouldn't know.


To be honest, it does have stuff like that, but less than you think.

like there is are Sidereal charms to steal someone's name from them, or a mindreading fluffed as stealing surface thoughts, or a solar charm to steal abstract things thats way deep in the charm tree, in 2e there were two Sidereal Martial Arts one for messing with dreams and other memories/mind in general but they haven't been put in the new edition yet because they tend to focus on one splat at a time and Sidereal stuff is a little esoteric even for Exalted, and no one wants to go back to an edition with hundreds of pages of errata. like 2e Sidereal martial arts are actually broken in the "I have a charm to temporarily make myself the Storyteller" sense- going too far with that one.

[Greywander]

If you're skimming, stop here

OP here, this thread really got away from me fast. I went and gathered a bunch of quotes to reply to, but it was just too much, so I'm going to summarize here instead of replying to specific people.

First, people are getting too fixated on the "anime" in the thread title. I'm not talking literally about making D&D like anime. As stated in the OP, I meant making them more like mythological figures who can perform supernatural acts. Actually, I will put a couple quotes here, since they sum it up better than I could:

What I do want is for D&D non-casters to actually be able to accomplish the feats of mythological non-casters. I want my barbarian to be able to redirect a river like Heracles, my ranger to be able to find their way out of a labyrinth that is constantly changing like Theseus, my fighter to be able to change the tide of battle by his mere presence like Achilles, my rogue to be able to deceive monsters like Odysseus... stuff like that.

But, no. We have to keep them grounded. :smallmad:

And this is just one example. Western myth is full of stuff that blows this out of the water, like Roland killing hundreds of enemies with a blow of his horn, or Hercules wrestling a river and winning, or Cu Chullain's numerous absurdities, or the Red Cross Knight regenerating from a cinder.

We don't need 'anime' powers, the western fantasy that DND is trying to emulate is full of stuff that works for high level.

Second, I'm talking mostly about high level martials. As someone said, martials are mostly fine in T1 and T2, it's really in T3 and T4 where they get overshadowed by casters. Casters can create natural disasters and bring back the dead, while martials can... shoot a crossbow really fast. Which is supernatural in it's own way, I suppose, but it's really not comparable. Combat isn't really the main issue; it's not really about damage output or AC or anything like that.

"But some people don't want magic forced on their fighter or barbarian or whatever." Yeah, I get that. So lower the level cap. There's something called E6 which caps your level at 6, which might be what you're looking for. But if you're going to allow your martial character to progress to high levels, they need those supernatural abilities to compete with spellcasters. That's what reaching high levels means. In T3 and T4, you've ceased to be a normal person and become a mythological figure.

They don't need to get some super flashy anime crap. Just take some normal concepts and dial them up to 11. For example, take things that martials already do, and turn it into "___ anything". Some examples: cut anything, steal anything, wrestle anything, punch anything, throw anything, talk to anything, hide anything, eat anything, etc. It's not that they're suddenly getting magical powers, they're literally just getting so good at doing something mundane that their abilities goes beyond normal human limits, becoming superhuman in the process. And they don't start with the "___ anything" at 1st level; no, that's for when they hit T4, working their way up from "normal" to "plausible" to "definitely exaggerated" until they finally reach "okay, you're just making that up".

4e Epic Destinies and Pathfinder Mythic both look interesting. However, I don't think non-casters should have to be reliant on optional extra rules to stay competitive. It would be like telling someone to play a gestalt character if they want to compete with a non-gestalt caster. Likewise with leaning on magic items. Martials and casters should have competitive progressions built directly into their classes. You have some leeway, we don't need everything to be perfectly balanced, but there's a sizable gap that needs to be narrowed.

I'm not going to step into the LotR discussion, since everyone here seems to remember the books far better than I do. But I will say that Luffy's devil fruit power is actually on the weaker side (though flexible, like the difference between Fireball and Prestidigitation). It's his freakish strength that makes him so powerful, and that has nothing to do with the devil fruit he ate (although its effect on his physiology might have played a role in training to get so swole). Using the two together makes him an even more formidable opponent, but the devil fruit by itself isn't that strong.

[Psyren]

To be honest, it does have stuff like that, but less than you think.

like there is are Sidereal charms to steal someone's name from them, or a mindreading fluffed as stealing surface thoughts, or a solar charm to steal abstract things thats way deep in the charm tree, in 2e there were two Sidereal Martial Arts one for messing with dreams and other memories/mind in general but they haven't been put in the new edition yet because they tend to focus on one splat at a time and Sidereal stuff is a little esoteric even for Exalted, and no one wants to go back to an edition with hundreds of pages of errata. like 2e Sidereal martial arts are actually broken in the "I have a charm to temporarily make myself the Storyteller" sense- going too far with that one.

Riveting. Sounds like I'm not missing much.


However, I don't think non-casters should have to be reliant on optional extra rules to stay competitive.

Good news, they aren't. You can outfight anything in the Monster Manual without a drop of Mythic, and you don't need to be able to "cut a sound" or "steal a memory" to be competitive.

But if you want those kinds of abilities, why the aversion to Mythic? I think it's the best possible compromise for both sides.

[Cheesegear]

Disagree on Barbarian. The fact that their Strength and Constitution can go to 24 is, by definition, super-human given that all stats are capped at 20. That is to say, your strength is literally beyond human.

Well, I only used a single metric for Str 24. Carrying capacity.

24*30 = 720 lb. Pull/Drag/Lift. That doesn't feel like a lot...And it isn't. Currently there are people in the world, today, that can deadlift around 500kgs...Over 1000 lb. Not many people, sure. But those people, are in fact, human.

Every now and then someone will drag a car, or even a plane! Again, well over 720 lb. Wheels help, sure. But again, these people are human.

720 lb. deadlift is impressive, absolutely! But it isn't super human.

Vertical leap record is about 2 ft. A Str of 24 (+7) will give you a standing vertical leap of ~3.5 ft. Nice. That is actually better than the guy at the gym.
~24 ft. long jump is about right.

(However, what is actually super-human, probably, is that you can deadlift 720 lb. and vertical leap ~3.5 ft. That's impressive.)

Eagle Barbarian gains a Fly speed during their turn. That's a vertical or horizontal leap of 40 ft...And someone said this wasn't anime.

[Greywander]

Good news, they aren't. You can outfight anything in the Monster Manual without a drop of Mythic, and you don't need to be able to "cut a sound" or "steal a memory" to be competitive.

But if you want those kinds of abilities, why the aversion to Mythic? I think it's the best possible compromise for both sides.
Flight, teleportation, resurrection, creating natural disasters... when I think of all the ways casters overshadow martials, combat ability is pretty much at the bottom of my list. Not that a Fireball or Disintegrate aren't impressive, but it's understood that the caster can only do so many of those, while the fighter can keep going all day. The problem is that combat is basically the only thing martials are good at. Yeah, there are skills, but casters get skill proficiencies too. Rogues can do some impressive things with skills, but I'd hesitate to say that it's comparable to the things a full caster can do.

Occasionally you'll hear an RPG story about a barbarian shouting "You no see Zogg!" at someone to sneak past them. Or the barbarian punching death to bring their friend back to life. You know, now that I think about it, it's usually the barbarian, probably because they tend to be roleplayed as being too stupid to know what's impossible and it being funny enough for the DM to allow it. Why can't these be codified class features? Let the barbarian literally grab a river and redirect it. Stuff like that.

Now, what you might be able to do is change ability checks so that "nothing is impossible". You want to jump to the moon? Sure, make an Athletics check, DC is... 50, I don't know. And if you can make that DC, you can actually jump to the moon. Then, give every non-caster at least one Expertise, so they can get really good at one skill in order to pull such impossible stunts. This way, we can have characters whose skills reach a point where they actually can wrestle a river to redirect it, punch holes through walls, cut through sound, steal intangibles, and so on.

[Lord Raziere]

3 and T4, you've ceased to be a normal person and become a mythological figure.

They don't need to get some super flashy anime crap. Just take some normal concepts and dial them up to 11. For example, take things that martials already do, and turn it into "___ anything". Some examples: cut anything, steal anything, wrestle anything, punch anything, throw anything, talk to anything, hide anything, eat anything, etc. It's not that they're suddenly getting magical powers, they're literally just getting so good at doing something mundane that their abilities goes beyond normal human limits, becoming superhuman in the process. And they don't start with the "___ anything" at 1st level; no, that's for when they hit T4, working their way up from "normal" to "plausible" to "definitely exaggerated" until they finally reach "okay, you're just making that up".


I mean.....A lot of Exalted stuff IS just normal stuff dialed up to 11. thats pretty much the Solar Exalted's modus operandi. they just have golden glowing auras and little god-stamps on their forehead on top of it. the only two things that are anime in the shonen sense of the term is high levels of Solar Brawl for Goku stuff (the hadoken and super-saiyan charms are completely avoidable) and Single Point Shining Into the void Style if you want your Iaijutsu, everything else is just Humanity turned to 11 in every way you can imagine

[ecarden]

If you're skimming, stop hereSecond, I'm talking mostly about high level martials. As someone said, martials are mostly fine in T1 and T2, it's really in T3 and T4 where they get overshadowed by casters. Casters can create natural disasters and bring back the dead, while martials can... shoot a crossbow really fast. Which is supernatural in it's own way, I suppose, but it's really not comparable. Combat isn't really the main issue; it's not really about damage output or AC or anything like that.

"But some people don't want magic forced on their fighter or barbarian or whatever." Yeah, I get that. So lower the level cap. There's something called E6 which caps your level at 6, which might be what you're looking for. But if you're going to allow your martial character to progress to high levels, they need those supernatural abilities to compete with spellcasters. That's what reaching high levels means. In T3 and T4, you've ceased to be a normal person and become a mythological figure.

No, thank you. I appreciate that you want that, but I don't and I prefer not to cut out the upper two tiers of play because you don't like how martials play at those levels.

Look, I generally play casters of some variety and I enjoy it. But on occasion I've wanted to play out the Batman fantasy of keeping up with the magical superpowered people with nothing but wits, strength, toys and money.

Is it realistic?

Not particularly, but so what?

Given the character's popularity and the broader popularity of the 'badass normal' archetype, I do not believe I am along in enjoying this play-type and your solution is 'sure Batman can keep up with Clayface, but he's obviously useless alongside Superman so just keep him in Gotham.'

Which doesn't work for the fantasy, no matter how 'realistic' it would be.

[GreyBlack]

Well, I only used a single metric for Str 24. Carrying capacity.

24*30 = 720 lb. Pull/Drag/Lift. That doesn't feel like a lot...And it isn't. Currently there are people in the world, today, that can deadlift around 500kgs...Over 1000 lb. Not many people, sure. But those people, are in fact, human.

Every now and then someone will drag a car, or even a plane! Again, well over 720 lb. Wheels help, sure. But again, these people are human.

720 lb. deadlift is impressive, absolutely! But it isn't super human.

Vertical leap record is about 2 ft. A Str of 24 (+7) will give you a standing vertical leap of ~3.5 ft. Nice. That is actually better than the guy at the gym.
~24 ft. long jump is about right.

(However, what is actually super-human, probably, is that you can deadlift 720 lb. and vertical leap ~3.5 ft. That's impressive.)

Eagle Barbarian gains a Fly speed during their turn. That's a vertical or horizontal leap of 40 ft...And someone said this wasn't anime.

You're right that there are people who do better than that IRL, but I'm speaking strictly in game terms. In game, you can't have over 20 strength on a PC, so anything above that is definitionally superhuman.

I don't want your real life logic in my fantasy game!

[Rukelnikov]

snip

Eagle Barbarian gains a Fly speed during their turn. That's a vertical or horizontal leap of 40 ft...And someone said this wasn't anime.

I think the point of contention is that while there are SOME things that may go into animesque territory (some monk skills, and some subclasses like Psi Warrior or Echo Knight) it doesn't go anime enough for their tastes.

To that effect, I do think 5e is much less animesque than 3.5 or PF and by what some people are saying it seems 4e was more animeish too. However, its undeniable that dnd does not have anime roots, and demanding that it has is kind of unfounded.

I do think the more recent books have veered a bit more in that direction (most notably in Tasha's since it has a lot of subclasses with flashy effects), and wouldn't be surprised if the tendency to go a bit more animesque continued given the popularity of the genre.

Maybe, the design team thinks its easier to insert those tropes in an adventure rather than take them away for those who want a more "grounded" type of game. If every lvl 10 combatant got the ability to jump like a Naruto ninja, leave afterimages, or fly with their own Ki, a "grounded" type of game would be constrained to the early levels of the game, which would be off putting to a large part of the community.

[strangebloke]

They're only 'like' Aragorn or Gandalf in the broadest strokes though. D&D is a war game with a paint of LOTR fantasy on top moved to individual characters perspective then another layer of different inspirations layered on top. That's still reflected in the various sacred cows, but especially the way classes are designed and the way combat and non-combat works.

It's not a story media fiction emulator. And when you try to 'build' a character from a favorite book or movie there are limits and a lot of translation and tons of stuff has to give and artistic licenses abound. Similarly, whenever they try and turn D&D into a book or a movie, either the same happens or it's a disaster.
Sure, artistic license exists. But if you're trying to think "what is a thing level Steve the level 15 fighter should be able to do" it makes sense to think of powerful things that Steve's nearest fictional analogues are doing.

Your point has relevance for the sort of player who wants to roll up to a dnd table with a character who's a "banished god who lost their power" or something similar, but I seriously, seriously do not see the problem with someone saying, "hey I remember how numerous epic heroes of myth were able to terrify entire armies away from them, I want my fighter to be able to do that." That's why these discussions are relevant and that's why I bring up feats that fictional characters accomplish that DND characters can't. Because the discussion is literally about "what are things we can give to Steve the 15th level fighter"


So what's the problem then? If 5e is as "anime as ever" then why do these threads keep popping up like weeds?

And neither ToB nor 5e, nor even 4e to my dim recollection, do anything like what the OP is desiring, where martials are capable of "cutting sound/light/metaphysical concepts" "stealing your dreams/memories" etc. Maybe Exalted has that stuff, I wouldn't know.

I'm fine with a "scaled down version" of these concepts, but again, I don't see the difference between that and what we already have. And what the OP wants doesn't sound "scaled down" at all.
To be clear:

I don't think we need anime powers to 'fix' martials
I don't think the above really are anime powers as such
I do think that the reflexive condemnation of things being "too anime" is unproductive for discussion
I favor a more "normal +++" approach (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?637718-Skill-Tricks-for-Martials&p=25251316#post25251316)



Flight, teleportation, resurrection, creating natural disasters... when I think of all the ways casters overshadow martials, combat ability is pretty much at the bottom of my list. Not that a Fireball or Disintegrate aren't impressive, but it's understood that the caster can only do so many of those, while the fighter can keep going all day. The problem is that combat is basically the only thing martials are good at. Yeah, there are skills, but casters get skill proficiencies too. Rogues can do some impressive things with skills, but I'd hesitate to say that it's comparable to the things a full caster can do.
Oh see, I'm in the opposite position.

IMO its fine that casters can do things martials can't, the problem is that they can do things martials are supposedly specialized in almost as well as they do. This occurs at high levels mostly when things like shield and absorb elements may as well be free, and the AC differences aren't that large to begin with, and even something like counterspell is pretty cheap for the spellcasters. Martials sort of have single target damage, except when compared to hexblades and bladesingers and eldritch blasters and swift quiver bards....

Pretty much the only real advantage at this level is the 3 or so HP per level the martials have which... okay lets be real, that isn't that large of an advantage.

The other more salient problem is that martials are just kind of bland after a certain point from an customization perspective.

Occasionally you'll hear an RPG story about a barbarian shouting "You no see Zogg!" at someone to sneak past them. Or the barbarian punching death to bring their friend back to life. You know, now that I think about it, it's usually the barbarian, probably because they tend to be roleplayed as being too stupid to know what's impossible and it being funny enough for the DM to allow it. Why can't these be codified class features? Let the barbarian literally grab a river and redirect it. Stuff like that.

Now, what you might be able to do is change ability checks so that "nothing is impossible". You want to jump to the moon? Sure, make an Athletics check, DC is... 50, I don't know. And if you can make that DC, you can actually jump to the moon. Then, give every non-caster at least one Expertise, so they can get really good at one skill in order to pull such impossible stunts. This way, we can have characters whose skills reach a point where they actually can wrestle a river to redirect it, punch holes through walls, cut through sound, steal intangibles, and so on.

The skill system isn't a fix for martials, as expertise is at most a one-level dip in rogue or a feat. Even if these abilties are really strong, its obvious that any caster can poach them as well. Indeed, bards would be among the biggest winners here. Additionally there's the problem that fixed DCs are eschewed by 5e's design, and also that even a really high DC is almost always going to be achievable at 1st level with the right build. (Vhuman ranger with skill expertise in his favored terrain with bardic inspiration can get a +15 at level 1)

My approach (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?637718-Skill-Tricks-for-Martials&p=25251316) (yes I'm going to keep linking this, we need to get more people involved) is pretty simple. Whenever a martial would get a feat, they also get to pick a couple 'skill tricks' that unlock special actions that rely on ability checks to work but are situationally very powerful. As one example Kane0 came up with:


(Prerequisites: athletics proficiency and proficiency bonus +5) You can attempt to bend and break Force effects such as the bars of a Forcecage by making an Athletics check against the Caster's Spell DC.

It doesn't require a stratospherically high check, but you need the trick to pull it off.

[Psyren]

Flight, teleportation, resurrection, creating natural disasters... when I think of all the ways casters overshadow martials, combat ability is pretty much at the bottom of my list. Not that a Fireball or Disintegrate aren't impressive, but it's understood that the caster can only do so many of those, while the fighter can keep going all day. The problem is that combat is basically the only thing martials are good at. Yeah, there are skills, but casters get skill proficiencies too. Rogues can do some impressive things with skills, but I'd hesitate to say that it's comparable to the things a full caster can do.

Occasionally you'll hear an RPG story about a barbarian shouting "You no see Zogg!" at someone to sneak past them. Or the barbarian punching death to bring their friend back to life. You know, now that I think about it, it's usually the barbarian, probably because they tend to be roleplayed as being too stupid to know what's impossible and it being funny enough for the DM to allow it. Why can't these be codified class features? Let the barbarian literally grab a river and redirect it. Stuff like that.

Now, what you might be able to do is change ability checks so that "nothing is impossible". You want to jump to the moon? Sure, make an Athletics check, DC is... 50, I don't know. And if you can make that DC, you can actually jump to the moon. Then, give every non-caster at least one Expertise, so they can get really good at one skill in order to pull such impossible stunts. This way, we can have characters whose skills reach a point where they actually can wrestle a river to redirect it, punch holes through walls, cut through sound, steal intangibles, and so on.

Some of these like Flight and Teleportation are already available to some martial subclasses, Echo Knights can teleport nearly at will for example. If you want these abilities to be available to every martial class/subclass baseline, please understand that not everyone wants that, which is why an optional system like Mythic that can be added to any martial class agnostic of subclass, archetype and even character level is the optimal solution, if you believe magic items aren't enough. Furthermore, I don't think most of us believe Martial Resurrection and Creating Natural Disasters are needed to be "competitive."

What you have not done is explain why a progression like Mythic doesn't represent an effective compromise here. Porting it to 5e and adding a few more abilities based on what you want to see shouldn't be difficult.

[Waazraath]

The fact that martials can't do anything in D&D but stare in awe at how much better casters are at everything ...

For the record, this statement has imo nothing to do with 5e (hell, not even 3.x which did have a martial/caster problem) as written in the rulebooks or as I've seen it played at any table, ever.



Iron Heart Surge? No. That's just no. The fluff of the abilities overlap, admittedly, but the effect and usefulness are in two entirely different leagues.

Which is a lot of 5e, when compared to ToB. Is a Battlemaster Fighter supposed to represent the type of crunchy warrior like the Warblade? Oh, yes, obviously.

Does it do it well? Meh. Better than nothing.

Oops, my bad, Iron Heart Focus I meant, not Iron Heart Surge (that's 3rd level not 5th). And yeah, I wouldn't mind more subsystems. I more and more think that is the way to go forward, towards 6e: less spellcasting classes, less spells, more focus for casters, and more other subsystems: maneuvers for martials, invocations (and only invocations) for Warlocks (like in 3e), more elemental powers, more totems, and each of those subsystems getting equal support each release. Again something that late 3.5 did really well, the late books not only gave new spells, but also new psionic powers, new vestiges, new Incarnum stuff. But I digress.


And if the anime flavour of that book was an exaggeration? For example when the subject of ToB as anime comes up quite often the blasting of desert wind is also brought up but the fluff for that discipline is so unconnected that the titular sword for it came from a different book.

well... that makes it a bit a definition thingy: what is "anime"? How anime ToB is depends on the answer. For me, ToB is obviously heavily inspired by more eastern martial arts; has artwork and flavor text which are connected to eastern philosophy, fighting systems, and cartoonlike art; and the maneuvers itself are partly supernatural in what you see in anime cartoons or comics, especially Desert Wind, but definitely also Shadow Hand but also others like Setting Sun and Devoted Spirit. Anyway, for me personally its 'anime' character wasn't a deterrent, I don't really have a dog in the fight on whether it's 'too' anime or not - an earlier poster though posted a link that WotC did acknowledge it was a bit too anime for some settings/players.



Second, I'm talking mostly about high level martials. As someone said, martials are mostly fine in T1 and T2, it's really in T3 and T4 where they get overshadowed by casters. Casters can create natural disasters and bring back the dead, while martials can... shoot a crossbow really fast. Which is supernatural in it's own way, I suppose, but it's really not comparable. Combat isn't really the main issue; it's not really about damage output or AC or anything like that.

"But some people don't want magic forced on their fighter or barbarian or whatever." Yeah, I get that. So lower the level cap. There's something called E6 which caps your level at 6, which might be what you're looking for. But if you're going to allow your martial character to progress to high levels, they need those supernatural abilities to compete with spellcasters. That's what reaching high levels means. In T3 and T4, you've ceased to be a normal person and become a mythological figure.

They don't need to get some super flashy anime crap. Just take some normal concepts and dial them up to 11. For example, take things that martials already do, and turn it into "___ anything". Some examples: cut anything, steal anything, wrestle anything, punch anything, throw anything, talk to anything, hide anything, eat anything, etc. It's not that they're suddenly getting magical powers, they're literally just getting so good at doing something mundane that their abilities goes beyond normal human limits".


Bolded for emphasis: I disagree with this premise. I have no problems with dialing concepts up to eleven, but I think we already have that. Rogues can get maximum Sleight of Hands somewhere at the mid levels I think being able to steal anything which is not outright impossibe (unless you are looking at 'stealing time' or 'stealing souls' or the like). Rune Knights already can grapple everything at the highest levels, and will win with moderate optimization as well. Cut everything and throw everything were nicely done in Tome of Battle, and could be implemented in 5e. Beyond normal human limits is fine (and needed) but I disagree with the idea that there should be no place in the game at the higher levels for more characters without very obvious and extreme supernatural abilities.


Some of these like Flight and Teleportation are already available to some martial subclasses, Echo Knights can teleport nearly at will for example. If you want these abilities to be available to every martial class/subclass baseline, please understand that not everyone wants that, which is why an optional system like Mythic that can be added to any martial class agnostic of subclass, archetype and even character level is the optimal solution, if you believe magic items aren't enough. Furthermore, I don't think most of us believe Martial Resurrection and Creating Natural Disasters are needed to be "competitive."


This. We even have martial subclass that can do the ressurection. Martials are and stay competitive at least up to and including tier 3. The balance is (among others) in resource management (spells being long rest). Give all martials flight and teleportation and healing and why would anybody want to play a caster?

[Tanarii]

Maybe, the design team thinks its easier to insert those tropes in an adventure rather than take them away for those who want a more "grounded" type of game. If every lvl 10 combatant got the ability to jump like a Naruto ninja, leave afterimages, or fly with their own Ki, a "grounded" type of game would be constrained to the early levels of the game, which would be off putting to a large part of the community.Jeez. Must be the reason I feel 5e is plenty of anime is I'm watching more "grounded" anime. Witchhunter Robin is probably the most gonzo I've watched, and that's explicitly Magic. Far more grounded are Trigun (once you exclude plant powers), Samurai Champloo, Battle Angel Alita manga, Akira (except for the very end "boss battle")

So I guess as with most things, it depends what your yardstick is for 'anime'. I mean, Samurai Champloo could be someone's campaign journal. Probably the reason I liked it so much, now that I think about it. :smallamused:

[strangebloke]

Jeez. Must be the reason I feel 5e is plenty of anime is I'm watching more "grounded" anime. Witchhunter Robin is probably the most gonzo I've watched, and that's explicitly Magic. Far more grounded are Trigun (once you exclude plant powers), Samurai Champloo, Battle Angel Alita manga, Akira (except for the very end "boss battle")

So I guess as with most things, it depends what your yardstick is for 'anime'. I mean, Samurai Champloo could be someone's campaign journal. Probably the reason I liked it so much, now that I think about it. :smallamused:

It's funny that people rant about "no anime in my DND" so much because a lot of Japanese media is directly or indirectly inspired by DND. DND was huge in Japan in the 80s and directly inspired the creators of staple Japanese game franchises like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Legend of Zelda, which in turn have been formative in informing the direction of entire genres of anime.

The most dominant genre of anime at the moment is "Isekai" which is at its core a genre where the main character is inserted into a setting that's usually loosely based on Dragon Quest. Which, as mentioned, is a DND-inspired video game. Like, did anime fans think it a coincidence that the first boss in SwordArt Online is named "Ilfang the Kobold Lord?" A huge amount of anime takes place in a fantasy pastiche that is extremely in line with normal DND expectations, complete with monks, barbarians, priests, fighters, and wizards. The biggest divergences are things like "the oozes are called slimes and they're cute" or "Orcs have pig snouts here" or "everyone is aware they're in a world with video game mechanics."

...which in a sense, means that the DND experience that's most consistent with modern anime is OOTS itself.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Rilmani]

Campaign customization idea to make martial combat more interesting (but not full-blown anime).

So the GM considers what they want melee action to feel like and look like. But they want aspects of that available at low levels. There are three routes to this.

A) Pick one class. Delete it, removing it from the classes player characters can choose. I suppose you could consider this downgrading it to an NPC class, because we are upgrading the remaining martial classes to incorporate some or all of the removed class's abilities. This will require careful editing of existing classes. If you eliminate Fighter, you could simply give Barbarian Indomitable at some level, give Ranger Action Surge, give Rogue Second Wind. What about the Fighter (or whichever class you remove) subclasses? Well. We draw from Warlock. Chop up the removed subclass abilities into Fighter Invocations. If you remove Ranger so that every martial class has a fighting style, Primeval Awareness, and Favored Enemy? Then Martial classes get to draw from Ranger Invocations derived from subclasses. So-on and so forth. Perhaps one martial class has Action Surge as once per long rest while another has Proficiency Modifier uses per day and the last has the predictable once-per-short-rest. If you delete Monk, then consider giving Rogue Slow Fall (with better or poorer scaling).


B) Remove a class. Turn it into a Prestige Class. Compress its abilities to a 2-4 level MAX prestige class. Some abilities are just worth more than a feat or an invocation. Feel free to be picky with the prerequisites to multiclassing into a prestige class. The point is that someone can get a variety of levels with a dip. The tricky part is figuring out what the capstone (lv3/lv4) should be, assuming there aren't escalating requirements for each level into a prestige class. Is a second Action Surge per short rest a good capstone? What about a fighter's Extra Attack (3 attacks per Attack Action)? Should Second Wind scale with your prestige class level, proficiency modifier, or character level?
Removing Monk and giving some or all martials access to Open Hand Techniques while turning Ki features into a prestige class makes sense to me. Heck, you could split Monk into multiple prestige classes if you want- just split the Purity of Body, Diamond Soul, Timeless Body, and Empty Body into one prestige class while another one has the traditional Ki features.

C) Delete a subclass. Look at the Catamaran: Ally Mechanics from the Tales of the Monkey King Blog from September 19, 2017. Gain an ally who grants you some of those subclass's features. If the ally is knocked out? You lose your subclass features. If ally is forced to stay behind? You lose those features. If an ally is Attached to a different Player Character? That character gets their abilities. These feels more intuitive to me than having a cleric lacky to heal and cast Bless- you won't have to bother with concentration, you won't necessarily be stronger, rather, depending on the subclasses you give your party access to you'll just give them more options.

This does not, necessarily, address the need for more out of combat options for Martials. But. In some campaigns this might be the right approach. If everyone is part of a jungle expedition, remove Ranger and give everyone some of the Ranger features (as opposed to saying "roll Survival 10 times a session"). Everyone is a criminal? Give them some Rogue features (but a slower sneak attack progression, if any).

Honestly? You could use Warlock as a template to give martials pseudo-magical abilities, if giving them Fae Touched or Magic Initiate isn't enough. X spell slots per short rest...

[Psyren]

It's funny that people dump on "no anime in my DND" so much because a lot of Japanese media is directly or indirectly inspired by DND. DND was huge in Japan in the 80s and directly inspired the creators of staple Japanese game franchises like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Legend of Zelda, which in turn have been formative in informing the direction of entire genres of anime.

The most dominant genre of anime at the moment is "Isekai" which is at its core a genre where the main character is inserted into a setting that's usually loosely based on Dragon Quest. Which, as mentioned, is a DND-inspired video game. Like, did anime fans think it a coincidence that the first boss in SwordArt Online is named "Ilfang the Kobold Lord?" A huge amount of anime takes place in a fantasy pastiche that is extremely in line with normal DND expectations, complete with monks, barbarians, priests, fighters, and wizards. The biggest divergences are things like "the oozes are called slimes and they're cute" or "Orcs have pig snouts here" or "everyone is aware they're in a world with video game mechanics."

...which in a sense, means that the DND experience that's most consistent with modern anime is OOTS itself.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Come on though, you know good and well that people like the OP asking for anime in D&D are not talking about Berserk or Dragon Quest or even SAO, they're talking about the front-cover Shonen Jump stuff like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, MHA and DBZ.

Like, Kirito's most amazing feat in SAO was learning how to dual-wield. He damn sure wasn't running around rezzing people*, cutting through memories and creating natural disasters.

*Other than himself anyway, and that was more of a Diehard thing.

[gloryblaze]

It's funny that people dump on "no anime in my DND" so much because a lot of Japanese media is directly or indirectly inspired by DND. DND was huge in Japan in the 80s and directly inspired the creators of staple Japanese game franchises like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Legend of Zelda, which in turn have been formative in informing the direction of entire genres of anime.

The most dominant genre of anime at the moment is "Isekai" which is at its core a genre where the main character is inserted into a setting that's usually loosely based on Dragon Quest. Which, as mentioned, is a DND-inspired video game. Like, did anime fans think it a coincidence that the first boss in SwordArt Online is named "Ilfang the Kobold Lord?" A huge amount of anime takes place in a fantasy pastiche that is extremely in line with normal DND expectations, complete with monks, barbarians, priests, fighters, and wizards. The biggest divergences are things like "the oozes are called slimes and they're cute" or "Orcs have pig snouts here" or "everyone is aware they're in a world with video game mechanics."

...which in a sense, means that the DND experience that's most consistent with modern anime is OOTS itself.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

The anime Goblin Slayer, regardless of anything else to be said about it, is the only piece of modern media I can think of off the top of my head that depicts anything resembling Vancian casting (because it's meant to depict a D&D world).

[strangebloke]

Come on though, you know good and well that people like the OP asking for anime in D&D are not talking about Berserk or Dragon Quest or even SAO, they're talking about the front-cover Shonen Jump stuff like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, MHA and DBZ.

Like, Kirito's most amazing feat in SAO was learning how to dual-wield. He damn sure wasn't running around rezzing people*, cutting through memories and creating natural disasters.

*Other than himself anyway, and that was more of a Diehard thing.

Where do you draw the line? Some people think TOB is too anime, and yeah, its arguably more 'anime' than some actual anime like Berserk, but then again something that feels like Berserk would be almost inarguably good material for a DND campaign. SAO is about as anime as ToB imo, what with the named stances and maneuvers.

My point is that "anime" as a descriptor is basically useless. You're way better off just thinking of MHA as a superhero show than as an anime, and everything you can say about DND and superhero stuff applies there as well. Ditto for One Piece. Dragonball is wuxia, Vagabond is a western, Inuyasha is basic fantasy.

[tokek]

If you're skimming, stop here

OP here, this thread really got away from me fast. I went and gathered a bunch of quotes to reply to, but it was just too much, so I'm going to summarize here instead of replying to specific people.

First, people are getting too fixated on the "anime" in the thread title. I'm not talking literally about making D&D like anime. As stated in the OP, I meant making them more like mythological figures who can perform supernatural acts. Actually, I will put a couple quotes here, since they sum it up better than I could:



Second, I'm talking mostly about high level martials. As someone said, martials are mostly fine in T1 and T2, it's really in T3 and T4 where they get overshadowed by casters. Casters can create natural disasters and bring back the dead, while martials can... shoot a crossbow really fast. Which is supernatural in it's own way, I suppose, but it's really not comparable. Combat isn't really the main issue; it's not really about damage output or AC or anything like that.

"But some people don't want magic forced on their fighter or barbarian or whatever." Yeah, I get that. So lower the level cap. There's something called E6 which caps your level at 6, which might be what you're looking for. But if you're going to allow your martial character to progress to high levels, they need those supernatural abilities to compete with spellcasters. That's what reaching high levels means. In T3 and T4, you've ceased to be a normal person and become a mythological figure.



At this point I firmly get off this hype train out of choice. I don't want the game that you want thanks.

So far as I'm concerned there are classes (half-casters) and sub-classes (especially in Tashas) that deliver enough of the amazing super-powered stuff while still leaving the option of a more gritty grounded fantasy firmly in place for those players who want it.

Your vision of the game is really very specific and its not really mine - nor is it the vision of a lot of people who play the game. Its not a wrong vision, its just quite specific and actually quite limiting of the stories we can tell with our characters. Some martial sub-classes are non-mythic as a set of deliberate design decisions to enable certain stories to be told within the game. That's not a story you personally want to tell but that's fine, you don't need to play those sub-classes do you?

I should also point out that various mechanisms do exist in the game for a lot of what you want but that for exactly those design reasons they are not made part of the core classes. You can have Boons, Feats, Dark Gifts, Draconic Gifts and probably others that I can't think of quickly off the top of my head. All of those can give your martial character some mythic boon or power if you want to do that and flavour it as such.

[Psyren]

Where do you draw the line? Some people think TOB is too anime, and yeah, its arguably more 'anime' than some actual anime like Berserk, but then again something that feels like Berserk would be almost inarguably good material for a DND campaign. SAO is about as anime as ToB imo, what with the named stances and maneuvers.

My point is that "anime" as a descriptor is basically useless.

I draw the line before/below nearly all the examples in the OP. (Cutting the person holding a hostage without harming the hostage is fine.) And for that matter, ToB and PoW are largely fine with me, particularly the latter where some of the more explicitly magical maneuvers like teleports and healing were labelled as such.

You're right that the term "anime" can mean a lot of things to different people. But I also think it's fair to say that most people who either claim to want D&D to be "more anime" (like the OP), or don't want that, are not thinking of Berserk and SAO when they say that. Because as noted, you can do a lot of that stuff in those lower-fantasy anime already. So while I agree that the "anime" descriptor is imprecise, I disagree that we can't have any inkling of what the person means when they say it.

Ultimately for me, I want abilities to have some degree of explanation / "curtain" behind them, and for those abilities that leave the realm of pure martial and start incorporating magic to be labelled as such. I also think that those magical abilities that don't have the same drawbacks that spells do (e.g. components), should be limited in other ways.


You're way better off just thinking of MHA as a superhero show than as an anime, and everything you can say about DND and superhero stuff applies there as well. Ditto for One Piece. Dragonball is wuxia, Vagabond is a western, Inuyasha is basic fantasy.

*I'm* better off? The OP brought up One Piece as an "anime" example, not me.

[Greywander]

Come on though, you know good and well that people like the OP asking for anime in D&D are not talking about Berserk or Dragon Quest or even SAO, they're talking about the front-cover Shonen Jump stuff like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, MHA and DBZ.
Ahem.

No I am not.

It might be more correct to say that that's a bit reductive. There's overlap between the things we see in anime and the things we see in folklore and mythology; it's the latter that I'm actually looking for, not the former. Please read my actual posts rather than inferring my position solely from the thread title.


I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I just used "anime" as a shorthand. As noted in the OP, folklore and mythology is full of this kind of stuff, so it's not limited to anime.

First, people are getting too fixated on the "anime" in the thread title. I'm not talking literally about making D&D like anime. As stated in the OP, I meant making them more like mythological figures who can perform supernatural acts. Actually, I will put a couple quotes here, since they sum it up better than I could:

What I do want is for D&D non-casters to actually be able to accomplish the feats of mythological non-casters. I want my barbarian to be able to redirect a river like Heracles, my ranger to be able to find their way out of a labyrinth that is constantly changing like Theseus, my fighter to be able to change the tide of battle by his mere presence like Achilles, my rogue to be able to deceive monsters like Odysseus... stuff like that.

But, no. We have to keep them grounded. :smallmad:

And this is just one example. Western myth is full of stuff that blows this out of the water, like Roland killing hundreds of enemies with a blow of his horn, or Hercules wrestling a river and winning, or Cu Chullain's numerous absurdities, or the Red Cross Knight regenerating from a cinder.

We don't need 'anime' powers, the western fantasy that DND is trying to emulate is full of stuff that works for high level.

[Psyren]

Ahem.

No I am not.


1) If you didn't intend One Piece to be a benchmark for what you're referring to, explicitly and directly referencing it in the opening post is counterproductive.

2) The thing about mythology is that it doesn't map well to D&D because the supernatural feats "martials" pull off there are more a product of lineage/race than class. Hercules in all his fictional representations didn't redirect a river by being a fighter, he did it by being the child of a deity that happens to punch things.

[PhantomSoul]

1) If you didn't intend One Piece to be a benchmark for what you're referring to, explicitly and directly referencing it in the opening post is counterproductive.

A benchmark or example doesn't mean only option, to be fair!


2) The thing about mythology is that it doesn't map well to D&D because the supernatural feats "martials" pull off there are more a product of lineage/race than class. Hercules in all his fictional representations didn't redirect a river by being a fighter, he did it by being the child of a deity that happens to punch things.

True, though at least for me I saw it as more being a source of inspiration for types of abilities, not a source to replicate for all details. (So maybe Hercules got a head start, but a non-demigod could achieve the same through training/Classes.)

[Lord Raziere]

Ahem.

No I am not.

It might be more correct to say that that's a bit reductive. There's overlap between the things we see in anime and the things we see in folklore and mythology; it's the latter that I'm actually looking for, not the former. Please read my actual posts rather than inferring my position solely from the thread title.

If you want something thats lighter system than Exalted and made on OSR, Godbound can also be good folklore/mythology shenanigans. its more general demigod stuff at its core and while I bought the deluxe version with the options to emulate Exalted, its optional.

[strangebloke]

1) If you didn't intend One Piece to be a benchmark for what you're referring to, explicitly and directly referencing it in the opening post is counterproductive.

2) The thing about mythology is that it doesn't map well to D&D because the supernatural feats "martials" pull off there are more a product of lineage/race than class. Hercules in all his fictional representations didn't redirect a river by being a fighter, he did it by being the child of a deity that happens to punch things.

1) you absolutely can pull from one piece. A monk whose whole shtick is being super flexible and having extendable arms might seem goofy but its not at all beyond the pale for DND, at least imo. You could totally have a fighter who can wield three swords, one in his mouth.

2) not true, because you have figures like Ajax who is at best a great-grandson of a god and doesn't derive his power from that and is able to fight with the best of the semi-divine kids (or even the gods themselves.) Diomedes is a similar figure, a normal fighter who was favored by the gods (a la a zealot or a paladin without spellcasting). The Red Cross Knight is similarly just blessed by God, as is Samson. But more importantly, where the powers come from is completely immaterial. If at level 15 I get to wrestle a river like Hercules, I will feel like Hercules, and that is fun. Coming up with a justification for such a feature is trivial. Storm Heralds can already summon storms.

[Psyren]

So maybe Hercules got a head start, but a non-demigod could achieve the same through training/Classes.)

And that's where you lose me, because "anyone can do enough push-ups and become Hercules with no explanation/lineage" is not something I'm interested in, and I suspect neither are the designers.

This is not to say that none of his feats of strength should be beyond a martial relying solely on class/training.


1) you absolutely can pull from one piece. A monk whose whole shtick is being super flexible and having extendable arms might seem goofy but its not at all beyond the pale for DND, at least imo. You could totally have a fighter who can wield three swords, one in his mouth.

Great, in which case that's already in the game. Astral Form Monk could be fluffed as the "stretchy" one for instance. So that takes me right back to asking what the problem/complaint/perceived gap is.


2) not true, because you have figures like Ajax who is at best a great-grandson of a god and doesn't derive his power from that

I have no idea how you can look at a character explicitly related to a divinity and say they get nothing from that. They include that stuff in the fiction for a reason, so that the curtain of credibility is there. You can't just have any random soldier become Ajax or Achilles with enough drills.

[Rilmani]

Ahem.

No I am not.

It might be more correct to say that that's a bit reductive. There's overlap between the things we see in anime and the things we see in folklore and mythology; it's the latter that I'm actually looking for, not the former. Please read my actual posts rather than inferring my position solely from the thread title.
I think I get what you’re aiming for. On page four with my I tried to emphasize giving martial characters more options. Similar to the “gestalt class” concept, but edited to fit one’s campaign.

My goal wasn’t to give each martial some terrifying combo of Smite, Action Surge, sneak attack, and so-on. It was that someone skilled with a weapon should have more than proficient attacks to show for it. Avenues they can take to change a situation (Hide, Shove, Disengage, Dodge) which feel worthwhile even when the back line is throwing their full weight at the enemy/enemies. Those four options don’t feel worthwhile because of factors like:

Shove -> Prone, even on a success, would disadvantage your ranged allies AND it feels unsatisfying due to the action economy.

But again, this is purely combat. What else could Martials do?
A) Gather NPC allies/followers. This is a hotly debated option due to the problems of bringing more creatures into combat. Meanwhile the other uses one could get out of followers (gather info in X location, acquire Y item from a shop, or build Z structure/business while we are busy with adventures) all have challenges.
What ability score from the player character will affect the ally’s rolls to accomplish X?
How should consequences be handled?
What motivates the DM to keep spending time and roleplaying with this character and to what degree is the character “owned” by the associated player?

B) Businesses, Structures, Bases, Airships, Zoos, Towers… How do you tie these into a class ability or martial-only feat? How could it be modified for each campaign? Are these operated by NPCs, player characters during downtime, or constructs of some sort? How “locked in” is such a building- meaning how can it be altered to fit changing circumstances, like being a shelter for civilians or handling an invasion with siege weapons.

C) Imagine starting a spiritual movement, a rebellion, unleashing the idea of unions, and so-on. Your character isn’t a leader, but their words, ideas, actions, or the bardic retelling of their lesson is having an impact. They have a social weight that hermit-like spellcasters don’t (I guess? Again this is weird to try to justify restricting from casters).
How could this be used by the player character? How could this be a vulnerability? How might two separate legends in the same party affect roleplaying opportunities moving forward?

D) Mythologically appropriate abilities outside of combat. The DMG has a section called Plot Points. This narrative tool is dangerously powerful, and the average player is bound to fumble occasionally with an attempt to wield it. Especially if they are ignorant of the GM’s long term plans, have never GMed a game before, or show favoritism for their character’s backstory/Ally/power. A Barbarian saying “I use a plot point to wrestle the River’s spirit and convince it to boost our boat’s speed” and thereby skipping a combat, Persuasion check, and so-on is bound to feel disjointed for the party. I particular- plot points don’t necessarily allow other player characters to intervene.
Using plot points to skip past events and ensure they proceed without major obstacles feels weird for a game about interacting with obstacles. I mean… giving Martials-only one plot point per Level could be okay? Or saying “You can gain a plot point and spend it for this scheme by spending X levels of hit dice/inspiration/exhaustion” feels… strange, still. Either your martial character has the ability, or they don’t- sticking penalties on (which are quite uncommon in the rest of the game) feels problematic.

Plus- that makes skill rolls feel even weaker.

Finally, on a vaguely related note. I keep coming up with ideas to potentially work Constitution (Insight) into a skill challenge. In a lot of fiction the idea of melee combatants breaking down their opponent’s style and cleverly working around it exists. So Wisdom (Insight) to think around it, Constitution (Insight) to feel a way around it, Dexterity (Deception) to perform a feint, and similar skill checks feel like they have a lot of potential to flesh out melee combat. Unfortunately coming up with boons and penalties for successful rolls, along with determining the action cost of these, has been a struggle. I recognize Insight checks aren’t visually interesting, but they seem to be a piece of the puzzle martial combat is missing.

[ZRN]

I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I mean, imagine the BBEG gives an order to their underling, and the fighter just straight up cuts the order so the underling doesn't hear it. Stuff like that.

I know martials are meant to be more mundane, but high level is anything but mundane. "Mundane" is 10th level or lower. After 11th level, you're treading into heroic, larger-than-life territory, where warriors become superhuman. I think there's room for abilities that look a lot like spells (e.g. cutting sound), but aren't, and are just the result of mundane ability taken up to 11 and honed beyond the normal human limits. This is how, for example, One Piece characters like Zoro or Sanji are able to compete on an even footing with characters who have devil fruit abilities, despite not being devil fruit users themselves (although let's be honest, Luffy kind of falls into this camp, too; he may be a devil fruit user, but he's also freakishly strong, which has nothing to do with his devil fruit power).

I'm really not sure how you'd implement this into D&D, though. You could make it essentially an alternate spellcasting system, though you'd call it something else (e.g. "Skill Tricks" or "Masterful Arts" or something). Maybe instead of spell slots, you'd spend hit dice on these, something that martials get a larger size of. Initially, you'd probably only get versions of these that do fairly mundane stuff, but at a very high level. For example, being able to slice through a medium-sized tree in a single swing (comparable to 1st and 2nd level spells?). Then later you'd upgrade to implausible-but-still-believable abilities, like cutting through stone and metal (comparable to 3rd to 5th level spells?). Then you'd start getting to stuff like cutting intangible concepts (comparable to 6th+ level spells?). Not sure if that would be the best way to do it, though, and I'd worry it would feel too similar to spellcasting.

I think that, first off, some non-casters do get cool "anime" (badass supernatural) abilities. Look at high-level monks, and some subclasses of barbarians, fighters, and rogues (e.g. soulknife, ancestral spirit barbarian, rune knight).

There are all of like 10 class/subclass combos in 5e that DON'T get some kind of explicitly supernatural powers, as opposed to like a hundred that DO include supernatural stuff. Badass Normal is a trope some people really like, so it makes sense that they have some options.

[strangebloke]

Great, in which case that's already in the game. Astral Form Monk could be fluffed as the "stretchy" one for instance. So that takes me right back to asking what the problem/complaint/perceived gap is.

Because the Astral monk doesn't even remotely feel like Luffy at any level of play?


I have no idea how you can look at a character explicitly related to a divinity and say they get nothing from that. They include that stuff in the fiction for a reason, so that the curtain of credibility is there. You can't just have any random soldier become Ajax or Achilles with enough drills.

Bluntly, this is not required for DND, DND does not rely upon such a curtain of credibility. Storm Heralds get to yell at clouds and summon storms, Monks get to run on water, Zealots get to never die, etc. You're just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about what is reasonable and what isn't.

[Lord Raziere]

Bluntly, this is not required for DND, DND does not rely upon such a curtain of credibility. Storm Heralds get to yell at clouds and summon storms, Monks get to run on water, Zealots get to never die, etc. You're just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about what is reasonable and what isn't.

Indeed. If such a curtain exists, its name is fitting for it is easily torn and burned away. DnD players may not like mythological/folkloric/anime stuff, but whenever a natural 1 or 20 comes around they sure do like their silly warner bros-esque cartoons. which y'know is technically more ridiculous than anything those three list, because a cartoon character is the most powerful and credibility-breaking thing in existence.

[Psyren]

Because the Astral monk doesn't even remotely feel like Luffy at any level of play?

Sorry you feel that way. Homebrew something then. I've recommended a Mythic ruleset enough times if you'd like a place to start.


Bluntly, this is not required for DND, DND does not rely upon such a curtain of credibility. Storm Heralds get to yell at clouds and summon storms, Monks get to run on water, Zealots get to never die, etc. You're just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about what is reasonable and what isn't.

Technically the designers are drawing that line, not me. And you might consider those lines to be arbitrary, but I suspect they have a decent knowledge about what sells books after years leading the industry (not to mention getting a black eye in 4e.)

Even in the DMG when they go through styles of play and mention things like Wuxia and Mythic Fantasy (DMG 39/41), they say "hey, you can play Shadow Monk or Oath of Vengeance Paladin here!" instead of things like "you can run on a cloud and summon storms with your sword!" And they also go on to say "hey, maybe your PCs have divine blood too" instead of "hey, maybe your PCs did a bunch of press-ups and drank plenty of juice."

[ZRN]

Technically the designers are drawing that line, not me. And you might consider those lines to be arbitrary, but I suspect they have a decent knowledge about what sells books after years leading the industry (not to mention getting a black eye in 4e.)

Even in the DMG when they go through styles of play and mention things like Wuxia and Mythic Fantasy (DMG 39/41), they say "hey, you can play Shadow Monk or Oath of Vengeance Paladin here!" instead of things like "you can run on a cloud and summon storms with your sword!" And they also go on to say "hey, maybe your PCs have divine blood too" instead of "hey, maybe your PCs did a bunch of press-ups and drank plenty of juice."

I feel like this is the weirdest point to get bogged down in. Almost every class description in the PHB is basically, "maybe you got these powers/abilities from some magical bloodline, maybe you were exposed to gamma radiation fey magic, maybe you practiced real hard, maybe a god likes you, whatever floats your boat."

If they were to make a Mythic Hero subclass that got powerful limited-use non-spell abilities, they could easily fudge it to fit whatever you and your DM have in mind.

[Greywander]

2) The thing about mythology is that it doesn't map well to D&D because the supernatural feats "martials" pull off there are more a product of lineage/race than class. Hercules in all his fictional representations didn't redirect a river by being a fighter, he did it by being the child of a deity that happens to punch things.
Why couldn't this be a class feature? I mean, isn't sorcery a product of your lineage, and yet they made an entire sorcerer class. Most NPCs never reach high levels, because they're normal people. The PCs are not normal people, which is why they're the PCs and not rando NPCs. We could say that reaching high levels is beyond what most people can achieve, but anyone who does reach high levels is because they do, in fact, have some kind of edge, like being a distant grandchild of a deity, or blessed by a deity, or having a drop of dragon blood in their veins, or whatever other justification you want. Maybe they really did just train super hard.


And that's where you lose me, because "anyone can do enough push-ups and become Hercules with no explanation/lineage" is not something I'm interested in, and I suspect neither are the designers.

There are all of like 10 class/subclass combos in 5e that DON'T get some kind of explicitly supernatural powers, as opposed to like a hundred that DO include supernatural stuff. Badass Normal is a trope some people really like, so it makes sense that they have some options.
I think we could both get what we want through the power of refluffing. A class feature gives you a mechanical ability, say, the ability to redirect a river by passing an Athletics check. How you do that is up to you. You can literally grab the river and move it somewhere else, or maybe you slice a channel in the ground with your sword that the water starts flowing down, or you jump in the river with your shield and use it to deflect the water onto a new path, and so on. There are lots and lots of mechanical effects that could be magic or could be mundane, depending on how you fluff it, but the mechanical outcome is the same.


What you have not done is explain why a progression like Mythic doesn't represent an effective compromise here. Porting it to 5e and adding a few more abilities based on what you want to see shouldn't be difficult.
I guess where I'm getting hung up on is why casters couldn't also get Mythic progression. But if you explicitly stapled Mythic progression to martial classes (and perhaps even then only starting in T3) as a "patch" to martials, making it the new standard, instead of just making Mythic progression available to everyone, then that seems like it could be a viable solution.

[Cybren]

I've trained at a basic level in Chinese broadsword katas (in other words swinging in the air) and multiple strikes under a second isn't happening at that level of training even without an opponent. OTOH hopefully we've all seen epee and Sabre competitions.

The really fun one is those with the Crossbow expert feat and a Heavy Crossbow and action surge :smallamused:
Why should we hope that? That's a really specific thing to expect anyone to have seen, even considering the audience.

[Psyren]

Why couldn't this be a class feature? I mean, isn't sorcery a product of your lineage, and yet they made an entire sorcerer class. Most NPCs never reach high levels, because they're normal people. The PCs are not normal people, which is why they're the PCs and not rando NPCs. We could say that reaching high levels is beyond what most people can achieve, but anyone who does reach high levels is because they do, in fact, have some kind of edge, like being a distant grandchild of a deity, or blessed by a deity, or having a drop of dragon blood in their veins, or whatever other justification you want. Maybe they really did just train super hard.

You've highlighted the issue better than I ever could. So every Fighter who is not descended from Zeus now caps out at 10th level or something. Can you not see why people might not like that idea? Can you not see why WotC putting that tripe in a book might hurt its appeal?


I think we could both get what we want through the power of refluffing. A class feature gives you a mechanical ability, say, the ability to redirect a river by passing an Athletics check. How you do that is up to you. You can literally grab the river and move it somewhere else, or maybe you slice a channel in the ground with your sword that the water starts flowing down, or you jump in the river with your shield and use it to deflect the water onto a new path, and so on. There are lots and lots of mechanical effects that could be magic or could be mundane, depending on how you fluff it, but the mechanical outcome is the same.

I guess where I'm getting hung up on is why casters couldn't also get Mythic progression. But if you explicitly stapled Mythic progression to martial classes (and perhaps even then only starting in T3) as a "patch" to martials, making it the new standard, instead of just making Mythic progression available to everyone, then that seems like it could be a viable solution.

Because it's much more palatable to say "here's an optional set of abilities you can add to the game if you want more mythological/preternatural martials" than it is to say "all martials get this, if you don't like it tough, don't level past 10."

Have you stopped to consider that just maybe the desire to move rivers by picking them up, or cutting grooves in the planet's crust, is not something most martial players care about? What you want is called a niche, and those get optional systems, if they're not simply left up to third parties entirely.



If they were to make a Mythic Hero subclass that got powerful limited-use non-spell abilities, they could easily fudge it to fit whatever you and your DM have in mind.

I'm not opposed to that, it would depend on what those subclass features are. So long as they don't delete Champion Fighter, Thief Rogue, Hunter Ranger etc from the game in the process.

[Greywander]

You've highlighted the issue better than I ever could. So every Fighter who is not descended from Zeus now caps out at 10th level or something. Can you not see why people might not like that idea? Can you not see why WotC putting that tripe in a book might hurt its appeal?
Fluff it however you like. Even in real life, very few people reach the top few percentage of ability. Regardless of why or how your PC was able to reach that point, they did. Choose your own explanation for why they could when most can't.


Because it's much more palatable to say "here's an optional set of abilities you can add to the game if you want more mythological/preternatural martials"
So if we don't add those abilities, are we going to take something away from casters to balance things out?


than it is to say "all martials get this, if you don't like it tough, don't level past 10."
TBH, things would balance a lot better if full casters only got up to 5th level spells, which is comparable to capping everyone at 10. But then where do 6th+ level spells fit into the game?

More or less what I'm suggesting is that campaigns where casters will get access to 6th+ level spells should also have martials getting access to these mythical abilities as well. Exact numbers don't really mean much, so whether we just cap everyone at 10 or we stretch out the progression so that casters only get up to 5th level spells at 20, both are roughly comparable. There are differences, of course, such as in HP or proficiency bonus, but you can tweak those as well.

Basically, up to about 10th level, martials and casters are, if not balanced, at least comparable. Also, reminder that this is where most people play, as it seems few people make it to T3 and beyond. What I'm trying to do is elevate martials past 10th level to stay competitive with casters. There's also the other way, where we bring down casters to stay competitive with martials. Would that be more amendable to you?


Have you stopped to consider that just maybe the desire to move rivers by picking them up, or cutting grooves in the planet's crust, is not something most martial players care about? What you want is called a niche, and those get optional systems, if they're not simply left up to third parties entirely.
That's fair. But couldn't martials get something? Increased carry weight, increased jump distance/height, extra exhaustion levels so exhaustion doesn't affect them as much, sharper eyesight, better hearing, and so on and so on? There are things you could give them that wouldn't be supernatural that would at least narrow the gap between them and casters.

And it's true that some classes/subclasses get some of the types of features I've suggested, but this is like giving someone a few spells and treating them as equal to a full caster. Most of these features tend to revolve around combat specifically, which is fine since combat is so central to D&D, but it leaves the martials with little to do outside of combat, aside from using skills (which, again, casters have too). I just want some additional non-combat features that would make someone seriously consider adding a fighter to their party instead of a wizard.

Linear warriors, quadratic wizards isn't quite as much of an issue as it once was, but it's still there and likely always will be. I just think we can do something to even things out a bit at higher levels.

I've suggested before that changes be made to the magic system to lean more into rituals, for example, wizards getting only ritual casting. This is fantastic from a utility perspective, but leaves wizards in a tough spot for combat. And what I was told was that D&D is a combat game and this just wouldn't work for D&D. So in D&D everyone needs to be competent at combat, but competency outside of combat is all of the place because it's treated like it doesn't matter as much.

Here's another point about balance: in a game system where elves live for 750 years but aren't outright superior to humans, I don't think I'm out of line asking for similar parity between casters and martials. D&D wants to be a balanced game, but is too narrowly focused on combat that it overlooks a lot of non-combat stuff.

[False God]

Have you stopped to consider that just maybe the desire to move rivers by picking them up, or cutting grooves in the planet's crust, is not something most martial players care about? What you want is called a niche, and those get optional systems, if they're not simply left up to third parties entirely.

There's a specific pshycological term for this which escapes me. But the long and short it is about controlling the language to control what people can think about. If "the game" (be it D&D or something else), doesn't present XYZ as an option or even as a possibility within the rules, then the people playing that game are less likely to want those things.

IE: if your language doesn't have a word for the feeling of "love", when you feel this emotion, how will you describe it? Could you even describe it? Could attempting to describe it be so cumbersome (thanks to control of the language as a whole), that you simply don't even try.

Look I'm not saying you're wrong, maybe most martial-playing D&Ders don't want to be able to do anime-styled things.

But then again, maybe since D&D has long been about some of the most basic no-nonsense reductivist martial gameplay available, perhaps those martial-playing D&Ders simply don't know what they do or don't want. Because "the game" doesn't provide them even the opportunity to think about their options in those terms.

Sure, obviously D&D doesn't control the whole of gaming language, but there does seem to be a rather strong, to the point of almost reactionary response to martials getting anything cool at all. And not even anime abilities. Heck, most discussions about martial/caster disparity IME devolve into discussions about how martials are too unrealistic already. Which ya know, really says something.

Anyway, if the average playgroup is any example or the general RPG form here is a sampling of anything at all, I'd say a lot of people don't know what they want.

I'd love to see stuff like the OP talks about in D&D. Maybe not as the default. But it's certainly something that could be provided in a supplement, and well within the parameters of D&D to provide. For all the folks who want that kind of thing. It can't be much terribly harder than giving us another MTG setting-book or something.

What bothers me more is more the reactionary response to including such a thing. "Go play another game!" "Port over these rules from another system!" (What *IS* with all the people pumping out Mythic anyway? I don't see the attraction.) "People don't want that here!" And just the general way people react to discussing ToB or 4E.

D&D includes a lot of stuff, and a lot of players, and a lot of different kinds of games. Not sure why "anime-inspired martial combat" couldn't get its own book explaining what elements to replace or enhance or add.

[Psyren]

Fluff it however you like. Even in real life, very few people reach the top few percentage of ability. Regardless of why or how your PC was able to reach that point, they did. Choose your own explanation for why they could when most can't.

"They got enough XP to reach that level." Done.



So if we don't add those abilities, are we going to take something away from casters to balance things out?

You absolutely can.

If you're expecting WotC to do that, I wouldn't hold my breath.



TBH, things would balance a lot better if full casters only got up to 5th level spells, which is comparable to capping everyone at 10. But then where do 6th+ level spells fit into the game?

More or less what I'm suggesting is that campaigns where casters will get access to 6th+ level spells should also have martials getting access to these mythical abilities as well. Exact numbers don't really mean much, so whether we just cap everyone at 10 or we stretch out the progression so that casters only get up to 5th level spells at 20, both are roughly comparable. There are differences, of course, such as in HP or proficiency bonus, but you can tweak those as well.

Basically, up to about 10th level, martials and casters are, if not balanced, at least comparable. Also, reminder that this is where most people play, as it seems few people make it to T3 and beyond. What I'm trying to do is elevate martials past 10th level to stay competitive with casters. There's also the other way, where we bring down casters to stay competitive with martials. Would that be more amendable to you?


I already have Starfinder for that.



That's fair. But couldn't martials get something? Increased carry weight, increased jump distance/height, extra exhaustion levels so exhaustion doesn't affect them as much, sharper eyesight, better hearing, and so on and so on? There are things you could give them that wouldn't be supernatural that would at least narrow the gap between them and casters.

And it's true that some classes/subclasses get some of the types of features I've suggested, but this is like giving someone a few spells and treating them as equal to a full caster. Most of these features tend to revolve around combat specifically, which is fine since combat is so central to D&D, but it leaves the martials with little to do outside of combat, aside from using skills (which, again, casters have too). I just want some additional non-combat features that would make someone seriously consider adding a fighter to their party instead of a wizard.


These are a lot more reasonable than picking up rivers. I'd be okay with those in a maneuver system of some kind if you truly want something subclass-agnostic. (Or a mythic progression.)


"Port over these rules from another system!" (What *IS* with all the people pumping out Mythic anyway? I don't see the attraction.)

I don't see the aversion.

People who want mythological heroes accompanied by a reason for their power get that.
People who don't care about the reason and just want to be absurd get that.
People who want mythical abilities available at any character level / tier of play get that.
People who want a progression in those abilities where they don't have get that.
Low wealth, high wealth, low magic, high magic, it's all there.

You can have universal path abilities, as well as path abilities that do specific things depending on the class(es) you Ascended with. You can also have Mythic augments to your existing feats and features, that require spending your mythic power resource to augment, or just maintaining a minimum amount (usually 1 point.)

[JackPhoenix]

(Cutting the person holding a hostage without harming the hostage is fine.)

I mean, another creature between you and the attacker is measly +2 AC, and hitting cover is optional rule. Hell, most weapons have reach of only 5', which means the hostage can't really be in the way in the first place!

[False God]

I don't see the aversion.

People who want mythological heroes accompanied by a reason for their power get that.
People who don't care about the reason and just want to be absurd get that.
People who want mythical abilities available at any character level / tier of play get that.
People who want a progression in those abilities where they don't have get that.
Low wealth, high wealth, low magic, high magic, it's all there.

You can have universal path abilities, as well as path abilities that do specific things depending on the class(es) you Ascended with. You can also have Mythic augments to your existing feats and features, that require spending your mythic power resource to augment, or just maintaining a minimum amount (usually 1 point.)

No, on Mythic I was literally asking, because I am totally unfamiliar with Mythic. Like, I've seen a lot of posts that just say "GO USE MYTHIC!!", so like, is it just really freaking awesome? Or is it just the current short-hand for "GO AWAY WE DON'T WANT YOUR KIND HERE!" that gets trotted out every time someone talks about adding "cool stuff" to martials?

That's my question: Is Mythic really that great, or just the current go-to for telling people to stop playing D&D when they want to play D&D differently?

[JackPhoenix]

No, on Mythic I was literally asking, because I am totally unfamiliar with Mythic. Like, I've seen a lot of posts that just say "GO USE MYTHIC!!", so like, is it just really freaking awesome? Or is it just the current short-hand for "GO AWAY WE DON'T WANT YOUR KIND HERE!" that gets trotted out every time someone talks about adding "cool stuff" to martials?

That's my question: Is Mythic really that great, or just the current go-to for telling people to stop playing D&D when they want to play D&D differently?

I don't know, I've never played it and I'm only passably familiar with it, but it *does* do exactly what some people in this thread want: give characters access to, well, mythical abilities, without removing the option to play just a guy who's really good with a sword without being able to fly on his own farts, cut abstract concepts or make everyone run in fear every time he yawns.


So if we don't add those abilities, are we going to take something away from casters to balance things out?

Preferably, yes, and I do *like* casters, and I do like them doing powerful spells instead of just crapping out xdD6 of [type] damage with added [condition], maybe in [area]. But there's just not enough cost to that power (or magic in general), and every caster is too versatile (yes, even sorcerer with his limited spell slots). They don't really have to choose between being the guy with a pet demon, the guy with a horde of zombies, the guy who throws fire everywhere, the guy who can trap someone in an unbreakable cage, whe guy who can control minds, or turns himself into a dragon, or whatever. Sure, spells known and spell slot offer *some* limitation, but you can easily do all of the above at the same time with the same character. While being caught in melee, wearing full plate.

Force more specialization, or add more cost for *not* specializing (Shadow of the Demon Lord does that pretty well, and it's a game with clear 5e heritage). Change more stuff into rituals, and give it some cost. Stop wizards from running around in armor, and let the fighter stop evil sorcerers by the time-honored method of hitting them in the face after he shrugs off their attempts to control his mind.

[Rukelnikov]

For the most part, I agree with Psyren and Jack, there's something I'd like to expand on though


More or less what I'm suggesting is that campaigns where casters will get access to 6th+ level spells should also have martials getting access to these mythical abilities as well. Exact numbers don't really mean much, so whether we just cap everyone at 10 or we stretch out the progression so that casters only get up to 5th level spells at 20, both are roughly comparable. There are differences, of course, such as in HP or proficiency bonus, but you can tweak those as well.

This is an interesting point. Why don't "martials" (my Bladesinger totally considers himself a martial btw) get these groundbreaking powers at about Tier 3 when 6+ levels spells start becoming commonplace?

Well, I think one of the reasons may be, this could very well feel like a forced change in character theme. A folk hero whose carrer started by grabing a pitchfork and leading a charge against a goblin gang raiding the village, could feel like a very different character if an year after that is jumping to the clouds and creating canyons with his strikes, the theme is fundamentally different, and would mean that the player can't play that character past lvl 10 (or whenever those kind of abilities started showing up)

A Wizard getting 6th+ levels spells, or a Monk becoming able to disperse his body, don't forcefully change the character as strongly. But the idea of being a "somewhat regular" guy who lived in a village and is just doing his best, gets shattered when he could very well just reroute the nearby river and end the villages droughts. The conflicts and interests of these characters would likely have very little in common, and its not the only archetype that would be killed by those kinds of features.

As I said in another thread, the problem here is not one of classes but of archetypes. Classes are modeled after those, and try to encompass a variety of tropes that tend to show up in these kind of adventures, the witty scoundrel, the brave warrior, the silver-tongued charlatan, the champion of the gods, the secluded sage, etc.

However, other archetypes are deliberately left off. The game doesn't have baked in support to play a deity for instance, likely because the power such character should have for it to FEEL like you are playing one, couldn't be balanced against Joe the carpenter's brave son with a pitchfork.

And sure, you can fluff things all you want, but a lot of people's disbelief eventually gets saturated when Bummy the Gnome Bum is dealing non trivial damage by chucking gnome sized darts next to Krangor, who spent 40 years mastering the Shadowfang sword style. Either Bummy's player will have to raise his characters capabilities lorewise, or Krangor's player is gonna have to accept he's not that much better than a specially talented bum.

Something similar needs to happen in the caster/non-caster divide at high levels for there to be balance. Either the caster's have to accept they can't play characters on the level of Merlin, Saruman and Lina. Or the non-casters have to be forced out of badass normals, i.e: Robin Hood can't level past 10.

I do think toning caster's down would be the best approach since the other option effectively kills a lot of low level archetypes, ~7 level spells and up should be epic level magic.

[Amechra]

Or is it just the current short-hand for "GO AWAY WE DON'T WANT YOUR KIND HERE!" that gets trotted out every time someone talks about adding "cool stuff" to martials?

I'm always kinda weirded out by this read of "go play this game that does that thing that you like" as being hostile.

It's like if... imagine you're at McDonalds, right? And you want some Pad Thai. And you and your buddy are talking about this, and you go "I wish I could get Pad Thai here, at McDonalds". Would you get mad at your buddy if they responded by saying "If you want Pad Thai, there's this great Thai place two blocks away. Wanna go there instead"?

Like, it's not a satisfying thing to hear, especially if you love everything about McDonalds other than the lack of Pad Thai. But, like, it's probably a better solution than hanging around at the McDonalds hoping that you can convince the manager that they should start selling Thai food too.

And it's not like your friend is saying "GO TO THE THAI PLACE AND NEVER JOIN ME HERE AT MCDONALDS EVER AGAIN" or even "GO TO THE THAI PLACE — I'LL STAY HERE AND EAT MY MCDONALDS WITHOUT YOUR WHINING". They're telling you where you can go to get your Pad Thai fix, and probably are telling you about the Thai place because they see this as a golden opportunity to introduce someone else to one of their favorite restaurants.

When you want a cheeseburger and fries, McDonalds will still be there. Heck, you can even buy take out from both places, bring them home, and then mix them all together, if that floats your boat.

...

At least, that summarizes why I personally yell at people to play games other than 5e. I, personally, want to play those other games, and I benefit from broader familiarity with said games.

[strangebloke]

Preferably, yes, and I do *like* casters, and I do like them doing powerful spells instead of just crapping out xdD6 of [type] damage with added [condition], maybe in [area]. But there's just not enough cost to that power (or magic in general), and every caster is too versatile (yes, even sorcerer with his limited spell slots). They don't really have to choose between being the guy with a pet demon, the guy with a horde of zombies, the guy who throws fire everywhere, the guy who can trap someone in an unbreakable cage, whe guy who can control minds, or turns himself into a dragon, or whatever. Sure, spells known and spell slot offer *some* limitation, but you can easily do all of the above at the same time with the same character. While being caught in melee, wearing full plate.

Force more specialization, or add more cost for *not* specializing (Shadow of the Demon Lord does that pretty well, and it's a game with clear 5e heritage). Change more stuff into rituals, and give it some cost. Stop wizards from running around in armor, and let the fighter stop evil sorcerers by the time-honored method of hitting them in the face after he shrugs off their attempts to control his mind.
I'll agree with all of this heartily. It's why I hate the wizard. It's such a broad, all-encompassing jack of all magical trades. You can just have fireball, it doesn't have to be your thing. You can just have animate dead too, you know. It's just a spell. And Shadow blade and dragon's breath and counterspell and... yeah.

Honestly? Give me five full casters. Druids, Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks. Theme their spell lists with MTG colors a la green, white, blue, red, black. Bards and Rangers and Artificers and Paladins can crib from more than one lists to get a more unique identity.



At least, that summarizes why I personally yell at people to play games other than 5e. I, personally, want to play those other games, and I benefit from broader familiarity with said games.

I can understand the why you'd say "play a different system" if someone is asking for something that is fundamentally unworkable in a 5e dnd paradigm, like "low magic DND." It isn't possible for numerous legacy reasons. You're just cutting out like 90% of the game and what's left doesn't really function without rebuilding everything from scratch so you may as well just play something different.

But like. "I wish maneuvers were retained as a default scaling martial mechanic" or "I wish there were high-end martial abilities that felt really high end, you know?" just doesn't merit that response imo. It's like going into McDonalds and asking for a hamburger with mayo, it may not be your preference but its not that weird, and the man telling you to go to Burger King seems kinda aggressive for some reason.

[False God]

I'm always kinda weirded out by this read of "go play this game that does that thing that you like" as being hostile.
Because it typically is. It doesn't carry over in text, but the comment is rarely phrased in a helpful manner. It's almost always phrased, and toned in a "We don't like those things, and we don't want those things around here, so you need to go somewhere else."


It's like if... imagine you're at McDonalds, right? And you want some Pad Thai. And you and your buddy are talking about this, and you go "I wish I could get Pad Thai here, at McDonalds". Would you get mad at your buddy if they responded by saying "If you want Pad Thai, there's this great Thai place two blocks away. Wanna go there instead"?
We're not asking McDonalds to provide Pad Thai. We're asking McDonalds to make a burger with 5 patties and triple cheese. It's not that they can't, or that the framework of their burgers doesn't support doing so, they just don't. It's a little extreme, and it's understandable that they do not produce this as their default burger.

We are asking why there is refusal to produce something that is clearly in their wheelhouse (sword-swinging-shenanigans) dialed up to 11.

We're asking why this cannot be optional material.

We're asking why this is incompatible with the existing burger framework.

We're not asking for a veggie burger, we're not asking for a wrap, or pad thai, or chicken alfredo, we're asking for a burger you might need to sign a waiver to eat. But the general counter argument seems to be that they just can't do this, it just isn't D&D, and that we need to go play another game.

[Amechra]

Yeah, that's fair.


I'll agree with all of this heartily. It's why I hate the wizard. It's such a broad, all-encompassing jack of all magical trades. You can just have fireball, it doesn't have to be your thing. You can just have animate dead too, you know. It's just a spell. And Shadow blade and dragon's breath and counterspell and... yeah.

Honestly? Give me five full casters. Druids, Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks. Theme their spell lists with MTG colors a la green, white, blue, red, black. Bards and Rangers and Artificers and Paladins can crib from more than one lists to get a more unique identity.

Fun fact: WotC was working on a MtG roleplaying game in the late 90s, right before they acquired TSR. Then, once they had D&D, they stopped.

[strangebloke]

Fun fact: WotC was working on a MtG roleplaying game in the late 90s, right before they acquired TSR. Then, once they had D&D, they stopped.

Shame honestly.

I don't even play MTG but the colors of magic always felt like a really clean way to encapsulate the different sorts of magic in fantasy. You can even see how DND already works that way in flavor it just isn't matched by the actual crunch of the game. People want to play evoker sorcerers but you can only really make yourself marginally better at that than a wizard who isn't specialized in the thing. :smallsigh:

[Rukelnikov]

Because it typically is. It doesn't carry over in text, but the comment is rarely phrased in a helpful manner. It's almost always phrased, and toned in a "We don't like those things, and we don't want those things around here, so you need to go somewhere else."


We're not asking McDonalds to provide Pad Thai. We're asking McDonalds to make a burger with 5 patties and triple cheese. It's not that they can't, or that the framework of their burgers doesn't support doing so, they just don't. It's a little extreme, and it's understandable that they do not produce this as their default burger.

We are asking why there is refusal to produce something that is clearly in their wheelhouse (sword-swinging-shenanigans) dialed up to 11.

Likely because it kills the "somewhat normal person" archetype (village hero, petty thief, circus performer, etc)


We're asking why this cannot be optional material.

Can't it?


We're asking why this is incompatible with the existing burger framework.

We're not asking for a veggie burger, we're not asking for a wrap, or pad thai, or chicken alfredo, we're asking for a burger you might need to sign a waiver to eat. But the general counter argument seems to be that they just can't do this, it just isn't D&D, and that we need to go play another game.

Is that the counter argument? I thought it was "dnd tries to accomodate a large varierty of characters, badass normal being one of them", people sometimes just wanna play "a regular guy", having supernatural abilities kills the mood, and since casters are automatically outside of that theme, non-caster have to fill that role.

[strangebloke]

Likely because it kills the "somewhat normal person" archetype (village hero, petty thief, circus performer, etc)

Eh, it depends on how its done. "Normal dude" is relative. In the Avengers the "Normal Dude" is more captain america than anyone else. Sure, he's actually superhuman and Widow and Hawkeye aren't, but those people are spies with magitech weapons and super elite training while Captain America is just a generally superhuman kid from Brooklyn. You could even make this argument about Superman and most of the justice league. Certainly, if you built a flying brick from the midwest in a superhero TTRPG system you'd be playing the normal guy. As has been pointed out you can play a 'normal guy' in a system like Exalted. Sort of.

It's all about establishing what's okay for Joe Normal to do in a given context.

IMO, the average joes of high level 5e are fine in combat in terms of power, or at least, pretty close to fine. The problem is that they're totally dependent on DM-arbitrated subsystems to have any kind of customization or utility. The skill system doesn't really work past DC 25 or so, magic items are optional, and the ribbons they get are very very narrow. Any concern over balance aside, its just boring.

I think its a fine idea to have something like 5Es skill powers that actually explicitly allow the sorts of things that all the DMs on here claim they let their players do. Let a barbarian for example to intimidate a whole crowd of weaker enemies into backing off. Let a really strong fighter rip his way through a force cage. Let a really inquisitive rogue just read someone's mind with an insight check. Let a monk with the medicine skill attempt to bring someone back a few minutes after they've died. If some of these features seem really strong, go ahead and gate them to high level.

But suffice to say I think there's a certain level of mythic that Joe Normal can have at high level. After all, he's not just Joe Normal, he's level 20 Joe Normal.

[Rukelnikov]

Eh, it depends on how its done. "Normal dude" is relative. In the Avengers the "Normal Dude" is more captain america than anyone else. Sure, he's actually superhuman and Widow and Hawkeye aren't, but those people are spies with magitech weapons and super elite training while Captain America is just a generally superhuman kid from Brooklyn. You could even make this argument about Superman and most of the justice league. Certainly, if you built a flying brick from the midwest in a superhero TTRPG system you'd be playing the normal guy. As has been pointed out you can play a 'normal guy' in a system like Exalted. Sort of.

I understand what you mean, Caps life is a bit more "normal" than Black Widow's or Hawkeye since they have been superspies for at least a decade. However, Steve is definitely not a "normal guy", Falcon could be even with his flying gizmo's. I generally take "normal guy" as what a real world human could maybe achieve, think olympic level skill or a tad more, real world "peak human".


It's all about establishing what's okay for Joe Normal to do in a given context.

I don't think its like that, casting cantrips is pretty damn normal in most generic dnd worlds given the ammount of races that have access to cantrips as racial features, yet most players wouldn't consider that a "normal guy".


IMO, the average joes of high level 5e are fine in combat in terms of power, or at least, pretty close to fine. The problem is that they're totally dependent on DM-arbitrated subsystems to have any kind of customization or utility. The skill system doesn't really work past DC 25 or so, magic items are optional, and the ribbons they get are very very narrow. Any concern over balance aside, its just boring.

Yeah, I agree. However, I think the fault there is with how attacks work in general. Weapons are... pretty much all the same, the are minor differences, like damage type, but its somewhat inconsequential since there are few enemies with resistance immunity to only one or two of those types.

To make non-magic combat interesting a rather major overhaul of the system is needed. but so as not to complicate it TOO much, a good starting point would be making weapons apply simple conditions, so that a Longsword and a Battleaxe feel like good options for different enemies. In a way, weapons ARE martials cantrips, if each weapon had something more to it than damage die/dice, having different weapons at your disposal could mean different approaches to combat. Maybe longswords apply bleeding, Maces ubalance opponents (disadvantage on next attack), etc.


Do away with HP and damage.
Attacks impose conditions, the whole system would be base around those, death comes as a result of said conditions
Weapons main feature now is what kind of attacks they allow its wielder to do. Longsword allows the basic slash which applies bleeding. Styles could unlock "moves" for weapon groups, or allow access to extra types of attacks baked in the weapon. Longswords second move "Thrust" doesn't apply bleeding, but removes 1 point of armor per hit (1/round max)



I think its a fine idea to have something like 5Es skill powers that actually explicitly allow the sorts of things that all the DMs on here claim they let their players do. Let a barbarian for example to intimidate a whole crowd of weaker enemies into backing off. Let a really strong fighter rip his way through a force cage. Let a really inquisitive rogue just read someone's mind with an insight check. Let a monk with the medicine skill attempt to bring someone back a few minutes after they've died. If some of these features seem really strong, go ahead and gate them to high level.

Well I think that's the centre point here. If those things are NOT baked in, DMs can choose to put those things in the game, if those are the settings they wanna play in. However, if the PHB gives that as class features, it's much harder for the DM to say I don't want that in my game, cause players may, understandably, feel robbed.

Thing is, they are currently gated behind DMs whims. Boons and blessings can be very powerful (specially the former), granting some of those to ~10th level characters could go a long way to make the shift in power believable, while also opening up new possible

DnD is a game that tries to encompass a rather wide spectrum, and maybe raising the ceiling is easier to homebrew than lowering the floor. After all Boons and Blessings are already part of the game, you could start using those as guidelins and give them to PCs as rewards.


But suffice to say I think there's a certain level of mythic that Joe Normal can have at high level. After all, he's not just Joe Normal, he's level 20 Joe Normal.

Yeah, he's not really normal, as far a characters in a story go, PCs are protagonists, which is the most broken power in the game.

[strangebloke]

I understand what you mean, Caps life is a bit more "normal" than Black Widow's or Hawkeye since they have been superspies for at least a decade. However, Steve is definitely not a "normal guy", Falcon could be even with his flying gizmo's. I generally take "normal guy" as what a real world human could maybe achieve, think olympic level skill or a tad more, real world "peak human".

That kind of Joe Normal isn't a PC and couldn't get past level 5 if he was. But you can be a god and still be a Joe Normal relatively speaking.


I don't think its like that, casting cantrips is pretty damn normal in most generic dnd worlds given the ammount of races that have access to cantrips as racial features, yet most players wouldn't consider that a "normal guy".
I mean, just because high elf PCs can do that doesn't mean NPCs can. You wouldn't assume for example, that a dwarf is born with a battleax in hand.

And really I don't think knowing a little magic has to break Joe Normal as a concept? Like, okay, Joe picked up ritual caster, he knows some tricks, big deal.



Do away with HP and damage.
Attacks impose conditions, the whole system would be base around those, death comes as a result of said conditions
Weapons main feature now is what kind of attacks they allow its wielder to do. Longsword allows the basic slash which applies bleeding. Styles could unlock "moves" for weapon groups, or allow access to extra types of attacks baked in the weapon. Longswords second move "Thrust" doesn't apply bleeding, but removes 1 point of armor per hit (1/round max)


This is really not my speed at all. HP is an abstraction but its fine for what it is, and its baked into the core of every single thing in this game. What you're really doing is reworking the system from scratch, at which point "dude just play exalted/GURPS/FATE" is a valid criticism.


Well I think that's the centre point here. If those things are NOT baked in, DMs can choose to put those things in the game, if those are the settings they wanna play in. However, if the PHB gives that as class features, it's much harder for the DM to say I don't want that in my game, cause players may, understandably, feel robbed.

Thing is, they are currently gated behind DMs whims. Boons and blessings can be very powerful (specially the former), granting some of those to ~10th level characters could go a long way to make the shift in power believable, while also opening up new possible

DnD is a game that tries to encompass a rather wide spectrum, and maybe raising the ceiling is easier to homebrew than lowering the floor. After all Boons and Blessings are already part of the game, you could start using those as guidelins and give them to PCs as rewards.

Boons and Blessings are boring though. Roll advantage on this, get a +X to that, cast this crappy 2nd level spell at will. Blech. I want unique, active abilities that I can use actively. Not just bigger numbers. I want my players to be able to pick those abilities as a means of customizing their character. And I don't think anyone would actually mind if the noncasters got some cool non-attack buttons. They might quibble with one or two but the vast majority of feedback I've gotten with the 20+ people I've played with has been in the affirmative.

People online have so far been mostly fine with what I've put out, once they actually read it.

[Psyren]

But like. "I wish maneuvers were retained as a default scaling martial mechanic" or "I wish there were high-end martial abilities that felt really high end, you know?" just doesn't merit that response imo. It's like going into McDonalds and asking for a hamburger with mayo, it may not be your preference but its not that weird, and the man telling you to go to Burger King seems kinda aggressive for some reason.

"If you want mayo on your burger, I'd rather you either went to Burger King or just did it yourself, because all the market research and taste testing they'd need to do to figure out the right amount of mayo to put on a burger to satisfy the handful of people who want McDonald's to mayo up their burgers and justify it without turning off the satisfied majority who never asked for dang mayo on their burgers in the first place is just going to pull their limited development resources away from making more of the things that we want."

But you know what, if they put in an optional mayo dispenser off to the side somewhere - which in this analogy would be a 5e ToB or maneuver system - I wouldn't mind.

[False God]

Likely because it kills the "somewhat normal person" archetype (village hero, petty thief, circus performer, etc)
So does level 5.

But you don't see the game stopping there do you?


Can't it?
As pointed out above, the general opinion seems to be: don't bring that stuff into D&D, go play something else.


Is that the counter argument? I thought it was "dnd tries to accomodate a large varierty of characters, badass normal being one of them", people sometimes just wanna play "a regular guy", having supernatural abilities kills the mood, and since casters are automatically outside of that theme, non-caster have to fill that role.
Then cap your level, don't expect the game to pretend that while your buddies are turning into dragons and calling for miracles from the gods that your ability to take more damage, avoid more damage, and deal more damage than some small armies is "normal guy" stuff.

Honestly, that's part of the worst of it. The stuff we're talking about largely is already there. It's just not framed in such terms. With Action Surge a 15th-level fighter can dish out 8 attacks and whirlwind through a group of low-level enemies while they can't even touch him. It's just described as "Boring dude with sword swings sword really fast." Instead of spiced up with special attack names, bright colors and pizzaz. It would be functionally the same for said fighter to have a special attack of 10W*30L that deals weapon+strength to all targets along the way.

One of these is what people are saying is D&D. The other is what people are saying is anime. The results are almost identical.

The objection to the new coat of paint is what's more irritating to me at least.

[Lord Raziere]

Honestly, that's part of the worst of it. The stuff we're talking about largely is already there. It's just not framed in such terms. With Action Surge a 15th-level fighter can dish out 8 attacks and whirlwind through a group of low-level enemies while they can't even touch him. It's just described as "Boring dude with sword swings sword really fast." Instead of spiced up with special attack names, bright colors and pizzaz. It would be functionally the same for said fighter to have a special attack of 10W*30L that deals weapon+strength to all targets along the way.

One of these is what people are saying is D&D. The other is what people are saying is anime. The results are almost identical.

The objection to the new coat of paint is what's more irritating to me at least.

I mean, is it really anime?

its just a hero killing lots of mooks at once. that is not unique to anime in the slightest. killing lots of mooks is a pretty much a universal fictional sign of badassery. I mean I love anime, but I'm not going to pretend that a one-man army (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneManArmy) is anything unique to it.

I think we're missing an important step in forgetting to define what isn't "anime" for the purposes of these discussions.

[Ignimortis]

So does level 5.

But you don't see the game stopping there do you?
Part of the issue is people who think that their "normal joe" character should be viable at all 20 levels while remaining a normal joe. And the worst thing is (I see it as a terrible thing) that WotC actually agrees, because high-level monsters that used to be unbeatable by a Fighter 20 without a wagonload of magic support, have been brought down to heel - to precisely be defeatable by someone whose only abilities are "I attack a lot for decent damage" and "I can take a lot of punishment".

Instead of bringing Fighter up and making them capable of beating a 3.5 Balor or a 3.5 Ancient Wyrm on their own merit, they brought the sheer majority of the fantastical creatures down — to Champion Fighter level. You barely even need a +1 weapon for most of them, since many high-level creatures no longer have resistance to non-magical damage.



Honestly, that's part of the worst of it. The stuff we're talking about largely is already there. It's just not framed in such terms. With Action Surge a 15th-level fighter can dish out 8 attacks and whirlwind through a group of low-level enemies while they can't even touch him. It's just described as "Boring dude with sword swings sword really fast." Instead of spiced up with special attack names, bright colors and pizzaz. It would be functionally the same for said fighter to have a special attack of 10W*30L that deals weapon+strength to all targets along the way.

One of these is what people are saying is D&D. The other is what people are saying is anime. The results are almost identical.

The objection to the new coat of paint is what's more irritating to me at least.
Doesn't really work out unless your enemies are really, really puny like goblins (or, at best, orcs). Anything with more than 20 HP will survive that one attack. It's almost like that one AD&D trick — you can cut down a lot of enemies with 1HD, but as soon as they're somewhat durable, with several HD, it's "fair fight" time.

And that's my major counterpoint to people saying "it's already there". Yes, in theory, that's already there. But the numbers don't hold up. Due to how Bounded Accuracy and damage growth work in 5e, as well as skill math and some basic rules, you are unlikely to be far more capable at level 17 compared to level 7, and your options aren't all that more powerful as long as you don't consider powerful to equal "I can now fight enemies of higher CRs in fair fights". You deal almost the same damage per attack, most martial classes have the same number of attacks, and while your HP has doubled, it's not that much harder to actually hit you. In fact, a non-Unarmored Defense martial will ever only increase their AC by finding better armor or a better shield, instead of getting better at avoiding blows.

Spells bypass this, because they open up new possibilities outright. Everything else, at most, is an ability to do level 1 things better. Exceptions exist, but they're rare (and generally limited to Monk and Barbarian). And I agree with Raziere that a guy killing some mooks isn't really "anime". It's just a story with high power differentials, which are more common in anime.

Getting new things to do is just as important as having your abilities feel powerful, and "anime" characters get both. Personally, I feel that 5e martials fail both requirements, because the peak of their power relative to their surroundings is hovering somewhere around level 3 — when you can both still kill small-fry enemies you meet in one blow, and your non-magic abilities don't feel like a second fiddle to what a mage can do. In two more levels, you'll lose the former, and in four levels more (at best), you'll lose the latter.

[GAZ]

I hate so many of the counter arguments here. They all boil down to: NO! You can't have cool stuff because you think speed and strength is good. Only people who hate speed and strength get to have cool stuff. My power fantasy where I get warp reality with my big brain in ways a billion times more impressive than anything Gandalf or Harry Potter ever did is the only valid power fantasy. Your power fantasy where you get use big muscles to be even a fraction as impressive as Cú Chulainn or Lu Bu is bad and wrong. You can't play D&D if that's what you want. Go away.

D&D isn't a war game. D&D isn't grounded. D&D isn't realistic. D&D is the world's premier fantasy role playing game. Except only as long as your fantasy is either all-powerful nerd or the all-powerful nerd's gimped mundane lackey. A high level D&D character is supposed to be a world changing superhero, but high level martial characters can't change the world except by lowering the collective HP total a bit at a time. They should be able to batter down castle walls, change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do. Instead all they get is stab more gooder. It's lame and needs to change.

[Schwann145]

I mean, I know it's been suggested before. But folklore is actually full of this kind of stuff. Swordsmen who can cut anything, even things with no physical tangibility (sound, light, even metaphysical concepts). Or not cut things, like slicing up a hostage taker without harming the hostage. Thieves who can steal anything, again, even things with no physical tangibility (your dreams, your thoughts, your memories, the sound of a cat's footfall, whatever).

I mean, imagine the BBEG gives an order to their underling, and the fighter just straight up cuts the order so the underling doesn't hear it. Stuff like that.
Abilities this extreme are *exceedingly* rare, even in folklore.


I know martials are meant to be more mundane, but high level is anything but mundane. "Mundane" is 10th level or lower. After 11th level, you're treading into heroic, larger-than-life territory, where warriors become superhuman.
What gives you that impression? Nothing granted from the classes themselves approaches anything near superhuman, so why would you assume that's the intent?

---

Long story short, it's because D&D gets it's inspiration primarily from more western-fantasy and folklore roots, and you just don't see the sort of thing you describe in such literature.
And also, I presume, because the scope of the game isn't meant to be "high fantasy" in the same way anime is.

Consider who you might base a warrior type off of:
Cu Chulainn? He's a demigod, not a mortal.
Hercules? Son of Zeus.
Gilgamesh? Mother was a goddess, so demigod.

Even when you get to more "mundane" examples of epic heroes, there's still external explanations for their strength/prowess/etc:
Achilles? Made invulnerable by his mother by being dipped in the River Styx.
Samson? Given his strength directly by God.
And what would King Arthur be without Excalibur and it's scabbard?

What you really *don't* see much, if any, of is folks who were known for their superhuman qualities all by themselves. You'll get fanciful stories of local heroes that goes all over the place (William Wallace and the fireballs from his eyes/bolts of lightning from his arse, etc) and you'll get mundane heroes' stories exaggerated posthumously, but the superhuman pretty much always exists because it was granted by a higher power in some way, or because the hero you're thinking of IS a higher power in some way.

Your level 15+ Fighter needs to either be a god, gain powers directly from the gods, or have powerful magical items granting them these abilities - which is exactly how D&D already plays.
Merlin was always stronger than Lancelot. The game is working as intended.

[tokek]

Well I think that's the centre point here. If those things are NOT baked in, DMs can choose to put those things in the game, if those are the settings they wanna play in. However, if the PHB gives that as class features, it's much harder for the DM to say I don't want that in my game, cause players may, understandably, feel robbed.

Thing is, they are currently gated behind DMs whims. Boons and blessings can be very powerful (specially the former), granting some of those to ~10th level characters could go a long way to make the shift in power believable, while also opening up new possible

DnD is a game that tries to encompass a rather wide spectrum, and maybe raising the ceiling is easier to homebrew than lowering the floor. After all Boons and Blessings are already part of the game, you could start using those as guidelins and give them to PCs as rewards.





This is the way.

If you look at something like Theros then they overlay the base system with some specific themed boons and a boon system that crank up the mythic heroism of the game. It fits that setting, it supports that setting having its own distinctive feel, it does nothing to diminish the feel of other settings.

Could you have an anime-style setting book like Theros? Sure you could. Should that change core mechanics of martial classes in the PHB to be more anime? Absolutely not because that would exclude other setting types from being able to work out of the box.

In the meantime, while Wizards publish other stuff, there are so many useful and sometimes powerful boon systems in D&D already that you could be using. When I read these threads I sometimes wonder if the problem is players just not liking their DM or not talking properly with them. Don't try to shove into core game mechanics what you could be agreeing with your DM for your game. Its not even homebrew, its just picking a bunch of existing game features and agreeing with your DM and as a group that you want those features to be in your game.

[Waazraath]

I hate so many of the counter arguments here. They all boil down to: NO! You can't have cool stuff because you think speed and strength is good. Only people who hate speed and strength get to have cool stuff. My power fantasy where I get warp reality with my big brain in ways a billion times more impressive than anything Gandalf or Harry Potter ever did is the only valid power fantasy. Your power fantasy where you get use big muscles to be even a fraction as impressive as Cú Chulainn or Lu Bu is bad and wrong. You can't play D&D if that's what you want. Go away.

D&D isn't a war game. D&D isn't grounded. D&D isn't realistic. D&D is the world's premier fantasy role playing game. Except only as long as your fantasy is either all-powerful nerd or the all-powerful nerd's gimped mundane lackey. A high level D&D character is supposed to be a world changing superhero, but high level martial characters can't change the world except by lowering the collective HP total a bit at a time. They should be able to batter down castle walls, change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do. Instead all they get is stab more gooder. It's lame and needs to change.

... I mean... I've been reading the same thread as you did, I suppose, but... no? That is not what the counter arguments are? At the very least not all of them? (you say "they /all/ boil down to). Counter arguments are among others:
- we already have a large part of the power fantasy you mention;
- the part which they can't do ("change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do") is because this is NOT something what regular martial fantasy characters do, despite your claim;
- making all /normal/ superheroes into demigods disqualifies other persons power fantasy, e.g. that of the common folk hero growing to greatness by just the strenght of his arms and/or his superior wits;
- the premise that the martials are inferior to casters in 5e is a flawed misconception being very very wrong;

[Lord Raziere]

... I mean... I've been reading the same thread as you did, I suppose, but... no? That is not what the counter arguments are? At the very least not all of them? (you say "they /all/ boil down to). Counter arguments are among others:
- we already have a large part of the power fantasy you mention;
- the part which they can't do ("change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do") is because this is NOT something what regular martial fantasy characters do, despite your claim;
- making all /normal/ superheroes into demigods disqualifies other persons power fantasy, e.g. that of the common folk hero growing to greatness by just the strenght of his arms and/or his superior wits;
- the premise that the martials are inferior to casters in 5e is a flawed misconception being very very wrong;

1. no we don't, because that is people going "this exists and its good enough for me" and insisting that it should be good enough for other people. that doesn't help.
2. what is "regular martial fantasy characters"? what is "not-myth"? again there is no definition for the not-anime stuff, no point of reference for what is desirable to this silent majority, only what isn't desirable. saying "DnD fighter as it is" as the answer is self-referential and circular.
3. except fighters can't use their superior wits for anything. their class features do not reward investing in intelligence or wisdom for anything other than spells in a subclass. the superior wit fighter doesn't exist.
4. Regardless of whether they are inferior, they don't feel like they live up to the fantasy imagined for them. which is enough.

[Waazraath]

1. no we don't, because that is people going "this exists and its good enough for me" and insisting that it should be good enough for other people. that doesn't help.
2. what is "regular martial fantasy characters"? what is "not-myth"? again there is no definition for the not-anime stuff, no point of reference for what is desirable to this silent majority, only what isn't desirable. saying "DnD fighter as it is" as the answer is self-referential and circular.
3. except fighters can't use their superior wits for anything. their class features do not reward investing in intelligence or wisdom for anything other than spells in a subclass. the superior wit fighter doesn't exist.
4. Regardless of whether they are inferior, they don't feel like they live up to the fantasy imagined for them. which is enough.

It's fine if you don't agree with these arguments, but that doesn't mean that reducing them to "They all boil down to: NO! You can't have cool stuff because you think speed and strength is good." and the rest of the strawman that followed isn't misleading. It is.

As for your replies:

1) If people ask "why can't character A have x" in the game where character A already has X, this really isn't a weird reply. Maybe it's not helping, because some people want even more X. But damn, we already have martial (sub)classes that can teleport, heal, change size, even raise the bloody dead - in addition to being already more durable, not or less being tied to limited resources, and often being more effective in combat. Complaints about "why can't martials have nice things" and "why can't martials have nice things" becomse a bit of a parody at a certain point.
2) context: I reply to a claim about martials being able to "change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do". I don't feel obliged to give an exact definition on martial fantasy characters, but based on 3 decades of games, comics, movies and fantasy books I'm pretty damn sure that this is not the default which 'martial fantasy characters' can do.
3) true but I wasn't talking about fighters, but martials in general and abilities possessed by superheroes without obvious and flashy magical abilities.
4) yes, that's what some people claim. I disagree.

[Lord Raziere]

It's fine if you don't agree with these arguments, but that doesn't mean that reducing them to "They all boil down to: NO! You can't have cool stuff because you think speed and strength is good." and the rest of the strawman that followed isn't misleading. It is.

As for your replies:

1) If people ask "why can't character A have x" in the game where character A already has X, this really isn't a weird reply. Maybe it's not helping, because some people want even more X. But damn, we already have martial (sub)classes that can teleport, heal, change size, even raise the bloody dead - in addition to being already more durable, not or less being tied to limited resources, and often being more effective in combat. Complaints about "why can't martials have nice things" and "why can't martials have nice things" becomse a bit of a parody at a certain point.


Yes by making them hybrid casters. Its completely missing the point: its like if a restaurant was serving two things, I said that one of dishes needs to be made better, so they decide to serve me half a completely different food with it that I'm not interested in. that doesn't fix it.

[strangebloke]

It's fine if you don't agree with these arguments, but that doesn't mean that reducing them to "They all boil down to: NO! You can't have cool stuff because you think speed and strength is good." and the rest of the strawman that followed isn't misleading. It is.

As for your replies:

1) If people ask "why can't character A have x" in the game where character A already has X, this really isn't a weird reply. Maybe it's not helping, because some people want even more X. But damn, we already have martial (sub)classes that can teleport, heal, change size, even raise the bloody dead - in addition to being already more durable, not or less being tied to limited resources, and often being more effective in combat. Complaints about "why can't martials have nice things" and "why can't martials have nice things" becomse a bit of a parody at a certain point.
2) context: I reply to a claim about martials being able to "change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do". I don't feel obliged to give an exact definition on martial fantasy characters, but based on 3 decades of games, comics, movies and fantasy books I'm pretty damn sure that this is not the default which 'martial fantasy characters' can do.
3) true but I wasn't talking about fighters, but martials in general and abilities possessed by superheroes without obvious and flashy magical abilities.
4) yes, that's what some people claim. I disagree.

Except the arguments are blatantly just wrong? Like, Obviously?

1) No they don't. We've been over this. We've mentioned things that are not in the game as fixed options. People have said "the DESIGNERS" don't want that, as though that's a relevant point to this discussion.
2)My dude the stare down an army feat comes from Aragorn. You know, the concept people like to say caps out at 5th level? We can quibble about what sorts of powers a 'standard hero' should have, but the big tough fighter guy who can scare people is like, bread and butter. The image for intimidation in the PHB uses a Barbarian. But martials have negative synergy with this skill. Most noncasters are dogbiscuits at resisting fear affects as well. You can say there's some upper limit on what you think noncasters should be able to do but I think its safe to say they're a country mile away from it in 5e.
3)The true Joe Normal is unworkable and doesn't belong in 5e. The Joe relatively Normal can be maintained even if you add massive numbers of superpowers to the martial chassis.
4)They're relatively equal in combat through t3. But I'd like you to bring up something that a Barbarian - any barbarian - can actually do outside of combat. And don't say "make a strength check" because anyone can do that.

[Psyren]

Instead of bringing Fighter up and making them capable of beating a 3.5 Balor or a 3.5 Ancient Wyrm on their own merit, they brought the sheer majority of the fantastical creatures down — to Champion Fighter level. You barely even need a +1 weapon for most of them, since many high-level creatures no longer have resistance to non-magical damage.

I don't know how to break this to you but they could do that in 3.5 too, provided you knew at least the basics about how to build one (and weren't stuck in core-only when they didn't know what they were doing.) Wealth By Level existed for a reason, you were supposed to be buying magic gear with it rather than swan-diving into a giant money bin like Scrooge McDuck.

(Granted, PF did this better than 3.5 did even after splats, but it was still possible in 3.5.)

What 5e did was get rid of the necessity to have the Big Six magic items as you hit certain level thresholds, rather than adding the ability for Fighters of a certain level to hit things of that level. Magic items are still expected (see below) but you're not going to be a christmas tree like you were in 3.5, especially thanks to attunement limits.



Long story short, it's because D&D gets it's inspiration primarily from more western-fantasy and folklore roots, and you just don't see the sort of thing you describe in such literature.
And also, I presume, because the scope of the game isn't meant to be "high fantasy" in the same way anime is.

Consider who you might base a warrior type off of:
Cu Chulainn? He's a demigod, not a mortal.
Hercules? Son of Zeus.
Gilgamesh? Mother was a goddess, so demigod.

Even when you get to more "mundane" examples of epic heroes, there's still external explanations for their strength/prowess/etc:
Achilles? Made invulnerable by his mother by being dipped in the River Styx.
Samson? Given his strength directly by God.
And what would King Arthur be without Excalibur and it's scabbard?

What you really *don't* see much, if any, of is folks who were known for their superhuman qualities all by themselves. You'll get fanciful stories of local heroes that goes all over the place (William Wallace and the fireballs from his eyes/bolts of lightning from his arse, etc) and you'll get mundane heroes' stories exaggerated posthumously, but the superhuman pretty much always exists because it was granted by a higher power in some way, or because the hero you're thinking of IS a higher power in some way.

Your level 15+ Fighter needs to either be a god, gain powers directly from the gods, or have powerful magical items granting them these abilities - which is exactly how D&D already plays.
Merlin was always stronger than Lancelot. The game is working as intended.

All of this. And the DMG literally tells you that magic items are expected to be part of the campaign as early as T2.


Except the arguments are blatantly just wrong? Like, Obviously?

1) No they don't. We've been over this. We've mentioned things that are not in the game as fixed options. People have said "the DESIGNERS" don't want that, as though that's a relevant point to this discussion.
2)My dude the stare down an army feat comes from Aragorn. You know, the concept people like to say caps out at 5th level? We can quibble about what sorts of powers a 'standard hero' should have, but the big tough fighter guy who can scare people is like, bread and butter. The image for intimidation in the PHB uses a Barbarian. But martials have negative synergy with this skill. Most noncasters are dogbiscuits at resisting fear affects as well. You can say there's some upper limit on what you think noncasters should be able to do but I think its safe to say they're a country mile away from it in 5e.
3)The true Joe Normal is unworkable and doesn't belong in 5e. The Joe relatively Normal can be maintained even if you add massive numbers of superpowers to the martial chassis.
4)They're relatively equal in combat through t3. But I'd like you to bring up something that a Barbarian - any barbarian - can actually do outside of combat. And don't say "make a strength check" because anyone can do that.

One thing I actually agree with you on is the crappy interaction between martials and fear (either causing or resisting it.) That should be changed. But the picking up and moving a river stuff can take a flying leap, I don't care how many times you all ask for it.

[Rukelnikov]

Thinking about the "anime"/"non-anime" divide, I think some of it may boil down to the perceived innate ability for growth present in most combat centered anime, whether they are shonen or not, vs the relatively staticness of western heroes. In a game with a leveling system like DnD growth is an ingrained aspect of gameplay and thus the story as a whole.

Cap is pretty much always the same, Aragorn's capabilities don't change that much during the course of the books (if at all). On the other hand, Gon, Naruto, Luffy, and most shonen characters seem like they can't help but become increasingly stronger with each episode. This means, the growing characters' archetype is "valid" for all tiers of play, while the more static ones have a limit to where they can still be the same character. Cap, Bucky, Hawkeye may get marginally stronger in the MCU as movies movies go on for example, but they never make a leap to a clearly more powerful tier

When Cap gets to weild Mjollnir in Endgame

OTOH, Iron Man, Strange, Wanda, Thor, Loki, They all get stronger as the story goes by, yet they always feel like the same character. So the problem lies in Cap, apparently, not being a viable Tier 4 archetype, so if a player wanted to play medieval Cap, by level 11 or something he would have to stop playing medieval Cap and have to play, idk, "demigod" Cap. While someone wanting to play Rock Lee, Dr Strange, or Iron Man, could do so from level 1 to 20 (somewhat since they can't be perfectly represented in the current system).

As I've said multiple times, I love anime, and would like that kind of progression (Mystycs work pretty well for an anime feel), but I realise its not for everyone.

Is there a way to reconcile the divide?

Is there a way the system could allow playing Cap from 3 to 20, while also allowing to play Cloud from 3 to 20, and have both be viable?

Sadly I don't think there is, which is why optional subsystems would be the way to go IMO, so tables can opt to go for what they prefer, but maybe someone can come up with something.

[Yakk]

Is there a way to reconcile the divide?

Is there a way the system could allow playing Cap from 3 to 20, while also allowing to play Cloud from 3 to 20, and have both be viable?

Sadly I don't think there is, which is why optional subsystems would be the way to go IMO, so tables can opt to go for what they prefer, but maybe someone can come up with something.
The simplest way I know of to reconcile that divide -- that narratively, "Captain America" hits a power cap -- is to provide a narrative way to bypass that power cap.

You can have narrative hooks in classes. Wizards, for example, have the narrative hook that they can learn new spells and get a bigger spellbook. Druids have the narrative hook that they can see new creatures and learn new forms that way. I am not suggesting we mimic either of these for "Captain America" style PCs, I am saying that embedding narrative hooks in classes can work.

There is a problem in non-full casters that the "back 10" level are, quite frankly, lackluster. For most non-full casters, replacing your last 10 or so levels (sometimes 7, sometimes 13) with the first few levels of other classes gives a better advancement experience.

And the narrative cap problem also kicks in in T3/T4.

So stick a narrative hook at the start of T3.

I would suggest a new subclass type system that starts then.

The new subclasses can be more epic in nature than the starting ones.

As an example of 5: Paragon of Strength, Paragon of Speed, Dragonblooded, Demigod, Chosen One.

Each of these can describe how they would fit in.

Dragonblooded

You have harnessed the power of a true dragon's blood in your veins. Maybe there was one in your family tree, maybe you ate the heart of a dragon or absorbed the blood through your skin, or maybe you where blessed with this power by a dragon.

What this provides is a narrative excuse to be able to do more awesome things. Which Paragon Path you choose can be a matter of in-game fiction, or could be an unlocking of a bit of back story your PC maybe never knew they had.

With such a narrative excuse, Captain America breaks the power cap on the character concept.

Now, not all of them require a narrative connection to the world. Paragon of Strength just means "your strength has become legendary", and it gives you a bunch of strength-related boosts. How it became legendary is up to the PC and the DM. Because the abilities are tied thematically, it only requires one breach of "normal" to justify it.

Any kind of "menu of anime" abilities doesn't work this way. Each one requires a separate breach of "being normal" to justify usually, unless you elect to pick ones all in the same theme. By pre-clumping and selecting abilities, the "breach of normal" is reduced.

...

And even if your PC is "just" a grizzled gruff veteran who managed to survive to level 11 in a crazy magic world, it should be possible to provide a Paragon Path that is sufficiently reasonable.

[GreyBlack]

Thinking about the "anime"/"non-anime" divide, I think some of it may boil down to the perceived innate ability for growth present in most combat centered anime, whether they are shonen or not, vs the relatively staticness of western heroes. In a game with a leveling system like DnD growth is an ingrained aspect of gameplay and thus the story as a whole.

Cap is pretty much always the same, Aragorn's capabilities don't change that much during the course of the books (if at all). On the other hand, Gon, Naruto, Luffy, and most shonen characters seem like they can't help but become increasingly stronger with each episode. This means, the growing characters' archetype is "valid" for all tiers of play, while the more static ones have a limit to where they can still be the same character. Cap, Bucky, Hawkeye may get marginally stronger in the MCU as movies movies go on for example, but they never make a leap to a clearly more powerful tier

When Cap gets to weild Mjollnir in Endgame

OTOH, Iron Man, Strange, Wanda, Thor, Loki, They all get stronger as the story goes by, yet they always feel like the same character. So the problem lies in Cap, apparently, not being a viable Tier 4 archetype, so if a player wanted to play medieval Cap, by level 11 or something he would have to stop playing medieval Cap and have to play, idk, "demigod" Cap. While someone wanting to play Rock Lee, Dr Strange, or Iron Man, could do so from level 1 to 20 (somewhat since they can't be perfectly represented in the current system).

As I've said multiple times, I love anime, and would like that kind of progression (Mystycs work pretty well for an anime feel), but I realise its not for everyone.

Is there a way to reconcile the divide?

Is there a way the system could allow playing Cap from 3 to 20, while also allowing to play Cloud from 3 to 20, and have both be viable?

Sadly I don't think there is, which is why optional subsystems would be the way to go IMO, so tables can opt to go for what they prefer, but maybe someone can come up with something.

Is this a spoiler anymore?

This is probably the healthiest way to look at it. That said, when looked at in this light, it becomes shockingly easy to fix the "Martial Problem" (if there even is one; I'd argue there isn't): Instead of giving magic items to players, just grant them boons.

The DMG itself even gives some sample boons that you can grant your players, such as:

As an action, you can cast the Misty Step spell, without using a spell slot or any components. Once you do so, you can't use this boon again until you finish a short rest.


When you take damage from any source, you can reduce that damage to 0. Once you use this boon, you can't use it again until you finish a short rest.


While completely in an area of dim light or darkness, you can become invisible as an action. You remain invisible until you take an action or a reaction.

I mean, come on! You give boons like this to your players and they'll go bananas on it!

Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at fixing "martial" characters and instead focus on giving them more goodies, and only viewing the classes as a part of the greater system that grants them abilities?

[Psyren]

The easiest way for lower-tier martials to keep up is items. Captain America exceeded his limits by being able to attune to Thor's Hammer, and being not just proficient with it, but also having a synergistic fighting style. Aragorn eventually rocked an artifact blade that proved his lineage. But you can certainly add in mythic or boons or some other supplementary progression as well.



Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at fixing "martial" characters and instead focus on giving them more goodies, and only viewing the classes as a part of the greater system that grants them abilities?

This. Why is this such a difficult concept for some here?

[tokek]

1. no we don't, because that is people going "this exists and its good enough for me" and insisting that it should be good enough for other people. that doesn't help.
2. what is "regular martial fantasy characters"? what is "not-myth"? again there is no definition for the not-anime stuff, no point of reference for what is desirable to this silent majority, only what isn't desirable. saying "DnD fighter as it is" as the answer is self-referential and circular.
3. except fighters can't use their superior wits for anything. their class features do not reward investing in intelligence or wisdom for anything other than spells in a subclass. the superior wit fighter doesn't exist.
4. Regardless of whether they are inferior, they don't feel like they live up to the fantasy imagined for them. which is enough.

1. Its in the game.
2. The game already caters to a wide variety of possible fantasy models using a rather modular ruleset.
3. There is more to the game than class features. Very intentionally so (Also Battlemasters literally have abilities to cover this but I'm sure you know that)
4. Try using all the rules. Talk with your DM about it

I think more and more this is about people who want to play a different game to their DM and they expect the game designers to "fix" this for them.

Even if there was an anime sourcebook that does not mean your DM is going to use it should your DM not want to use it. I honestly think all this energy expended on trying to persuade unknown people on the internet would be far better spent talking to your DM.

[Lord Raziere]

1. Its in the game.
2. The game already caters to a wide variety of possible fantasy models using a rather modular ruleset.
3. There is more to the game than class features. Very intentionally so (Also Battlemasters literally have abilities to cover this but I'm sure you know that)
4. Try using all the rules. Talk with your DM about it

I think more and more this is about people who want to play a different game to their DM and they expect the game designers to "fix" this for them.

Even if there was an anime sourcebook that does not mean your DM is going to use it should your DM not want to use it. I honestly think all this energy expended on trying to persuade unknown people on the internet would be far better spent talking to your DM.

1. No its not.
2. If you call changing the wallpaper that, sure.
3. problem is you can't really do the tactical master mind on a wide scale, its actually a bad thing, because DnD's way of modeling it is very materialistic. sure you can say your fighter has a lot of int, is a battlemaster and is totally this noble general in their background. but the battlemaster is more of a duelist than a strategist, and if you want that actual genius brain strategy or whatever, its basically all gonna be DM Fiat. all the armies are a separate character, all the strategies you come up with have no mechanics other than what the DM writes down as notes to make up on the spot, and you can't really do this on the small scale because you can't order the other pcs around.
4. I'm not going to bother my friends with what some online stranger thinks how I should solve my problems with the system. they don't play with me to hear me criticize stuff, and criticizing it is irrelevant to playing with them and playing with them is irrelevant to this.

[GreyBlack]

Just gonna focus on this one:



3. problem is you can't really do the tactical master mind on a wide scale, its actually a bad thing, because DnD's way of modeling it is very materialistic. sure you can say your fighter has a lot of int, is a battlemaster and is totally this noble general in their background. but the battlemaster is more of a duelist than a strategist, and if you want that actual genius brain strategy or whatever, its basically all gonna be DM Fiat. all the armies are a separate character, all the strategies you come up with have no mechanics other than what the DM writes down as notes to make up on the spot, and you can't really do this on the small scale because you can't order the other pcs around.


So your problem is that "Intelligence" is not required for a Fighter?

I think you're kinda confusing what the stats are in 5e. I've been in a couple online fights about what the stats actually represent, and the answer in 5e generally comes down to "Not much, really." Having a low stat might inform how you'd like to play a character, but it doesn't actually mean anything except for when you make ability checks or are in combat.

In D&D, a die roll should only happen when there is a chance of failure. As you're walking down the street, you don't spontaneously go blind because you rolled a 1 on your Perception check; you're always seeing the stuff around you. However, there's a chance you wouldn't notice the dog across the street "watering" the fire hydrant. That's where the DM might ask you to make a Perception check.

So, what does that mean about the Fighter? Well, he can still be that actual genius brain in terms of coming up with combat strategies. He's trained his whole life on this, he knows combat tactics, he knows what types of weapons work well against what (as he is proficient in all of them), knows what types of armor gives what type of protection, knows about positioning on the map, etc. These are all things a Fighter can do without any chance of failure, and therefore no need for a die roll.

But, if he can't come up with a strategy on his own, then maybe he might know of some type of battle in the past that would give them some help in planning the upcoming battle. Enter the Intelligence (History) check. If he's proficient, then he gets a bonus to it! That said, he might not be super book smart, as represented by the -1 Intelligence, but that doesn't mean that he can't come up with some type of strategy to marshall his forces into an engagement at a strategic level which would be in some way, shape, or form effective in the combat at hand. In fact, based on their past military experience, maybe they'd even get advantage on that check! Point being that this is that character's wheelhouse; they _are_ a fighting tactical mastermind. Maybe not socially; that might be the Rogue Mastermind archetype, but still they can accomplish these things handily!

Which, again, comes back to "Readjusting your expectations." Your character can be anything you want them to be. They can have any character trait you want them to, and it doesn't have to be represented by anything numerical on the character sheet. As long as you say it, then it's true. But, if there's a chance of failure, is this an area where your character is strong? Well, then you can rely on the stats to make those decisions.

[tokek]

1. No its not.
2. If you call changing the wallpaper that, sure.
3. problem is you can't really do the tactical master mind on a wide scale, its actually a bad thing, because DnD's way of modeling it is very materialistic. sure you can say your fighter has a lot of int, is a battlemaster and is totally this noble general in their background. but the battlemaster is more of a duelist than a strategist, and if you want that actual genius brain strategy or whatever, its basically all gonna be DM Fiat. all the armies are a separate character, all the strategies you come up with have no mechanics other than what the DM writes down as notes to make up on the spot, and you can't really do this on the small scale because you can't order the other pcs around.
4. I'm not going to bother my friends with what some online stranger thinks how I should solve my problems with the system. they don't play with me to hear me criticize stuff, and criticizing it is irrelevant to playing with them and playing with them is irrelevant to this.

I suggest you go back and read what fighters can actually do before complaining that they can't do things A battlemaster has a couple of manoeuvre options which add their superiority dice to skill checks. One of which is all about tactical and strategic smarts. In a game of bounded accuracy adding an additional d12 onto a d20 roll at high level is a big deal.

There are several systems in the game for adding mythic stuff to characters, in a mythic style game they are right there to use. Pick the ones you want to use and use them.

I think some people have an obsession with trying to load every mechanic in the game onto the base class abilities. I have no idea why you would want such an inflexible game design but to be perfectly clear I prefer the modular design we have.

[ZRN]

"If you want mayo on your burger, I'd rather you either went to Burger King or just did it yourself, because all the market research and taste testing they'd need to do to figure out the right amount of mayo to put on a burger to satisfy the handful of people who want McDonald's to mayo up their burgers and justify it without turning off the satisfied majority who never asked for dang mayo on their burgers in the first place is just going to pull their limited development resources away from making more of the things that we want."

But you know what, if they put in an optional mayo dispenser off to the side somewhere - which in this analogy would be a 5e ToB or maneuver system - I wouldn't mind.

But like, they already did that? They made a whole bunch of semi-magical subclasses that let you play a supernatural-but-not-spellcasting martial character. Heck, one of the first homebrew subclasses I wrote for 5e was a "mythic hero" fighter subclass with scaling daily powers. (I remember it being pretty cool, but I posted it in ENWorld's archetype database they've since taken down, so who knows.)

[Psyren]

2. If you call changing the wallpaper that, sure.

So DMG pgs. 38-41, "Flavors of Fantasy" = "wallpaper?"

I suspect you have a different vision for this game than the designers intended - which is fine, but expecting them to cater to your vision is unreasonable when you have the tools to tailor your campaign to your own tastes. Their vision of Mythic Fantasy or Wuxia points to the existing subclasses and systems, and maybe over time they'll gradually add to that, but if your vision of that involves more drastic additions like repositioning rivers then that's what DM's Guild and homebrew are for.


But like, they already did that? They made a whole bunch of semi-magical subclasses that let you play a supernatural-but-not-spellcasting martial character. Heck, one of the first homebrew subclasses I wrote for 5e was a "mythic hero" fighter subclass with scaling daily powers. (I remember it being pretty cool, but I posted it in ENWorld's archetype database they've since taken down, so who knows.)

You're preaching to the choir, I'm not the one who thinks the base fighter should have a bunch of supernatural or divine stuff crammed into its chassis. I'm perfectly happy with stuff like Rune/Echo/Eldritch Knight existing alongside Champion/Samurai.

[Rukelnikov]

I mean, come on! You give boons like this to your players and they'll go bananas on it!

Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at fixing "martial" characters and instead focus on giving them more goodies, and only viewing the classes as a part of the greater system that grants them abilities?

I did this all the time when I DMed, it worked pretty well for me and my group.

The last standard* campaign I DMed had a Goliath Barbarian whom started getting powers related to stone giants, I gave him the Fling and Rolling Rock special abilities stone giants got in SKT, and had we continued playing past lvl 8 he would have likely gotten more powers related to them (dreamwalker was gonna be the next thing)

In that same campaign I had a Hexblade who when at low HP could spend inspiration to go Ultra Instinct for level rounds, enemies had disadvantage to attack him, and he had advantage on all saving throws, but he couldn't speak and he would even dodge allies, this came up when the Druid tried to cast cure wounds on him, but required an attack roll to be able to touch him cause he would instinctively try to dodge everyone.

*Since then I have done away with traditional leveling instead granting abilities based more on what happens on the adventure, with levels being gained sporadically and players getting features or ASIs somewhat regularly. We played that for like 15-20 sessions, they started as regular lvl 3 characters, and ended up as "level 5" with many powers on top


4. I'm not going to bother my friends with what some online stranger thinks how I should solve my problems with the system. they don't play with me to hear me criticize stuff, and criticizing it is irrelevant to playing with them and playing with them is irrelevant to this.

{Scrubbed}

[GreyBlack]

I did this all the time when I DMed, it worked pretty well for me and my group.

The last standard* campaign I DMed had a Goliath Barbarian whom started getting powers related to stone giants, I gave him the Fling and Rolling Rock special abilities stone giants got in SKT, and had we continued playing past lvl 8 he would have likely gotten more powers related to them (dreamwalker was gonna be the next thing)

In that same campaign I had a Hexblade who when at low HP could spend inspiration to go Ultra Instinct for level rounds, enemies had disadvantage to attack him, and he had advantage on all saving throws, but he couldn't speak and he would even dodge allies, this came up when the Druid tried to cast cure wounds on him, but required an attack roll to be able to touch him cause he would instinctively try to dodge everyone.

*Since then I have done away with traditional leveling instead granting abilities based more on what happens on the adventure, with levels being gained sporadically and players getting features or ASIs somewhat regularly. We played that for like 15-20 sessions, they started as regular lvl 3 characters, and ended up as "level 5" with many powers on top

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

OMG, I love this idea! Doing stuff like this with your players is absolutely fantastic, and I wholeheartedly endorse this!

[Lord Raziere]

So your problem is that "Intelligence" is not required for a Fighter?

I think you're kinda confusing what the stats are in 5e. I've been in a couple online fights about what the stats actually represent, and the answer in 5e generally comes down to "Not much, really." Having a low stat might inform how you'd like to play a character, but it doesn't actually mean anything except for when you make ability checks or are in combat.

In D&D, a die roll should only happen when there is a chance of failure. As you're walking down the street, you don't spontaneously go blind because you rolled a 1 on your Perception check; you're always seeing the stuff around you. However, there's a chance you wouldn't notice the dog across the street "watering" the fire hydrant. That's where the DM might ask you to make a Perception check.

So, what does that mean about the Fighter? Well, he can still be that actual genius brain in terms of coming up with combat strategies. He's trained his whole life on this, he knows combat tactics, he knows what types of weapons work well against what (as he is proficient in all of them), knows what types of armor gives what type of protection, knows about positioning on the map, etc. These are all things a Fighter can do without any chance of failure, and therefore no need for a die roll.

But, if he can't come up with a strategy on his own, then maybe he might know of some type of battle in the past that would give them some help in planning the upcoming battle. Enter the Intelligence (History) check. If he's proficient, then he gets a bonus to it! That said, he might not be super book smart, as represented by the -1 Intelligence, but that doesn't mean that he can't come up with some type of strategy to marshall his forces into an engagement at a strategic level which would be in some way, shape, or form effective in the combat at hand. In fact, based on their past military experience, maybe they'd even get advantage on that check! Point being that this is that character's wheelhouse; they _are_ a fighting tactical mastermind. Maybe not socially; that might be the Rogue Mastermind archetype, but still they can accomplish these things handily!

Which, again, comes back to "Readjusting your expectations." Your character can be anything you want them to be. They can have any character trait you want them to, and it doesn't have to be represented by anything numerical on the character sheet. As long as you say it, then it's true. But, if there's a chance of failure, is this an area where your character is strong? Well, then you can rely on the stats to make those decisions.

Not the point

you don't have a system of war and strategy to actually model how effective those strategies are. its all DM fiat. DnD is too materialistic, because what it primarily models is objects and physical things. you can't abstract out any army into a single group of enemies that has formations in DnD, because each and everyone of them has to be individual warriors for no reason. so it doesn't try, because its modeling is all materialist. so you can't really be a strategist, because there is no actual system for war, there is a system for small scale fights, but there is no actual system where you can be a strategical genius on a big scale, while any small scale tactics has to be emulated manually, so all its up to player skill which isn't always reliable. its not about fighters having a required stat, its about the archetype not being represented well. if I'm a strategist, whether I know a few martial arts moves or have armor is secondary concerns to the real meat and potatoes of the mind.

its also why you have people insisting that fighters have to be more wuxia while others are insisting that the fighters if they are wuxia have to have ki or whatever to make it make sense, because DnD's modeling is all about a materialist mindset where anything that isn't an object, isn't modeled. which limits what DnD can do.



{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

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[Psyren]

you don't have a system of war and strategy to actually model how effective those strategies are. its all DM fiat.

Feature, not bug. How effective an overarching strategy is, is campaign-dependent. Working as intended.

[Lord Raziere]

Feature, not bug. How effective an overarching strategy is, is campaign-dependent. Working as intended.

But doesn't actually allow someone to play a strategist. its playing Mother May I so you can get back to play a violent adventurer which has a big system devoted to it. all these patches and features your talking about isn't to actually make them work properly or fun or actually engage with it, but to breeze past it as soon as possible to get back what the system can actually do. its fooling the player into thinking that something has been done so that they can go do other stuff.

[Psyren]

But doesn't actually allow someone to play a strategist. its playing Mother May I so you can get back to play a violent adventurer which has a big system devoted to it. all these patches and features your talking about isn't to actually make them work properly or fun or actually engage with it, but to breeze past it as soon as possible to get back what the system can actually do. its fooling the player into thinking that something has been done so that they can go do other stuff.

...Feature, not bug. Working as intended.

The GM should be the one to decide if your strategy was effective, not the Effective Strategist feat.

[Rukelnikov]

Like you are?

{Scrubbed}

[ZRN]

The GM should be the one to decide if your strategy was effective

Or more specifically, the DM sets the DC and you roll an ability check, just like when you try smithing a sword or playing poker or baking bread or sail a ship or basically anything else in D&D that's not "fight" or "cast a spell."

D&D is a pretty rules-light game for everything except combat. That doesn't mean those other things aren't important in a D&D game; it just means the mechanics for resolving them are straightforward.

[Doug Lampert]

Consider who you might base a warrior type off of:
Cu Chulainn? He's a demigod, not a mortal.
Hercules? Son of Zeus.
Gilgamesh? Mother was a goddess, so demigod.


Gandalf, an angel in disguise.
Circe, a goddess.
Calypso, a goddess.
Hecate, a goddess.
Medea, grandchild of the sun god.
Merlin, child of a demon and a nun with both divine and infernal boons.

Roland (cut a new pass through a mountain with a single blow), mundane with a magic sword.
Arthur (built a kingdom and defeated dozens of kings), mundane with one of two magic swords. Most of the Knights of the Round Table are purely mundane.

The basis of the caster classes is FAR MORE divine powered and non mortal than the mythical fighter basis. If X is a bad model for martial power because it's a demigod, why isn't the same true for casters?

[Rukelnikov]

Gandalf, an angel in disguise.
Circe, a goddess.
Calypso, a goddess.
Hecate, a goddess.
Medea, grandchild of the sun god.
Merlin, child of a demon and a nun with both divine and infernal boons.

Roland (cut a new pass through a mountain with a single blow), mundane with a magic sword.
Arthur (built a kingdom and defeated dozens of kings), mundane with one of two magic swords. Most of the Knights of the Round Table are purely mundane.

The basis of the caster classes is FAR MORE divine powered and non mortal than the mythical fighter basis. If X is a bad model for martial power because it's a demigod, why isn't the same true for casters?

But most caster classes already incorporate divine/external sources of power.

Sorcerers have a magical bloodline which explains their powers, Warlocks make pacts with higher beings, Clerics receive their powers from deities, Druids get their power from nature*. Wizards and Bards are actually the only two full casters with no higher power built in in the class.

I think the point of that post was to showcase stuff non-casters do in mythology that some people would like to see DnD non-casters doing, and the response was to show that those non-casters had a source of power "explaining" why they were able to do such stuff.

[Psyren]

The basis of the caster classes is FAR MORE divine powered and non mortal than the mythical fighter basis. If X is a bad model for martial power because it's a demigod, why isn't the same true for casters?

But there are plenty of non-divine examples for casters too. Milamber. Prospero. Stephen Strange. Jaina Proudmoore. Harry Potter. All got their power through innate talent and study, not biological lineage, because the power of the setting itself is what they learned how to shape. There's a path there that players and DMs can expect characters to be able to follow just by taking up a chosen profession. The same is not true of Hercules, Achilles, or Roland - but all you need to do to make those work is add just one other (optional) system and you're good to go.

What I don't understand is why there is such an aversion to doing that, when it solves the problem. "My father is a god and I reached puberty" or "my mother held me by the ankle and dipped me in an extraplanar river as a baby" may not be adequately represented in D&D by class, but that doesn't mean they can't be represented in D&D at all.

[Brookshw]

...Feature, not bug. Working as intended.

The GM should be the one to decide if your strategy was effective, not the Effective Strategist feat.

Excuse me, but if I want to play BESM and Warhammer in D&D then the system better be able to accommodate that from the onset, get back to work designers!

Back to (quasi)serious discussion, mass combat isn't a thing D&D has managed well in any edition, it kind of makes you wonder why they even give stats for catapults and the like. I'm not remotely surprised though considering it was a game that was intentionally getting away from a mass combat tactical games by zeroing in on the small scale and individual level. I can't recall any RPG that did a great job of handling mass combat, though lots have tried through various levels of abstractions and to limited success.

[Ignimortis]

I don't know how to break this to you but they could do that in 3.5 too, provided you knew at least the basics about how to build one (and weren't stuck in core-only when they didn't know what they were doing.) Wealth By Level existed for a reason, you were supposed to be buying magic gear with it rather than swan-diving into a giant money bin like Scrooge McDuck.

(Granted, PF did this better than 3.5 did even after splats, but it was still possible in 3.5.)

What 5e did was get rid of the necessity to have the Big Six magic items as you hit certain level thresholds, rather than adding the ability for Fighters of a certain level to hit things of that level. Magic items are still expected (see below) but you're not going to be a christmas tree like you were in 3.5, especially thanks to attunement limits.

My point was exactly that you'd be carried by your magic items, and not only the Big Six, but also things that counter fast flight and teleportation and all the other cool things that high level creatures were able to do quite often (Dominate Person/Monster showed up a fair bit, and generally lots of various nasty spells were there). A high-HD dragon was usually also a Sorcerer of a decent level. It's not about just hitting or doing damage - it's about the fact that a lot of 5e creatures are aptly described as big sacks of HP and damage, sometimes with a save-based ability to...usually cause more damage.

I think that it's this way at least in part due to the fact that it was very hard to keep both 5e Fighter and the assumption that you don't get specific magic items that you need, as well a reduction in the sheer amount of those items, and yet preserve the power level and variety of those monsters.

[Psyren]

I would represent a siege etc using a hazard, similar to a natural disaster. So there are % chances for a nearby wall to breach, or for masonry to clip you as it comes down, or (if you're supremely unlucky) for a boulder to land on you, or a fire etc. The catapult has stats because the PCs, being elite operatives, can go deal with the source, thus protecting that section of wall or improving their odds of avoiding nasty occurrences while in that zone.


My point was exactly that you'd be carried by your magic items, and not only the Big Six, but also things that counter fast flight and teleportation and all the other cool things that high level creatures were able to do quite often. A high-HD dragon was usually also a Sorcerer of a decent level. It's not about just hitting or doing damage - it's about the fact that a lot of 5e creatures are aptly described as big sacks of HP and damage, sometimes with a save-based ability to...usually cause more damage.

I think that it's this way at least in part due to the fact that it was very hard to keep both 5e Fighter and the assumption that you don't get specific magic items that you need, as well a reduction in the sheer amount of those items, and yet preserve the power level and variety of those monsters.

You counter "fast flight" by using a bow or readying actions. And a dragon who teleports away from you is still defeated.

As for the magic items you need, the DMG assumes you get those. Not as many as 3e, but then, you don't need as many as 3e either.

[ZRN]

Are there actually different points of view being debated here as to what stuff specific classes in 5e should be able to do?

Like, is anyone really upset that specifically battlemasters, champions, thieves, and berserkers can't break the laws of physics? Because there are a bunch of OTHER classes and subclasses that CAN do those things, even without casting spells. We could certainly use MORE subclasses dedicated to fitting that niche, IMHO, but I don't see how it really presents a structural problem for the system.

[GreyBlack]

Not the point

you don't have a system of war and strategy to actually model how effective those strategies are. its all DM fiat. DnD is too materialistic, because what it primarily models is objects and physical things. you can't abstract out any army into a single group of enemies that has formations in DnD, because each and everyone of them has to be individual warriors for no reason. so it doesn't try, because its modeling is all materialist. so you can't really be a strategist, because there is no actual system for war, there is a system for small scale fights, but there is no actual system where you can be a strategical genius on a big scale, while any small scale tactics has to be emulated manually, so all its up to player skill which isn't always reliable. its not about fighters having a required stat, its about the archetype not being represented well. if I'm a strategist, whether I know a few martial arts moves or have armor is secondary concerns to the real meat and potatoes of the mind.

its also why you have people insisting that fighters have to be more wuxia while others are insisting that the fighters if they are wuxia have to have ki or whatever to make it make sense, because DnD's modeling is all about a materialist mindset where anything that isn't an object, isn't modeled. which limits what DnD can do.

{Scrubbed}

Okay, in order to do a large scale conflict like that, you'd have to basically create a whole new subsystem within D&D itself, and likely to D&D's detriment. At that point, you're playing Chainmail, and have then come full circle back to D&D's origins as a wargame.

I'm not opposed to this at all. D&D lacks high level play options, and really only supports play well between levels 1-10. In fact, the majority of 5e published adventures cap out around level 12. Adding in a wargame to D&D might be a good way to improve T3-4 gameplay, and creating subclasses that can more effectively manage these large groups might fit well.

THAT SAID...



To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus the long sword is the basis of strategy. The principle is "strategy by means of the long sword". If he attains the virtue of the long sword, one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior's craft.

I think you don't quite understand what strategy is, based on what you're saying. There's a reason why civilians don't tend to be generals in the military; because they don't have the experience in warfare and with various methods of waging war to adequately command troops. Civilians, typically, don't know the correct tactical uses of (for example) an M4 versus an F14. HOWEVER, as a fighter, you are proficient in all of these things. You are trained in all of the tools with which to wage war. Therein lies the art of waging war; it's in knowing your tools and when to best use them.



The foreman carpenter must know the architectural theory of towers and temples, and the plans of palaces, and must employ men to raise up houses. The Way of the foreman carpenter is the same as the Way of the commander of a warrior house. In the construction of houses, choice of woods is made.

Straight un-knotted timber of good appearance is used for the revealed pillars, straight timber with small defects is used for the inner pillars. Timbers of the finest appearance, even if a little weak, is used for the thresholds, lintels, doors, and sliding doors, and so on. Good strong timber, though it be gnarled and knotted, can always be used discreetly in construction. Timber which is weak or knotted throughout should be used as scaffolding, and later for firewood.

The foreman carpenter allots his men work according to their ability. Floor layers, makers of sliding doors, thresholds and lintels, ceilings and so on. Those of poor ability lay the floor joists, and those of lesser ability carve wedges and do such miscellaneous work. If the foreman knows and deploys his men well the finished work will be good. The foreman should take into account the abilities and limitations of his men, circulating among them and asking nothing unreasonable. He should know their morale and spirit, and encourage them when necessary. This is the same as the principle of strategy.

So is armor a secondary concern like this? Well, Musashi certainly doesn't think so, and he's regarded as one of those legendary fighters we're all taught was the best swordsmen of all time. Knowing your tools and how to use them is literally what being a fighter is. And, because you're proficient in all of the tools of war, guess what? You're proficient in waging war like that!

Now, your homework is to go read the "Book of Five Rings", "The Ground Book" so that we can continue this discussion about the importance of the mind in fighters.

[Ignimortis]

You counter "fast flight" by using a bow or readying actions. And a dragon who teleports away from you is still defeated.

As for the magic items you need, the DMG assumes you get those. Not as many as 3e, but then, you don't need as many as 3e either.

Readying actions to do what, exactly? And a dragon who teleports away from you is far from defeated, especially if it pulls a Smaug (even though in 5e, it probably can't do that to a large-ish city with archer militia/guards).

Thing is, a 5e level 20 Fighter facing a 3.5 Pit Fiend or a CR20 Red Dragon (with numbers adjusted to account for Bounded Accuracy) is still unlikely to win outside of maybe driving the target to Teleport out of the fight, potentially coming back in a few rounds with lots more buffs than they left with. They don't have the toolkit to counter a high-level spellcaster that doesn't have the typical spellcaster weakness of "lowish AC, low HP". What will the Fighter do when a dragon suddenly throws Greater Invisibility onto itself? Does a high-level Fighter have to have a Ring of True Seeing?

[Psyren]

Readying actions to do what, exactly?

Hit it when it gets in melee range of course, you have a reach weapon right?

A bow would be better (and flight better still), but if the dragon wants to melee you it has to put itself at risk. And the lovely thing about 5e is that you can ready multiple attacks unlike 3.5 (if you have the Extra Attack feature e.g.) so you can potentially wail on the dragon when it gets close.


Thing is, a 5e Fighter facing a 3.5 Pit Fiend or a CR20 Red Dragon (with numbers adjusted to account for Bounded Accuracy) is still unlikely to win outside of maybe driving the target to Teleport out of the fight, potentially coming back in a few rounds with lots more buffs than they left with.

One of anything isn't supposed to be fighting a CR20 creature, encounters are designed around a party of 4. If four level 20 Fighters can't take down a dragon, I would question their builds, tactics, gear or all three.

[Valmark]

Hit it when it gets in melee range of course, you have a reach weapon right?

A bow would be better (and flight better still), but if the dragon wants to melee you it has to put itself at risk. And the lovely thing about 5e is that you can ready multiple attacks unlike 3.5 (if you have the Extra Attack feature e.g.) so you can potentially wail on the dragon when it gets close.


Nitpick: Extra Attack doesn't allow you to ready multiple attacks- I think only monsters with Multiattack can currently. Still need to take a risk since dragons I think don't get regeneration, but much less then if the party could attack multiple times.

[Psyren]

Nitpick: Extra Attack doesn't allow you to ready multiple attacks- I think only monsters with Multiattack can currently. Still need to take a risk since dragons I think don't get regeneration, but much less then if the party could attack multiple times.

Really? It says when you take the Attack action you can use that feature, and that's the action you're readying. It's entirely possible I missed something there.

Still, for 4 fighters that's still a lot of attacks even if only 1 or 2 of them get to ready.

[Valmark]

Really? It says when you take the Attack action you can use that feature, and that's the action you're readying. It's entirely possible I missed something there.

Still, for 4 fighters that's still a lot of attacks even if only 1 or 2 of them get to ready.

I could be missing an errata, but it says 'on your turn' in my book (or maybe I do have the errata)- but yeah, it's still useful.

[GreyBlack]

Really? It says when you take the Attack action you can use that feature, and that's the action you're readying. It's entirely possible I missed something there.

Still, for 4 fighters that's still a lot of attacks even if only 1 or 2 of them get to ready.



Beginning at 5th Level, you can Attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on Your Turn.


So now we know.

[Psyren]

Thanks! Missed that clause. I knew you'd only get one from an OA but not only one from a Ready. Doesn't change anything else I wrote though.

[Greywander]

4)They're relatively equal in combat through t3. But I'd like you to bring up something that a Barbarian - any barbarian - can actually do outside of combat. And don't say "make a strength check" because anyone can do that.
This is kind of the crux of the issue. Combat isn't really what I'm worried about. Some martial subclasses might give you more things to do outside of combat, but really all of them should. And even the ones that do tend to be rather narrow, compared to the broad utility of spells. It doesn't have to be wrestling rivers, but something would be nice. And river-wrestling does sound like a good way to have a mythical character who is martially oriented, rather than being a caster. But I get that not everyone wants to play such a character. (Still, I feel like this could be a basis for a mythical martial class, like a monk but themed after figures like Hercules instead of kung fu masters).


Thinking about the "anime"/"non-anime" divide, I think some of it may boil down to the perceived innate ability for growth present in most combat centered anime, whether they are shonen or not, vs the relatively staticness of western heroes. In a game with a leveling system like DnD growth is an ingrained aspect of gameplay and thus the story as a whole.
Part of the problem here isn't just that there are two incompatible systems, it's that both systems are used side by side. This is what people are talking about when they say "linear warriors, quadratic wizards". Casters are anime characters, while martials are not. Batman is impressive on his own, but when he joins an adventuring party with Goku and Luffy, he starts to look like a bit of a chump. Martials can mostly keep up with casters in combat, and D&D is a combat-heavy game, which is why most people don't notice/care, but not everyone wants to spend every session in combat.


This is probably the healthiest way to look at it. That said, when looked at in this light, it becomes shockingly easy to fix the "Martial Problem" (if there even is one; I'd argue there isn't): Instead of giving magic items to players, just grant them boons.
The issue here is that it's being left up to DM fiat: the DM may give you some boons, or they may not. Also, if only the martial characters are getting boons, it could breed resentment among the caster players. Why do martials get all the cool boons, and the casters don't get anything? Codifying boons into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is a caster player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a caster instead.

With this in mind, what we could do is come up with a set of optional class features that are applied only to martial classes, granting them boons, or just straight up giving them magic items (you can work it into the narrative however you like), or mythical abilities, or whatever. When you start a campaign, the DM can inform the players whether or not they're using these optional rules.

[GreyBlack]

The issue here is that it's being left up to DM fiat: the DM may give you some boons, or they may not. Also, if only the martial characters are getting boons, it could breed resentment among the caster players. Why do martials get all the cool boons, and the casters don't get anything? Codifying boons into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is a caster player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a caster instead.

With this in mind, what we could do is come up with a set of optional class features that are applied only to martial classes, granting them boons, or just straight up giving them magic items (you can work it into the narrative however you like), or mythical abilities, or whatever. When you start a campaign, the DM can inform the players whether or not they're using these optional rules.

Let's turn it around, then: Why do spellcasters get all these cool spells, but martials don't get anything? Codifying spells into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is the martial player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a martial anyway.

See how that sounds? That's the exact logic being used right now for why martial characters should get a buff where spellcasters don't need one.

That said, the boons system is more something I'd advocate for over a traditional magic treasure system rather than a "This is how you buff martial characters" system; boons grant a sense that your character is unique and more powerful than average, while magic items always feel too precious to use. If I were to do something like this, I'd probably go more for a "Fighting manual" system for treasures that I outlined earlier in this thread where the fighters can find various hidden techniques lost to the ages and learn those as opposed to just giving flat buffs. Yes, I know you'd say that is too reliant on DM fiat, but, let's be real here: everything is dependent on DM fiat. Honestly, I think we could do with the DM saying "No" to casters more solely because casters are trying to use spells in "cute" ways that the spell doesn't actually intend. Examples include the Grease spell, which you shouldn't be able to use on specific items and such, yet players will frequently do anyway.

[Rukelnikov]

Part of the problem here isn't just that there are two incompatible systems, it's that both systems are used side by side. This is what people are talking about when they say "linear warriors, quadratic wizards". Casters are anime characters, while martials are not. Batman is impressive on his own, but when he joins an adventuring party with Goku and Luffy, he starts to look like a bit of a chump. Martials can mostly keep up with casters in combat, and D&D is a combat-heavy game, which is why most people don't notice/care, but not everyone wants to spend every session in combat.

I also think the problem is OoC, during combat martials are usually fine, Barbarians may struggle a bit in T4, but they excel during T1 so it kinda compensates.

[Greywander]

Let's turn it around, then: Why do spellcasters get all these cool spells, but martials don't get anything? Codifying spells into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is the martial player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a martial anyway.

See how that sounds? That's the exact logic being used right now for why martial characters should get a buff where spellcasters don't need one.
This doesn't make sense because you're drawing a false equivalency. It would be like if I told you not to commit murder and you responded with, "Let's turn it around: 'Kill everyone!' See how silly that sounds?"

Casters having things to do outside of combat is not an issue. In general, classes having things to do outside of combat is not an issue. The issue is some classes not having things to do outside of combat. Curbing spellcasting is only a partial solution; it won't give martials more things to do outside of combat. Taking away utility options will generally make the game less fun because it shrinks the toolbox that the players have to deal with problems. Adding new options is more fun, because it gives them new toys to play with.

This is also why buffs are generally better received than nerfs; the only time people welcome a nerf is when the ability being nerfed really did make the game less fun because of how strong it was. But even then, it's because it reduced player options; when you're handed a shiny golden tool (i.e. one OP ability), all of the ratty wooden tools in your toolbox no longer seem to be worth using. You'll use the golden tool for everything, and that's not fun because now you only have one real tool. This is a big reason why game balance is important: you want different options to be equally viable so that the players feel like there's a real choice to be made. If one choice is the obvious right choice, that's not fun. So even a well-applied nerf is still meant to increase player options by making everything else more viable compared to that one overpowered ability.

I feel like an easy option system would be something like, "Classes A, B, and C all gain a mythic boon at levels X, Y, and Z; classes D and E (e.g. half casters) get mythic boons at levels V and W. Here's a list of mythic boons you can choose." And then it's things like triple carry capacity, triple jump height/distance, see normally out to a mile, get two additional exhaustion levels that act as buffers, double overland travel speed, Revivify with a difficult Medicine check and a healer's kit, and so on. I mean, it could be the really mythical stuff, but it could also be tamer stuff like this.

[False God]

I mean, is it really anime?

its just a hero killing lots of mooks at once. that is not unique to anime in the slightest. killing lots of mooks is a pretty much a universal fictional sign of badassery. I mean I love anime, but I'm not going to pretend that a one-man army (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneManArmy) is anything unique to it.

I think we're missing an important step in forgetting to define what isn't "anime" for the purposes of these discussions.

I wasn't saying it was unique to anime.

In fact that was my entire point.

A lot of what "anime" is already there. There's little argument that the Sun-Soul Monk being able to shoot beams of energy from his hands is very DBZ. It's just not framed that way. It's described in very generic and mundane terms. Which is part of why so many people come around saying "Why don't martial characters get cool stuff?" In truth, they do. But it is described in some of the dullest, plainest, most boring language in the game.

So part of the argument isn't so much "Stuff needs to be added." but that "martials need better advertising". They can do some cool things, but those things are described in decidedly un-cool terms.


Part of the issue is people who think that their "normal joe" character should be viable at all 20 levels while remaining a normal joe. And the worst thing is (I see it as a terrible thing) that WotC actually agrees, because high-level monsters that used to be unbeatable by a Fighter 20 without a wagonload of magic support, have been brought down to heel - to precisely be defeatable by someone whose only abilities are "I attack a lot for decent damage" and "I can take a lot of punishment".

Instead of bringing Fighter up and making them capable of beating a 3.5 Balor or a 3.5 Ancient Wyrm on their own merit, they brought the sheer majority of the fantastical creatures down — to Champion Fighter level. You barely even need a +1 weapon for most of them, since many high-level creatures no longer have resistance to non-magical damage.
I absolutely agree. The low ACs, the low damage. I've throw high-level monsters at low level parts (we're talking like, +10 CR difference here) and they've beaten them fairly quickly because at this point it's almost impossible not to.

Now, personally I can't stand the idea that a fighter needs to be loaded up with magic gear. Magic gear is often seen (as I wrote in another thread) as something the DM can give and take away at whimsy, while class abilities are not.

If you stripped a 20th level wizard down to their shorts, they'd still be a powerhouse. If you did the same to a fighter, he'd be useless.


Doesn't really work out unless your enemies are really, really puny like goblins (or, at best, orcs). Anything with more than 20 HP will survive that one attack. It's almost like that one AD&D trick — you can cut down a lot of enemies with 1HD, but as soon as they're somewhat durable, with several HD, it's "fair fight" time.
But even in anime, against "fair fights", enemies on your level, your crazy cool attaks...often don't so much. BUT those enemies and those fights and those enemies often exist more as plot devices to get the MC and crew to go off on a secondary adventure to become more powerful, to then come back and defeat the baddie. There's an issue translating literature into game mechanics.


And that's my major counterpoint to people saying "it's already there". Yes, in theory, that's already there. But the numbers don't hold up. Due to how Bounded Accuracy and damage growth work in 5e, as well as skill math and some basic rules, you are unlikely to be far more capable at level 17 compared to level 7, and your options aren't all that more powerful as long as you don't consider powerful to equal "I can now fight enemies of higher CRs in fair fights". You deal almost the same damage per attack, most martial classes have the same number of attacks, and while your HP has doubled, it's not that much harder to actually hit you. In fact, a non-Unarmored Defense martial will ever only increase their AC by finding better armor or a better shield, instead of getting better at avoiding blows.

Spells bypass this, because they open up new possibilities outright. Everything else, at most, is an ability to do level 1 things better. Exceptions exist, but they're rare (and generally limited to Monk and Barbarian). And I agree with Raziere that a guy killing some mooks isn't really "anime". It's just a story with high power differentials, which are more common in anime.

Getting new things to do is just as important as having your abilities feel powerful, and "anime" characters get both. Personally, I feel that 5e martials fail both requirements, because the peak of their power relative to their surroundings is hovering somewhere around level 3 — when you can both still kill small-fry enemies you meet in one blow, and your non-magic abilities don't feel like a second fiddle to what a mage can do. In two more levels, you'll lose the former, and in four levels more (at best), you'll lose the latter.

Yeah, I can agree to that. And it's something casters very much still get, which leads to the discrepancy in gameplay and overall feel of the game. Casters get more and new and better things to do. Martials get to do...more of the same. The former has been cut down a bit, the latter has been boosted up a bit, but in many ways there are still two completely different games competing for space in D&D.

[strangebloke]

I think this discussion would improve a lot of we ignored the word anime entirely. It's not descriptive, anime is too broad a genre.

Like lol, non casters should have anime abilities like going to Japanese highschool.


Let's turn it around, then: Why do spellcasters get all these cool spells, but martials don't get anything? Codifying spells into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is the martial player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a martial anyway.

See how that sounds? That's the exact logic being used right now for why martial characters should get a buff where spellcasters don't need one.

Do you like ToB? I did. Martials with loads of buttons. Felt strong. You could make a character that did a lot even if they were superficially just a guy with a sword. Sure the crusader had maneuvers that were spells in all but name, but the narration of what they were doing at any moment didn't prevent the crusader from feeling normal compared to the party Beguiler.

One great moment was a magically sealed door at mid level made of adamantine. Casters didn't have the right spells prepared. Crusader just cut right though it.

Now that's 3.5. probably wouldn't work here and I'll grant that tob was contentious. (I'll argue it's the best dang thing in 3.5) but come on, there has to be some way to give a list of options that provide martials with scaling out of combat bonuses. There's absolutely no reason fighters should be picking from the same feats at 16th level.

We can quibble about how and to what extent. But I don't think it should be arguable that barbarians need to be total lumps out of combat.


I also think the problem is OoC, during combat martials are usually fine, Barbarians may struggle a bit in T4, but they excel during T1 so it kinda compensates.

They struggle earlier if you have a DM who abuses monster abilities like flying.

[GAZ]

It's a feature, not a bug. This is how it's supposed to be.

It is absolutely baffling to me that so many people here seem to think "actually this bad thing that you are complaining about is on purpose and not by accident" is some kind of gotcha or remotely good argument at all.




Merlin was always stronger than Lancelot. The game is working as intended.

A) No he wasn't. Lancelot soloed enemy armies, prides of lions, and freaking dragons. Merlin never did nothin'.
B) If the Arthurian legends were a campaign, Merlin would be an NPC not an adventurer on account of the whole never actually doing anything bit.
C) Merlin has explicitly the exact opposite of character progression, growing younger and less powerful as events advance.
D) The most powerful magic Merlin ever pulls is shape-changing and fortune-telling. No meteor swarm or gate here.
E) The game is nothing like Merlin and Lancelot. This is a problem for people who think Lancelot is cool and want their character to do Lancelot like things such as single-handedly open a sarcophagus that seven men couldn't open together, overpower a giant, flip over a horse by hitting its rider really hard, snap a dragon's neck, etc etc.


... I mean... I've been reading the same thread as you did, I suppose, but... no? That is not what the counter arguments are? At the very least not all of them? (you say "they /all/ boil down to). Counter arguments are among others:
- we already have a large part of the power fantasy you mention;
- the part which they can't do ("change the flow of rivers, cross continents at a run, and stare down entire armies on their own because that's the kind of stuff martial fantasy characters can do") is because this is NOT something what regular martial fantasy characters do, despite your claim;
- making all /normal/ superheroes into demigods disqualifies other persons power fantasy, e.g. that of the common folk hero growing to greatness by just the strenght of his arms and/or his superior wits;
- the premise that the martials are inferior to casters in 5e is a flawed misconception being very very wrong;

Yes. It is. You're doing it right now.

Yu redirected the Yellow River by splitting a mountain with his axe. Pecos Bill busting his horse Widow-Maker is what dug out the Rio Grande. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas ran hundreds of miles in pursuit of the Uruks. Beowulf swam for a week straight while wearing mail armor. Roland, Lancelot, Guan Yu, and Conan all forced the retreat of entire armies on their own.

Fantasy, folklore, and myth has non-magical heroes do cool, world changing things all the time. D&D has magical heroes do cool, world changing things all the time. The problem is that D&D does not have non-magical heroes do cool, world changing thing even once. The ability of martial character to deal lots of HP damage by stabbing good has never been the issue. The inability of martial character to do anything else is. They can't even lift as much weight as IRL strongmen, never mind live up to the legends of legendary warriors they supposedly emulate.

[Anymage]

I feel like an easy option system would be something like, "Classes A, B, and C all gain a mythic boon at levels X, Y, and Z; classes D and E (e.g. half casters) get mythic boons at levels V and W. Here's a list of mythic boons you can choose." And then it's things like triple carry capacity, triple jump height/distance, see normally out to a mile, get two additional exhaustion levels that act as buffers, double overland travel speed, Revivify with a difficult Medicine check and a healer's kit, and so on. I mean, it could be the really mythical stuff, but it could also be tamer stuff like this.

Mythic boons sound like a solution, but in practice I see them having two major pitfalls. That were largely seen in both ToB and 4e.

First, D&D has historically handled special abilities by making them discrete powers. Skill systems have been largely tacked on afterthoughts. This makes the vast majority of interesting buttons functionally equivalent to spells. If you have maneuvers or exploits or whatever that look a lot like spells, and have a recovery mechanism that looks something like spellcasting if you squint, you already have subclasses that include spell like abilities and even actual spells. How does a refluffed eldritch knight or arcane trickster not closely resemble a mythic/anime archetype? This does lead to people harrumphing about how "their fighters are now wizards", and with both ToB and 4e the harrumphs were loud enough that WotC had to take notice. (And notably when 4.5 came out, it was the fighters who had to break from AEDU to be more at-will oriented, than the wizards who were asked to break from AEDU to be more daily oriented.)

Second, to the degrees that mythic powers would be specific feats like "wrestle a river" instead of a broad list of what one could do with mythic level stats, you then create an optimization meta where certain powers wind up being more appealing than others. We've already seen with magic items that +whatever items that just make people better at what they'd already be doing are both more popular amongst players, and more boring for not opening up new avenues of activity. Wrestling a river sounds a lot more niche than being able to double your damage once per day, and I don't see the former being picked all that often. Real mythic competencies tend to imply that a character's broad competencies are sharpened to a supernatural degree, and D&D is not likely to be a system of broad supernatural competencies at any point in the reasonable future.

[Tanarii]

I also think the problem is OoC, during combat martials are usually fine, Barbarians may struggle a bit in T4, but they excel during T1 so it kinda compensates.
When it boils down to it, my point of view is that Tier 4 martials getting Demi-god like powers appropriate to their class theme wouldn't be a problem at all. Even if it's done without Magic items.

It's rarely played, and by that point full casters have level 9 spells. It's an appropriate Tier for it. It's effectively the Epic Tier, coming after the high-level / adventure-path ending / world threat destroying Tier 3.

My other point of view is that leveling is too fast in low level and mid level tiers, especially in the sweet spot of Tier 2. Those tiers are where "badass normal guy" martials are not only totally appropriate, but as a general rule I've found roundly dominate compared to most full casters, especially the three arcane nuke full casters.

(I should note that I divide the classes into 6 martials and 6 full casters.)

If someone wanted Tier 2 Martials to be far more gonzo anime / epic mythology as a standard part of D&D, I'd say it's time for homebrew or an expansion for that. But Tier 4? No problem. In return for granting that, I'll take slower leveling in trade.

[Ignimortis]

Hit it when it gets in melee range of course, you have a reach weapon right?

A bow would be better (and flight better still), but if the dragon wants to melee you it has to put itself at risk. And the lovely thing about 5e is that you can ready multiple attacks unlike 3.5 (if you have the Extra Attack feature e.g.) so you can potentially wail on the dragon when it gets close.

One of anything isn't supposed to be fighting a CR20 creature, encounters are designed around a party of 4. If four level 20 Fighters can't take down a dragon, I would question their builds, tactics, gear or all three.

One of anything vs an equal CR just makes it a 50/50 rather deadly fight instead of "kinda normal for the day, you can have several of these without rest" for 4 vs an equal CR, as per CR definitions. But let's put 4 fighters in there instead of 1.

Also, why would a 3.5 dragon get in melee range? It has non-cooldown dragon breath and high-level magic, as well as unlimited built-in flight. A bow helps, if the dragon doesn't use magic. Greater Invisibility still says "you lose", as making 32/16 attacks with a bow for 1d8+8 damage with disadvantage isn't gonna be much — especially if Contingent Stoneskin kicks in and basically says "the dragon now has 150 temp HP against physical damage, and it potentially has several copies of that". Meanwhile, the dragon has a 20d10 spammable fire breath coming out of nowhere - and since Evasion is not a Fighter class feature, they will be taking damage if hit.

I am not trying to hype up 3.5's broken spellcasting (BS for short), but a lot of high-level monsters in 3.5 felt like mythical threats of large scale precisely because you couldn't just go and make them into a pincushion if they played on their terms by using their abilities like the intelligent beings they are.

Meanwhile, 5e versions of them are neutered just enough so that a party of 4 Fighters very much could potentially take them down just by declaring "I pull out my bow and Action Surge" for 32 attacks two turns in a row, even if those Fighters don't have any bow-specific abilities and their bows are just +1 longbows. It won't do for an Ancient Red, but it's CR24 in 5e, and it would quite potentially two-round an Adult Red (CR17). So if we're going somewhere in-between, it will severely weaken the hypothetical CR20 Red Dragon, the middlepoint between Adult and Ancient (so a Wyrm?), and another round will probably finish it off. The only counterplay the 5e dragon has is, indeed, flying away or trying very hard to kill 2+ Fighters in two turns or less (for which it will need to be in melee range and thus far more vulnerable).

Now, what would a party of 4 Wizards do? Invulnerability, then any non-fire damage spells/cantrips. If the dragon cannot readily leave the battlefield, it's dead. If it can, then another strategy is needed, but level 9 spell completely negates everything the 5e dragon can do offensively, for 10 minutes. Now, a 3.5 dragon would just Greater Dispel Magic.

TL;DR: Fighters still only ever cause damage and take damage in ways that are the same from level 1 to 20, only with better to-hit, damage and more attacks. The monsters that used to be able to play with different tactics, now play the same as Fighter, relying mostly on damage and toughness, while having almost no additional abilities that aren't "more damage in a different pattern".



I absolutely agree. The low ACs, the low damage. I've throw high-level monsters at low level parts (we're talking like, +10 CR difference here) and they've beaten them fairly quickly because at this point it's almost impossible not to.

Now, personally I can't stand the idea that a fighter needs to be loaded up with magic gear. Magic gear is often seen (as I wrote in another thread) as something the DM can give and take away at whimsy, while class abilities are not.

If you stripped a 20th level wizard down to their shorts, they'd still be a powerhouse. If you did the same to a fighter, he'd be useless.

+10? Whoa. Although I shouldn't be surprised, we once TPK'd to a CR22 dragon as a level 6 party (the GM was pretty rough back then) and still got almost a hundred damage in before everyone died (before you ask, we couldn't run). That was back in 2015 and we didn't have the crazy builds going around these days, too.

I fully agree that the "Fighter gets magic gear" point is extremely annoying. 1) Everyone gets magic gear, you're not special 2) Things external to your character are not your character's strong points. At best, they're a focusing tool for your own power. Aragorn isn't cool because he has Narsil. Mat Cauthon isn't cool because he has an antimagic amulet. The only people who are cool in large part due to their gear are people like Batman - people who fight dirty and rely on tech to carry them because they themselves are not powered (outside of massive plot armor and plot power). And even Batman is far more capable without his gear than a non-specific level 20 Fighter would be.

Batman also shows us that characters who do need to be loaded with magic gear can produce that very same magic gear (sometimes even in the batcave, with a box of batscraps). So, Artificers with a combat bent - not Fighters, who never had any ability to make their own magic items.



But even in anime, against "fair fights", enemies on your level, your crazy cool attaks...often don't so much. BUT those enemies and those fights and those enemies often exist more as plot devices to get the MC and crew to go off on a secondary adventure to become more powerful, to then come back and defeat the baddie. There's an issue translating literature into game mechanics.

My issue is mostly with the fact that HP scales so quickly, you won't be nailing a CR2 or a CR3 enemy in one non-smite attack even at level 20. They're already packing 50+ HP, and you still do, at best, 4d6+8 or something like that, and that's half weapon-dependent. 10 minotaurs are not a challenge to a level 20 party, but they will still take several turns to clear out without wasting resources, simply because 5e relies heavily on HP as the sole real defense of enemies.



Yeah, I can agree to that. And it's something casters very much still get, which leads to the discrepancy in gameplay and overall feel of the game. Casters get more and new and better things to do. Martials get to do...more of the same. The former has been cut down a bit, the latter has been boosted up a bit, but in many ways there are still two completely different games competing for space in D&D.

5e exemplifies the problem very well, too. Due to Bounded Accuracy, everything mundane is crippled by the d20 being the deciding factor — always. I cannot call 5e's skill system workable, because it literally doesn't provide a good framework for a skilled character being distinct from an unskilled character (Rogue 11+ notwithstanding). A level 17 character with a +11 bonus can still lose to a level 1 character with a -1 penalty. Skill tricks, as discussed in another thread, would be a nice addition — but the skill system lacks sufficient depth to support them at one point becoming second nature to your character.



Do you like ToB? I did. Martials with loads of buttons. Felt strong. You could make a character that did a lot even if they were superficially just a guy with a sword. Sure the crusader had maneuvers that were spells in all but name, but the narration of what they were doing at any moment didn't prevent the crusader from feeling normal compared to the party Beguiler.

One great moment was a magically sealed door at mid level made of adamantine. Casters didn't have the right spells prepared. Crusader just cut right though it.

Now that's 3.5. probably wouldn't work here and I'll grant that tob was contentious. (I'll argue it's the best dang thing in 3.5) but come on, there has to be some way to give a list of options that provide martials with scaling out of combat bonuses. There's absolutely no reason fighters should be picking from the same feats at 16th level.


Yes. This. ToB was the best thing that ever happened to D&D. In fact, I'd argue that late 3.5 was the best thing that ever happened to D&D. It took very important steps to solving D&D's issues - somewhat unsteady ones, unpolished, but nothing is ever perfect the first time around.
Martial adepts were a good foundation for Fighter-type characters, even if they floundered after level 11-13 - that was still better than the Fighter who ceased to be useful around level 5. Building up to Path of War and updating the skill system to include skill tricks (including high-level superhuman ones) would've fixed that, too.
Speaking of skill tricks — 3.5 introduced them. Again, not perfect, somewhat underpowered, but decent nonetheless.
Limited casters broke the mold of "build your own caster" BS with Wizards and Clerics.
Binders and Incarnum and Warlocks provided a very interesting niche of highly customizable characters with almost/at-will powers, which were far more balanced than the X/day structure could be.

Meanwhile, 5e discarded all the progress made and went back to 3.5's corebook, the worst part of the edition by far. I don't know why (early playtests indicated that 4e wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back), and I'm sad to see that it's brought WotC so much success, they probably won't relinquish that formula ever again.

[Psyren]

TL;DR: Fighters still only ever cause damage and take damage in ways that are the same from level 1 to 20, only with better to-hit, damage and more attacks. The monsters that used to be able to play with different tactics, now play the same as Fighter, relying mostly on damage and toughness, while having almost no additional abilities that aren't "more damage in a different pattern".

The 3.5 Fighters could Ubercharge that dragon into paste, and invisibility is a joke at level 20. I did say they were underpowered if you're playing core-only, but which unfortunate souls are doing that in 2021?

As for 5e monsters having simpler tactics - I don't know if you noticed, but the whole game is simpler than 3e, that was kind of the point. Feature, not bug.


I'm sad to see that it's brought WotC so much success, they probably won't relinquish that formula ever again.

Thank the gods.

[Ignimortis]

The 3.5 Fighters could Ubercharge that dragon into paste, and invisibility is a joke at level 20. I did say they were underpowered if you're playing core-only, but which unfortunate souls are doing that in 2021?

As for 5e monsters having simpler tactics - I don't know if you noticed, but the whole game is simpler than 3e, that was kind of the point. Feature, not bug.


Yes, the 3.5 Fighter could. Because WBL actually lets them have flight they need to charge, and a way to see invisible creatures. The 5e Fighter couldn't, because a Ring of True Seeing or anything of the sort is not ever guaranteed. That was the whole purpose of this thought experiment — to demonstrate that 5e creatures are, pardon my bluntness, dumbed down versions of 3.5 creatures. I do believe that at least in part it's this way because otherwise the Fighter might be even more of a hindrance at high levels than they were in 3.5 without a dedicated build that lets them do at least one thing well.



Thank the gods.

What for? For the game stagnating and being held back by things that have caused arguments since the dawn of internet D&D forums? Excuse me if I do not share the sentiment that D&D, being "the world's greatest roleplaying game" (the cover says so) is fine as it is, especially with 5e.

[Sneak Dog]

But there are plenty of non-divine examples for casters too. Milamber. Prospero. Stephen Strange. Jaina Proudmoore. Harry Potter. All got their power through innate talent and study, not biological lineage, because the power of the setting itself is what they learned how to shape. There's a path there that players and DMs can expect characters to be able to follow just by taking up a chosen profession. The same is not true of Hercules, Achilles, or Roland - but all you need to do to make those work is add just one other (optional) system and you're good to go.

What I don't understand is why there is such an aversion to doing that, when it solves the problem. "My father is a god and I reached puberty" or "my mother held me by the ankle and dipped me in an extraplanar river as a baby" may not be adequately represented in D&D by class, but that doesn't mean they can't be represented in D&D at all.

It should be baked into the class, so that everyone is roughly level when they're the same level. Not just in combat, but also in the exploration and social pillars. Some variance is fine, but outliers are bad. Some games feature a lot more of one pillar than the others, and a class serving that pillar better would be unbalanced. If you disagree here, I'd like to argue that the fighter should be about twice as effective in combat. They're, after all, a fighter. Make them as good at fighting as the bard is at... whatever skill they do. Which is +proficiency, advantage and d6 better than most other people trying to do so at level 3.

Also, by not giving certain classes the tools to be that awesome, while still remaining perfectly viable in combat (props 5e for getting combat balance decently right) gets you the captain hobo problem. A barbarian is still doing the same feats of strength at level 15 than at level 5. They've not progressed much, really. They primarily have some more damage and hit points. However, your wizard has gone from a tiny sleet storm for a minute to a 5 mile actual storm for 8 hours.
Yet they both handle a dragon just as well. Your storm summoning wizard is somehow as powerful as this barbarian who is weaker than your summoned bigby's hand of five levels ago. (While their greatest pride is their physical strength no less!) Your mighty spells are as good as this somewhat strong person smacking the foe with a club.

In another system, this is called the captain hobo problem. You can fluff your characters any way you wanted and powers were built by the players, so you could have cyclops with laser eyes dealing as much damage as a homeless person throwing rusty forks. GM make sure the fluff matches the power level when checking the characters was the advice there, but it's a build-your-own-class system.

A barbarian shouldn't have a mere 24 strength and advantage on strength checks. They should break bounded accuracy for strength checks because they're that strong. They shouldn't have a single percent of chance of failing against a 12 strength farmer at level 5 or so, and competitive in a tug of war with a level appropriate monster. Be it bear, giant or dragon. They shouldn't be weaker than a wizard spell.
And if the fluff is that they're big tough people that became so tough because they overcome the challenges of a primitive life of wrestling bears, giants and dragons, great. Solid fluff. Fits right in next to the cleric praying to deities, the wizard studying magic really hard, the sorcerer having a magic bloodline, the monk studying themselves really hard and the fighter studying fighting really hard.

[GreyBlack]

This doesn't make sense because you're drawing a false equivalency. It would be like if I told you not to commit murder and you responded with, "Let's turn it around: 'Kill everyone!' See how silly that sounds?"

Casters having things to do outside of combat is not an issue. In general, classes having things to do outside of combat is not an issue. The issue is some classes not having things to do outside of combat. Curbing spellcasting is only a partial solution; it won't give martials more things to do outside of combat. Taking away utility options will generally make the game less fun because it shrinks the toolbox that the players have to deal with problems. Adding new options is more fun, because it gives them new toys to play with.

This is also why buffs are generally better received than nerfs; the only time people welcome a nerf is when the ability being nerfed really did make the game less fun because of how strong it was. But even then, it's because it reduced player options; when you're handed a shiny golden tool (i.e. one OP ability), all of the ratty wooden tools in your toolbox no longer seem to be worth using. You'll use the golden tool for everything, and that's not fun because now you only have one real tool. This is a big reason why game balance is important: you want different options to be equally viable so that the players feel like there's a real choice to be made. If one choice is the obvious right choice, that's not fun. So even a well-applied nerf is still meant to increase player options by making everything else more viable compared to that one overpowered ability.

I feel like an easy option system would be something like, "Classes A, B, and C all gain a mythic boon at levels X, Y, and Z; classes D and E (e.g. half casters) get mythic boons at levels V and W. Here's a list of mythic boons you can choose." And then it's things like triple carry capacity, triple jump height/distance, see normally out to a mile, get two additional exhaustion levels that act as buffers, double overland travel speed, Revivify with a difficult Medicine check and a healer's kit, and so on. I mean, it could be the really mythical stuff, but it could also be tamer stuff like this.


Let's turn it around, then: Why do spellcasters get all these cool spells, but martials don't get anything? Codifying spells into the class progression means you don't have to rely on the DM for handouts, nor is the martial player justified in feeling resentment since they knew what your class features were and still chose to play a martial anyway.

See how that sounds? That's the exact logic being used right now for why martial characters should get a buff where spellcasters don't need one.

That said, the boons system is more something I'd advocate for over a traditional magic treasure system rather than a "This is how you buff martial characters" system; boons grant a sense that your character is unique and more powerful than average, while magic items always feel too precious to use. If I were to do something like this, I'd probably go more for a "Fighting manual" system for treasures that I outlined earlier in this thread where the fighters can find various hidden techniques lost to the ages and learn those as opposed to just giving flat buffs. Yes, I know you'd say that is too reliant on DM fiat, but, let's be real here: everything is dependent on DM fiat. Honestly, I think we could do with the DM saying "No" to casters more solely because casters are trying to use spells in "cute" ways that the spell doesn't actually intend. Examples include the Grease spell, which you shouldn't be able to use on specific items and such, yet players will frequently do anyway.

I've added the bold for emphasis. You're responding to a point I'm not making.

[GreyBlack]

Do you like ToB? I did. Martials with loads of buttons. Felt strong. You could make a character that did a lot even if they were superficially just a guy with a sword. Sure the crusader had maneuvers that were spells in all but name, but the narration of what they were doing at any moment didn't prevent the crusader from feeling normal compared to the party Beguiler.

One great moment was a magically sealed door at mid level made of adamantine. Casters didn't have the right spells prepared. Crusader just cut right though it.

Now that's 3.5. probably wouldn't work here and I'll grant that tob was contentious. (I'll argue it's the best dang thing in 3.5) but come on, there has to be some way to give a list of options that provide martials with scaling out of combat bonuses. There's absolutely no reason fighters should be picking from the same feats at 16th level.

We can quibble about how and to what extent. But I don't think it should be arguable that barbarians need to be total lumps out of combat.

I have complicated feelings on ToB. On one hand, there was a problem with martial characters in 3.5, and I think ToB went a long way to fixing it. On the other hand, in order to fix 3.5's martial character problem, I think they had to go further and create literal superhero classes (like, Silver Age Superman level classes) in order to be on par with the casters in that edition.

I don't think we have that problem in 5e, though, and implementing a TOB type deal into 5e is fixing a problem which does not exist. Currently, I'd argue that all of the 5e classes are somewhere between a 3.5 Tier 2 and Tier 4. No class is the absurd brokenness that was the 3.5 Erudite or Artificer, but no class is as bad as the Truenamer or CW Samurai. Would it be nice if all of the classes were more unified? Maybe, but the variation isn't a super big problem like it was.

Not every class has to be good at everything, not every player has to be able to do every job. Sometimes, you just need a fighter who's good at fighting. If you need a fighter who does other stuff, there are subclasses like the Purple Dragon Knight or Rune Knight.

So, all this talk about giving high level non-casters super abilities? It'd be nice, but solutions like a 5e ToB are a solution in need of a problem.

[tokek]

I just want to say something with regard to some of the mythic examples that have been referred to.

Some of them should not be pure martial characters.

Lancelot was the archetypal Paladin all the way back in 1st edition and that whole thing where they lost their paladin features if they broke their oath (could not keep it in their trousers) was at least in part inspired by his story. In AD&D he was a level 20 paladin and its quite easy to model how a level 20 paladin does astonishing mythic things as per the legends.

Aragorn? Works for me as a Ranger. Can defeat armies by using Fear spell to break the lines at which point they can never focus enough force on him to win - he shatters their lines then defeats them in detail with his far superior one-on-one skills.

The flavour for these might be a bit different to the default flavour in the game but the game also quite explicitly tells you to reflavour things to suit your character and your game.

[Psyren]

Yes, the 3.5 Fighter could. Because WBL actually lets them have flight they need to charge, and a way to see invisible creatures. The 5e Fighter couldn't, because a Ring of True Seeing or anything of the sort is not ever guaranteed. That was the whole purpose of this thought experiment — to demonstrate that 5e creatures are, pardon my bluntness, dumbed down versions of 3.5 creatures. I do believe that at least in part it's this way because otherwise the Fighter might be even more of a hindrance at high levels than they were in 3.5 without a dedicated build that lets them do at least one thing well.

Yes, they wanted to move away from guaranteed WBL and needing highly-specific capabilities (like flight) to compete at high levels. And yes, the monsters at each tier of play were aligned with that goal. It's almost like they were (gasp) designing a game. Imagine that!


What for? For the game stagnating and being held back by things that have caused arguments since the dawn of internet D&D forums? Excuse me if I do not share the sentiment that D&D, being "the world's greatest roleplaying game" (the cover says so) is fine as it is, especially with 5e.

5e is "stagnating" relative to 3e? Pull the other one?

I never said 5e was "fine as it is." I'm in fact looking forward to 5.5, maybe they'll un-crap the Monk. And contrary to what some in this thread might think, I do want nice things for martials. I just don't think those nice things need to include moving rivers and cutting memories.

So no, I don't think 5e is perfect. But I think it was extremely innovative in terms of being willing to simplify in order to broaden the hobby, while still maintaining a level of depth that rewards system mastery. And more importantly, it's not afraid to come up with unique and flavorful magic to give to martials without turning them into just more spellcasters (see Echo Knight and Astral Form.)

[Ignimortis]

Yes, they wanted to move away from guaranteed WBL and needing highly-specific capabilities (like flight) to compete at high levels. And yes, the monsters at each tier of play were aligned with that goal. It's almost like they were (gasp) designing a game. Imagine that!

And they arrived at the design that basically means "you can just keep up the same tactics you had at level 1, and still win" for many high-level fights. Why am I playing a level 20 character, again?



5e is "stagnating" relative to 3e? Pull the other one?

I never said 5e was "fine as it is." I'm in fact looking forward to 5.5, maybe they'll un-crap the Monk. And contrary to what some in this thread might think, I do want nice things for martials. I just don't think those nice things need to include moving rivers and cutting memories.

So no, I don't think 5e is perfect. But I think it was extremely innovative in terms of being willing to simplify in order to broaden the hobby, while still maintaining a level of depth that rewards system mastery. And more importantly, it's not afraid to come up with unique and flavorful magic to give to martials without turning them into just more spellcasters (see Echo Knight and Astral Form.)

5e is very much stagnant, because it took the worst parts of 3.5 and ignored almost everything that 3.5 did to redeem itself afterwards — and does very little to advance itself on it's own terms. Echo Knight is very nice in concept, but it's burdened by being a Fighter subclass, which means that Echo Knight is the only remotely exciting thing going on there, and you're still going to mostly "I attack" every problem you face, just in a more narratively fancy way.

Besides, it's been 7 years, and we've seen one new class release and a bunch of subclasses, out of which maybe half are worthwhile at all. 3.5 did have a lot of sketchy or even bad content, but it also wasn't afraid to try new things and add new subsystems — 3e lasted for less than 8 years total, and yet did so much more than 5e in almost the same timeframe.

Touting simplification to broaden the appeal as "innovative" makes me laugh. It's what everyone's been doing for the last dozen years or so, including other tabletop and videogames. I can't say it's had a wholly positive outcome in most cases. D&D certainly lost so much depth, it's now a water-filled hole two feet deep and a few feet wide, and while it makes sure that you can't sink, swimming in it is rather hard. I'm not arguing for 3.5's complexity wholesale, but there is certainly a middle point between 3.5's stormy sea and 5e's puddle.

Personally, I don't need moving rivers and cutting memories (in D&D), I'd be fine with something on the level of Path of War - but I would also slam dunk caster power, too. More limited caster classes, no spells like Wish in the game at all, and generally limit everyone to circa 6th spell level or less. Revivify, not Resurrection. Dimension Door, not Teleport. Augury, not Scrying. Then dial monster power and certain rules back up to encourage (not necessitate, PF2 overdoes it) proper positioning, tactical thinking, application of buffs/debuffs, and switching up strategies to deal with different enemies. Casters do not need half of what they get. If someone wants Wish or Gate or Clone, they can get it at epic levels (includes mythic-scale actions for martials, release date TBD ;)).

[Brookshw]

Besides, it's been 7 years, and we've seen one new class release and a bunch of subclasses, out of which maybe half are worthwhile at all. 3.5 did have a lot of sketchy or even bad content, but it also wasn't afraid to try new things and add new subsystems — 3e lasted for less than 8 years total, and yet did so much more than 5e in almost the same timeframe.


3e crumbled under its own weight as an overly complex, often broken, crunchy system, that was a great barrier to newcomers while being massively frustrating for many players and DMs alike at high level. "Lots of stuff" doesn't mean anything other than WoTC wanted people to keep spending money and didn't care about the quality of what they were putting out. I'll take 5e's slower, playtested, and surveyed process any day.

[strangebloke]

Not every class has to be good at everything, not every player has to be able to do every job. Sometimes, you just need a fighter who's good at fighting. If you need a fighter who does other stuff, there are subclasses like the Purple Dragon Knight or Rune Knight.

So, all this talk about giving high level non-casters super abilities? It'd be nice, but solutions like a 5e ToB are a solution in need of a problem.

Not every class has to be good at everything but every class should be good at something. I don't think people who play barbarians would be seriously upset if you gave them some cool things they could do out of combat. I don't think, for example, that every barbarian getting to pick from the totem barbarian's 6th level ribbon abilities would upset anyone. The problem with ToB as a solution here isn't that

If we can at least agree that there is a lack of out of combat features for martials, particularly at high levels, then we're only disagreeing about the extent and framing of such things, and we can work together to figure out some solution that works for everyone.


And they arrived at the design that basically means "you can just keep up the same tactics you had at level 1, and still win" for many high-level fights. Why am I playing a level 20 character, again?

You can solve this to an extent as a DM by using the 5e monsters' abilities cleverly (which is imo more fun anyway) but full disclosure I do generally see people multiclassing away from martials at my table. Really makes you think!

[Psyren]

And they arrived at the design that basically means "you can just keep up the same tactics you had at level 1, and still win" for many high-level fights. Why am I playing a level 20 character, again?

If you want a more "exciting" subclass like Battle Master or Eldritch Knight, then retrain to it using those rules. Trying to take Champion and Samurai away from the people that like those subclasses accomplishes nothing.

And if none of them appeal to you, complaining on an unrelated message board is hardly going to result in anything useful.


Echo Knight is the only remotely exciting thing going on there

Hard no.


Besides, it's been 7 years, and we've seen one new class release and a bunch of subclasses, out of which maybe half are worthwhile at all. 3.5 did have a lot of sketchy or even bad content, but it also wasn't afraid to try new things and add new subsystems — 3e lasted for less than 8 years total, and yet did so much more than 5e in almost the same timeframe.

I'd rather have targeted updates that go through adequate testing and iterations, than gallons of effluent/bloat with the occasional good nugget. D&D is finally at a point where they can take their time between books.


Touting simplification to broaden the appeal as "innovative" makes me laugh. It's what everyone's been doing for the last dozen years or so, including other tabletop and videogames.

Correction, it's what everyone is trying to do. 5e actually succeeded at it, and the hobby is larger than ever. And obviously I disagree on 5e being a "puddle" - Champion being simple does not mean it's the only subclass you have to play.

“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” - Albert Einstein


Personally, I don't need moving rivers and cutting memories (in D&D), I'd be fine with something on the level of Path of War - but I would also slam dunk caster power, too. More limited caster classes, no spells like Wish in the game at all, and generally limit everyone to circa 6th spell level or less. Revivify, not Resurrection. Dimension Door, not Teleport. Augury, not Scrying. Then dial monster power and certain rules back up to encourage (not necessitate, PF2 overdoes it) proper positioning, tactical thinking, application of buffs/debuffs, and switching up strategies to deal with different enemies. Casters do not need half of what they get. If someone wants Wish or Gate or Clone, they can get it at epic levels (includes mythic-scale actions for martials, release date TBD ;)).

If this is what you want, there's a great game you'll love called 4th edition, have at it.

[Jakinbandw]

Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGC6325zbGE
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVXnFlKu02Y

So I've linked above the kind of things I would love to see from fighters in 5e. I'm curious why such a character couldn't hang with a wizard, but also why it the game doesn't allow cool stunts like it as baseline stuff that fighters can do.

And yes, he wields 2 magic weapons in this, but if Fighters need to rely on magic to keep up, why not give them abilities that let them find more magical treasure that only they can use in treasure hordes and such? Why not make it an actual feature where they put together and unseal old magic items no one else can use or even know about?

I just feel that there is a lot of untapped room for fighters in dnd.

[Talakeal]

I think putting the word "anime" in the thread title has kind of preemptively derailed the thread.

Personally, I am not sure how one would make a game feel more "anime" to begin with; a specific anime maybe, but anime in general? No idea, although that might actually be a really interesting discussion if anyone wants to broach it.


As for the topic at hand, this seems to be yet another incarnation of the "people who like playing traditional martial characters at high level are having badwrongfun" that is showing every couple of weeks anymore, and about which there are at least three other threads currently active. And while I have more detailed responses elsewhere, in short I feel like D&D is abstract enough that you can visualize it however you like, and what is important is too add more options to the game rather than taking them away.


I do agree that martial characters and high level monsters could use a bit of a pick up, but its not a huge deal, and its more about bounded accuracy and a desire for simplistic rules than any actual martial / caster disparity. I am curious though about what exactly the 3.5 red dragon has that the 5E one doesn't; as aside from spell-casting being optional the 5E version seems to have everything that the 3E one does plus more. I also note that neither has the oft cited ability to swim through lava (something that would be absolutely impossible due to strength alone due to the weight and viscosity of lava) and that they explicitly do not annihilate enemies from the air so as to avoid destroying treasure.

[Brookshw]

So I've linked above the kind of things I would love to see from fighters in 5e. I'm curious why such a character couldn't hang with a wizard, but also why it the game doesn't allow cool stunts like it as baseline stuff that fighters can do.

And yes, he wields 2 magic weapons in this, but if Fighters need to rely on magic to keep up, why not give them abilities that let them find more magical treasure that only they can use in treasure hordes and such? Why not make it an actual feature where they put together and unseal old magic items no one else can use or even know about?

I just feel that there is a lot of untapped room for fighters in dnd.

He attacked with a flaming reach weapon, second winded, action surged, made some athletics check, then attacked with another weapon. Which thing aren't fighters doing? :smallconfused:

[Jakinbandw]

He attacked with a flaming reach weapon, second winded, action surged, made some athletics check, then attacked with another weapon. Which thing aren't fighters doing? :smallconfused:

I've never seen or heard of fighters allowed to run on debris thrown into the air to get an areal advantage. I've also never heard or or seen fighters able to use their attacks to allow them to take a hide action, reposition, then attack again.

In fact If this forum is to be believed, he couldn't have attacked in the first place as his foe was more than 10 feet away from him.

Also, as a fighter, he has no class features that give him access to a flaming weapon, or a one hit kill blade (that he is the only one able to recognize, build, and use, even with 2 other scholars in the party, one a full fledged mage). So most of his equipment feels like it is something fighters should have, but they rely on the gm being kind to them, rather than having class features that make that fantasy possible.

[GreyBlack]

Not every class has to be good at everything but every class should be good at something. I don't think people who play barbarians would be seriously upset if you gave them some cool things they could do out of combat. I don't think, for example, that every barbarian getting to pick from the totem barbarian's 6th level ribbon abilities would upset anyone. The problem with ToB as a solution here isn't that

If we can at least agree that there is a lack of out of combat features for martials, particularly at high levels, then we're only disagreeing about the extent and framing of such things, and we can work together to figure out some solution that works for everyone.



Totem Warrior Barbarians can cast Beast Sense and Speak to Animals out of combat, Ancestal Guardian Barbarians can cast Augury and Clairvoyance, Storm Soul can breathe underwater, Wild Magic can sense magic around them within 60 feet without even using a spell slot... these are all things for a martial character to do out of combat. That's not even getting into the Rogue, Fighter, and Monk's abilities to do weird stuff.

Which, again, leads back to my point: Not every class has to be good at everything. It's okay to let them have situational abilities like that. You have subclasses to fill in gaps that a class's base features don't necessarily cover.

And that's fine.

[Psyren]

^ Moreover, the "reach weapon" in question is his ancestral Morning Star Whip, which in D&D terms would probably be Legendary (both Carmilla and Dracula himself feared it, on top of it being able to harm Death), or whenever they get around to updating the Legacy Weapon rules. So any other preternatural abilities he displayed during the fight could easily be attributed to that.

EDIT: Oh, and he was using the Holy Dagger as well, which was "empowered by God" per the show. Make of that what you will.

[Jakinbandw]

Moreover, the "reach weapon" in question is his ancestral Morning Star Whip, which in D&D terms would probably be Legendary (both Carmilla and Dracula himself feared it, on top of it being able to harm Death), or whenever they get around to updating the Legacy Weapon rules. So any other preternatural abilities he displayed during the fight could easily be attributed to that.

I mean, he didn't have it when he did his run across flying debris, or used the flame it made to hide. So that suggests that at least those important mobility things aren't part of any affect it would have on him.

[Psyren]

I mean, he didn't have it when he did his run across flying debris, or used the flame it made to hide. So that suggests that at least those important mobility things aren't part of any affect it would have on him.

He had both weapons (and his magic whip) while fighting Death, which was the video you linked.

(And even if he had thrown them or something, he was still attuned.)

[strangebloke]

Totem Warrior Barbarians can cast Beast Sense and Speak to Animals out of combat, Ancestal Guardian Barbarians can cast Augury and Clairvoyance, Storm Soul can breathe underwater, Wild Magic can sense magic around them within 60 feet without even using a spell slot... these are all things for a martial character to do out of combat. That's not even getting into the Rogue, Fighter, and Monk's abilities to do weird stuff.

Which, again, leads back to my point: Not every class has to be good at everything. It's okay to let them have situational abilities like that. You have subclasses to fill in gaps that a class's base features don't necessarily cover.

And that's fine.

Barbarians aren't good at anything. At best specific subclasses get late access to ritual spells and aren't even that good in their niche of melee combat outside of T1.

It's terrible and I'm shocked to see people defending it.

Is there anything lost in replicated the scarebarian builds of 3.5? Wouldn't most people agree those were pretty fun?

[Brookshw]

I've never seen or heard of fighters allowed to run on debris thrown into the air to get an areal advantage. I've also never heard or or seen fighters able to use their attacks to allow them to take a hide action, reposition, then attack again. Planes of air, time, manifestation points in Eberron, etc, that's a terrain feature, there was stuff whizzing around at the beginning of the fight.


In fact If this forum is to be believed, he couldn't have attacked in the first place as his foe was more than 10 feet away from him. If D&D is to be believed, that would have to be a custom magic item in the first place, so sure, have whatever range was homebrewed.


Also, as a fighter, he has no class features that give him access to a flaming weapon, or a one hit kill blade (that he is the only one able to recognize, build, and use, even with 2 other scholars in the party, one a full fledged mage). So most of his equipment feels like it is something fighters should have, but they rely on the gm being kind to them, rather than having class features that make that fantasy possible. They don't rely upon the DM to give it to them out of kindness, they rely upon the loot tables as outlined in the DMG.

[Jakinbandw]

If D&D is to be believed, that would have to be a custom magic item in the first place, so sure, have whatever range was homebrewed.

They don't rely upon the DM to give it to them out of kindness, they rely upon the loot tables as outlined in the DMG.

So when was the last time you saw a custom homebrew fire whip with a 50' range as random loot that only the a fighter was allowed to use in the loot tables of the dmg?

This is exactly why I say that this fight can't happen in dnd.

[Psyren]

So most of his equipment feels like it is something fighters should have, but they rely on the gm being kind to them, rather than having class features that make that fantasy possible.

You shouldn't be able to rely solely on class features to become Trevor Belmont, because not every fighter (or Fighter/Ranger, Fighter/Rogue etc) should become Trevor Belmont. Not every fighter is descended from a long line of vampire hunters with an ancestral weapon passed down from sire to scion, and D&D equipment rules don't assume that anyway. Nor does class represent you being a scion of a highly specific family lineage.

[strangebloke]

Saying "You can embody the cool archetype in your head if the DM gives you a special magic item. Why don't you ask them nicely honey?" is such a patronizing response to the statement that a class is lacking almost any kind of playstyle customization.

not every fighter needs to be Trevor Belmont. Or Hercules. Or Cu Chullain. But a player should be able to say "I want to be like that," build a character, and be that (or eventually become that) without relying on the DM to specifically equip them and enable them to do so. And sure, people should be able to have the opportunity to just be a guy with a greatsword who attacks over and over but there's no reason that needs to be the only option. It helps no one to cut customization out of the game.

[Jakinbandw]

Nor does class represent you being a scion of a highly specific family lineage.

Sorcerer does.

But sure, not every fighter. That's why we have subclasses. So 5e should have a subclass that let's me play as a decendant of a long line of monster hunters with special training and beginning the game with a legacy weapon, and the ability to identify and find magic items better than the parties mage who has access to detect magic and identify.

[Psyren]

Sorcerer does.

No, it doesn't. This might surprise you, but there's more than one line of dragons in the game, many more. There are not multiple Belmont families. The "but sorcerer!" argument as a response to Hercules and Trevor and whoever else continually falls flat.


Saying "You can embody the cool archetype in your head if the DM gives you a special magic item. Why don't you ask them nicely honey?" is such a patronizing response to the statement that a class is lacking almost any kind of playstyle customization.

If your "cool archetype" relies on replicating somebody that explicitly uses a special magic item (along with being descended from a singular bloodline on top of that), I'm genuinely not sure what other response you could have been expecting.

[Brookshw]

So when was the last time you saw a custom homebrew fire whip with a 50' range as random loot that only the a fighter was allowed to use in the loot tables of the dmg?

This is exactly why I say that this fight can't happen in dnd.

Sure it can, it would just be whatever weapon came off the loot tables.


So 5e should have a subclass that let's me play as a decendant of a long line of monster hunters with special training and beginning the game with a legacy weapon, and the ability to identify and find magic items better than the parties mage who has access to detect magic and identify.

If you're expecting that level of emulation we need a different subclass for every character in any action movie/video game/anime/comic/etc. Seems like a really tall order.

[GreyBlack]

Barbarians aren't good at anything. At best specific subclasses get late access to ritual spells and aren't even that good in their niche of melee combat outside of T1.

It's terrible and I'm shocked to see people defending it.

Is there anything lost in replicated the scarebarian builds of 3.5? Wouldn't most people agree those were pretty fun?

Ancestral Guardian: 10th level:

At 10th level, you gain the ability to consult with your ancestral spirits. When you do so, you cast the Augury or Clairvoyance spell, without using a spell slot or material components. Rather than creating a spherical sensor, this use of Clairvoyance invisibly summons one of your ancestral spirits to the chosen location. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Storm Herald: 6th level:

At 6th level, the storm grants you benefits even when your aura isn't active. The benefits are based on the environment you chose for your Storm Aura.

Desert. You gain resistance to fire damage, and you don’t suffer the effects of extreme heat, as described in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Moreover, as an action, you can touch a flammable object that isn't being worn or carried by anyone else and set it on fire.

Sea. You gain resistance to lightning damage, and you can breathe underwater. You also gain a swimming speed of 30 feet.

Tundra. You gain resistance to cold damage, and you don’t suffer the effects of extreme cold, as described in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Moreover, as an action, you can touch water and turn a 5-foot cube of it into ice, which melts after 1 minute. This action fails if a creature is in the cube.

Totem Barbarian: 3rd Level:

Yours is a path that seeks attunement with the natural world, giving you a kinship with beasts. At 3rd level when you adopt this path, you gain the ability to cast the Beast Sense and Speak with Animals spells, but only as rituals.

Wild Magic: 3rd Level:

When you choose this path at 3rd level, as an action, you can open your awareness to the presence of concentrated magic. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any spell or magic item within 60 feet of you that isn’t behind total cover. When you sense a spell, you learn which school of magic it belongs to.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Last I checked, level 3 was not late access to ritual spells.

Barbarian is also probably the worst at out of combat stuff, but that isn't a bad thing. Sometimes, all you want to do is play a guy who goes into a blind rage and starts throwing mountains. That said, to say that there's nothing for a barbarian to do outside of combat is very disingenuous; there's plenty that they can do. It's just a question of the player being willing to use those abilities.

[strangebloke]

If your "cool archetype" relies on replicating somebody that explicitly uses a special magic item (along with being descended from a singular bloodline on top of that), I'm genuinely not sure what other response you could have been expecting.

There is so much precedent for magical bloodlines and items as class features and your continued insistence to the contrary doesn't change anything.

Besides which, its unneeded I don't need to be from a grand lineage to be a Belmont or Hercules. As long as I can do the things he can do and I feel like a cool guy, that's enough.

[Jakinbandw]

No, it doesn't. This might surprise you, but there's more than one line of dragons in the game, many more. There are not multiple Belmont families. The "but sorcerer!" argument as a response to Hercules and Trevor and whoever else continually falls flat.
Because in dnd there would only be one single family in the entire world dedicated to fighting monsters. 9_9



If your "cool archetype" relies on replicating somebody that explicitly uses a special magic item (along with being descended from a singular bloodline on top of that), I'm genuinely not sure what other response you could have been expecting.
I expect to be able to play someone cool and interesting with cool weapons and useful abilities.

Saying: "Oh that's possible, but your never allowed to do it," while there are classes built around having Magic weapons (hexblade) and having a special liniage (sorcerer) feels like you want to keep anything special only for spellcasters and out of the hands of martials.

[strangebloke]

Barbarian is also probably the worst at out of combat stuff, but that isn't a bad thing. Sometimes, all you want to do is play a guy who goes into a blind rage and starts throwing mountains. That said, to say that there's nothing for a barbarian to do outside of combat is very disingenuous; there's plenty that they can do. It's just a question of the player being willing to use those abilities.

I don't think I will ever agree with the notion that being mediocre in your niche and bad everywhere else is good design in an edition where nearly every class is a generalist to some degree and some classes are supergeneralists that can do everything. I further will never agree with the notion that a barbarian not getting to make any significant decisions beyond subclass options and limited feat choices are a good thing.

I like playing noncaster martials. Love it, in fact. I conceptually love being a relatively normal guy in a party of superpowered freaks. There are zero noncasting classes or subclasses that are satisfying to me, and I've observed every single martial player I've ever had except one multiclass into casting or retire their character before t3. I play a lot of DND, this is my 4th campaign getting into t3 now, and its one of the most clear-cut trends I've observed. The argument that there's this huge well, this huge majority of people who want to be a brick from levels 1 to 20 is, AFAICT, completely unsupported, and it really just feels like there's a lot of DMs and caster players who just meanspiritedly don't want martials to have buttons.

The most you can claim IMO is that there are people who are okay with lacking basic OOC options or customization. I really don't think you can argue that such people want things to be such a way.

[Psyren]

There is so much precedent for magical bloodlines and items as class features and your continued insistence to the contrary doesn't change anything.

Besides which, its unneeded I don't need to be from a grand lineage to be a Belmont or Hercules. As long as I can do the things he can do and I feel like a cool guy, that's enough.


Because in dnd there would only be one single family in the entire world dedicated to fighting monsters. 9_9p

An item or bloodline as a class feature, sure.

Trevor Belmont's items and bloodline - custom.


I expect to be able to play someone cool and interesting with cool weapons and useful abilities.

Good news! There's this game called D&D that lets you do that.

Your problem is that you want to play one specific person who explicitly does not rely solely on his class, by relying solely on class. That's the disconnect.

[JackPhoenix]

I've never seen or heard of fighters allowed to run on debris thrown into the air to get an areal advantage. I've also never heard or or seen fighters able to use their attacks to allow them to take a hide action, reposition, then attack again.

That has nothing to do with fighters, but how turn-based combat in D&D works. Either nobody can run on debris thrown in the air because the debris fall effectively instantly, or anyone can try, if it stays in the air long enough. And attack, hide, move and attack is simply a matter of multiple turns. Or not, fighter can actually do that in a single turn with Action Surge.


Also, as a fighter, he has no class features that give him access to a flaming weapon, or a one hit kill blade (that he is the only one able to recognize, build, and use, even with 2 other scholars in the party, one a full fledged mage). So most of his equipment feels like it is something fighters should have, but they rely on the gm being kind to them, rather than having class features that make that fantasy possible.

Why would that need to be a class feature, though? Not to mention that EK *does* have a class feature that gives him access to a flaming weapon. As for recognizing, building and using the weapon (I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know specifics) a fighter can absolutely roll better Arcana check than a wizard (though there are people on this forum who wants to stop that by making it trained only, or worse, make it class-dependant, because barbarians can't know something wizards don't) and have proficiencies required to craft it and use it.


But sure, not every fighter. That's why we have subclasses. So 5e should have a subclass that let's me play as a decendant of a long line of monster hunters with special training and beginning the game with a legacy weapon, and the ability to identify and find magic items better than the parties mage who has access to detect magic and identify.

That's awfully specific, though. Should 5e have a subclass for any possible character from a piece of fiction that ISN'T D&D? Because that would be one thick rulebook....

[Rukelnikov]

3e crumbled under its own weight as an overly complex, often broken, crunchy system, that was a great barrier to newcomers while being massively frustrating for many players and DMs alike at high level. "Lots of stuff" doesn't mean anything other than WoTC wanted people to keep spending money and didn't care about the quality of what they were putting out. I'll take 5e's slower, playtested, and surveyed process any day.

Wizards could be printing double what they do or more. However its not only that 3e had "more stuff" its the complexity of it.

I played a lot of "High Level" 3.x in the 17-25 range, and some even reaching 30s (highest level party member I had was ECL 33, I was 28 with 3 Artifacts, highest level PC I DMed was Divine Rank 3). The sheer ammount of abilities each character had, meant that every round the ammount of possibility each player or monster had was staggering, this lead to some reaaaaaaaaally long turns, and it would become tedious when someone used an area typed buff and each ally (PCs and NPCs) has to check how much was the bonus they currently had of that type.

There was a combat we had as a level 17 somewhat prepped 6 man party against a White Great Wyrm who gated a Lich who in turn gated a Titan, and then gated a Balor that summoned another Balor. We had a Plannar Allied Tulani and gated a Titan, I had what was essentially a simulacrum (fission psionic power), and during the fight our summoner brought some more creatures.

Summons had their own summons, we were fighting by proxy, and by that point had come full circle to wargames.

I think the bounded idea of 5e permeates to more than just the accuracy, the range of complexity is bounded, and, for me, the quality of the games too. The best 5e has offered me has never felt nearly as good as the best 3e has, but the worst 5e has given me has been much better than the worst 3e has. 5e is a more consistent edition.


Not every class has to be good at everything but every class should be good at something. I don't think people who play barbarians would be seriously upset if you gave them some cool things they could do out of combat. I don't think, for example, that every barbarian getting to pick from the totem barbarian's 6th level ribbon abilities would upset anyone. The problem with ToB as a solution here isn't that

With an Elven Archer Ranger/Barbarian I was trying to port from 3e I honest went Totem for the Eagle 1 mile vision, that kind of stuff should be more widely available for all Barbarians, and Rangers tbh too.


If we can at least agree that there is a lack of out of combat features for martials, particularly at high levels, then we're only disagreeing about the extent and framing of such things, and we can work together to figure out some solution that works for everyone.

I think most of the people commenting on this thread agree that non casters need more stuff to play with out of combat, the questions are what, how and when.

[Psyren]

I think most of the people commenting on this thread agree that non combatants need more stuff to play with out of combat, the questions are what, how and when.

Indeed, and I've provided ideas here and elsewhere (that aren't moving rivers, stealing concepts and cutting dreams.)

[Jakinbandw]

An item or bloodline as a class feature, sure.

Trevor Belmont's items and bloodline - custom.

Cool, that's fine. I just want something as strong. Maybe a holy sword that can extend a sword of light out to 50 feet when I swing it hitting every foe in that area, or how about a mace that transforms into a cannon that shoots bursts of shrapenal? I'm arguing for power and scale, not specificity.



There's this game called D&D that lets you do that.

Except it doesn't. You've specifically stated that the cool martial things I'm looking for need to be a custom weapon, and that such things shouldn't be worked out with the gm, that I should only what gets rolled up on a treasure table.

[strangebloke]

Except it doesn't. You've specifically stated that the cool martial things I'm looking for need to be a custom weapon, and that such things shouldn't be worked out with the gm, that I should only what gets rolled up on a treasure table.

And that you shouldn't rely on getting any magic weapon at all, ever

[Jakinbandw]

And that you shouldn't rely on getting any magic weapon at all, ever

Yeah. So as much as you try to say you are fine with that video, you refuse to let people play fighters that fun or interesting in that way.

[Psyren]

You've specifically stated that the cool martial things I'm looking for need to be a custom weapon, and that such things shouldn't be worked out with the gm, that I should only what gets rolled up on a treasure table.

I said no such thing.

I've pretty clearly stated that homebrew and DM's Guild exist for the things that the current game doesn't cover.

[tokek]

I've never seen or heard of fighters allowed to run on debris thrown into the air to get an areal advantage. I've also never heard or or seen fighters able to use their attacks to allow them to take a hide action, reposition, then attack again.

In fact If this forum is to be believed, he couldn't have attacked in the first place as his foe was more than 10 feet away from him.

Also, as a fighter, he has no class features that give him access to a flaming weapon, or a one hit kill blade (that he is the only one able to recognize, build, and use, even with 2 other scholars in the party, one a full fledged mage). So most of his equipment feels like it is something fighters should have, but they rely on the gm being kind to them, rather than having class features that make that fantasy possible.

I looked at the clip and I immediately through "Hmm looks a like a dex based paladin/rogue"

You want a one-hit kill martial? Play a paladin, its literally what they do. You can have your anime special effects for it if you like, you can flavour it as a special weapon.

Could be some future Fighter sub-class but honestly Paladin is a better base chassis for most of these mythic-powered martial concepts.

[Brookshw]

Wizards could be printing double what they do or more. However its not only that 3e had "more stuff" its the complexity of it. They could, that doesn't mean that they should. Also, if people want more "stuff", there's the DMGuild, and I can't recommend Kobold Press hard enough.


I played a lot of "High Level" 3.x in the 17-25 range, and some even reaching 30s (highest level party member I had was ECL 33, I was 28 with 3 Artifacts, highest level PC I DMed was Divine Rank 3). The sheer ammount of abilities each character had, meant that every round the ammount of possibility each player or monster had was staggering, this lead to some reaaaaaaaaally long turns, and it would become tedious when someone used an area typed buff and each ally (PCs and NPCs) has to check how much was the bonus they currently had of that type. Understood. The highest I ever ran was level 35 with divine ranks added, at least one of the players was an intermediate deity by the end. Incidentally, of the last two 3.5 campaigns I ran, one went up the level 27ish with everything on the table, bonus hp, and people starting with some kind of extra boon that grew as they leveled, followed by a PHB only Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (with the PrCs from that book allowed). Massive difference in the last two campaigns. That's one of the reasons that having "optional" systems is better than raising the floor on the default power levels, doing so creates an unnecessary zero-sum situation where certain types of games simply no longer exist as a result, it's better to set a,...normal? reasonable?...default, then give options to raise the floor (and ceiling) to what's suitable for a particular campaign. Why remove certain play styles when you can just add optional systems so people can set up their campaign however they want?



I think the bounded idea of 5e permeates to more than just the accuracy, the range of complexity is bounded, and, for me, the quality of the games too. The best 5e has offered me has never felt nearly as good as the best 3e has, but the worst 5e has given me has been much better than the worst 3e has. 5e is a more consistent edition. Most fun I've had with D&D since 2e. I tried 3e with my wife, she couldn't get into it, 5e worked much better. Same thing with one of my player's kids (who, I guess, are also my players now; funny thing after you game with people for decades, turns into a generational game), they're young enough they would have gotten lost in all of 3e's "stuff", but they manage 5e fairly well.

[gloryblaze]

An item or bloodline as a class feature, sure.

Trevor Belmont's items and bloodline - custom.



Good news! There's this game called D&D that lets you do that.

Your problem is that you want to play one specific person who explicitly does not rely solely on his class, by relying solely on class. That's the disconnect.

Would you be OK with a subclass that looked something like this if it was printed in a 5e book?


Martial Archetype: The Heroic Scion
You're the latest in a long line of adventurers—some have been mercenaries, some have been heroes, and some may have been villains, but they have all been exceptional. At some point in your family's history, one of your ancestors acquired a mighty weapon that they have passed down from generation to generation. This weapon's destiny has become so entwined with your bloodline that it can only be wielded by the heir to your house, growing with them and granting them its powers only as they become worthy of the family name. Now, it's your turn to take up this ancestral weapon.


Bonus Proficiencies:
When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with smith's tools and Intelligence (Arcana) checks.

Ancestral Weapon:
Starting at 3rd level, you unlock the powers of your family's heirloom weapon. Choose a weapon you own that you are proficient with. That weapon becomes your ancestral weapon. The ancestral weapon becomes a magic weapon with properties that you choose from the Ancestral Weapon Properties detailed below. You choose two properties at 3rd level. Your ancestral weapon unlocks an additional property of your choice at 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th level. Only you can use your ancestral weapon's properties: if another creature wields your ancestral weapon, it acts as a nonmagical weapon of its type.

If you ever lose your ancestral weapon, it reappears within 5 feet of you at dawn or dusk the next day (you choose dawn or dusk when you gain this feature). If it is destroyed, you can reforge it over the course of a long rest if you have access to smith's tools.


Artifact Connoisseur:
Starting at 7th level, your experience with your ancestral weapon makes you an expert in esoteric and rare magic items. You can tell whether or not an item is magical by touching it. Additionally, if you spend a minute observing an object outside of combat (even if you don't touch it), you learn whether the item is permanently magical, under the temporary effects of a spell or other magical effect, or nonmagical. You also learn whether the item is cursed.

After determining that an item is magical using this ability, you can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC determined by the item's rarity: 10 for Common, 12 for Uncommon, 14 for Rare, 16 for Very Rare, 18 for Legendary, and 20 for artifacts. On a success, you learn the item's properties and how to use it.

Filler Abilities:
At 10th level, something happens, and something else happens at 15th and 18th levels, too



Ancestral Item Properties:
Properties are presented in alphabetical order. If a property has a prerequisite, you must meet it to choose that property. If a property refers to level, it means your level in this class.

Flaming.
Prerequisite: 7th level
You can cause your ancestral weapon to ignite as a bonus action. While it burns, it sheds bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet, and it deals an additional 2d6 fire damage on a hit. You can douse the flames as a bonus action.

Telescoping.
Prerequisite: Your weapon has the reach property
Once per turn when you attack with your ancestral weapon, you can increase its reach to 60 feet.

Holy.
Prerequisite: 10th level
You have the benefits of a protection from evil and good spell while you hold your weapon. Additionally, it deals an additional 1d8 radiant damage to Fiends and Undead.

A Bunch of Other Properties.
You know, like Axiomatic or Freezing or Hypoallergenic or Gluten-Free.

[Jakinbandw]

Would you be OK with a subclass that looked something like this if it was printed in a 5e book?


Martial Archetype: The Heroic Scion
You're the latest in a long line of adventurers—some have been mercenaries, some have been heroes, and some may have been villains, but they have all been exceptional. At some point in your family's history, one of your ancestors acquired a mighty weapon that they have passed down from generation to generation. This weapon's destiny has become so entwined with your bloodline that it can only be wielded by the heir to your house, growing with them and granting them its powers only as they become worthy of the family name. Now, it's your turn to take up this ancestral weapon.


Bonus Proficiencies:
When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with smith's tools and Intelligence (Arcana) checks.

Ancestral Weapon:
Starting at 3rd level, you unlock the powers of your family's heirloom weapon. Choose a weapon you own that you are proficient with. That weapon becomes your ancestral weapon. The ancestral weapon becomes a magic weapon with properties that you choose from the Ancestral Weapon Properties detailed below. You choose two properties at 3rd level. Your ancestral weapon unlocks an additional property of your choice at 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th level. Only you can use your ancestral weapon's properties: if another creature wields your ancestral weapon, it acts as a nonmagical weapon of its type.

If you ever lose your ancestral weapon, it reappears within 5 feet of you at dawn or dusk the next day (you choose dawn or dusk when you gain this feature). If it is destroyed, you can reforge it over the course of a long rest if you have access to smith's tools.


Artifact Connoisseur:
Starting at 7th level, your experience with your ancestral weapon makes you an expert in esoteric and rare magic items. You can tell whether or not an item is magical by touching it. Additionally, if you spend a minute observing an object outside of combat (even if you don't touch it), you learn whether the item is permanently magical, under the temporary effects of a spell or other magical effect, or nonmagical. You also learn whether the item is cursed.

After determining that an item is magical using this ability, you can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC determined by the item's rarity: 10 for Common, 12 for Uncommon, 14 for Rare, 16 for Very Rare, 18 for Legendary, and 20 for artifacts. On a success, you learn the item's properties and how to use it.

Filler Abilities:
At 10th level, something happens, and something else happens at 15th and 18th levels, too



Ancestral Item Properties:
Properties are presented in alphabetical order. If a property has a prerequisite, you must meet it to choose that property. If a property refers to level, it means your level in this class.

Flaming.
Prerequisite: 7th level
You can cause your ancestral weapon to ignite as a bonus action. While it burns, it sheds bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet, and it deals an additional 2d6 fire damage on a hit. You can douse the flames as a bonus action.

Telescoping.
Prerequisite: Your weapon has the reach property
Once per turn when you attack with your ancestral weapon, you can increase its reach to 60 feet.

Holy.
Prerequisite: 10th level
You have the benefits of a protection from evil and good spell while you hold your weapon. Additionally, it deals an additional 1d8 radiant damage to Fiends and Undead.

A Bunch of Other Properties.
You know, like Axiomatic or Freezing or Hypoallergenic or Gluten-Free.


Man, I would love that! Have at least one of the other class features be about knowing specific types of foe and another allowing for some cool mobility. This is the exact kind of thing I want to see in fighter subclasses.