Examples of characters we'd like high level PCs to be comparable to

[Rukelnikov]

In the GATG thread there's lots of different examples given of this and that character, but that's not something usually talked about outside of usual martials vs casters debates.

So what are the characters you think high level PCs should be able to emulate?

And more specifically, characters of archetypes 5e strives to emulate but doesn't

[OldTrees1]

As usual it is relative. Consider if I want a high level mage to be a global scale force that can travel anywhere in the planes. They could travel to Avernus and run a campaign to take it over and maintain control. If I want the mage to have that scale and range, then I would want the other high level characters to have similar scale and range. The means may be different but the power would be comparable.

On the other hand if I want a high level mage to warp reality with Wish ...

Or maybe I ban* some spells for a campaign, in order to lower the high level mage to a kingdom scale that can travel anywhere on the globe in a timely manner. (* Alternatively I could just have the campaign stop leveling after the desired level). Then I would want the other high level characters to have a similar kingdom scale force and ability to travel the globe in a timely manner.


Zariel victorious (rather than defeated and fallen) with the ability to create/find portals would be a partial example of something I sometimes want a 20th level Knight or Paladin to be comparable to. Can the character defeat a plague? A famine? Natural disasters happening across the globe while an Elder Evil awakens (specifically the natural disasters part, not the boss fight afterwards)?


D&D is usually good at handling combat scaling (although sometimes it overlooks mobility qualitative scaling and anti-army scaling). So most of the improvement is about out of combat scaling.

[Rilmani]

I think that the Dragon Slayer mages in Fairy Tail are an appropriate example for high level sorcerers and warlocks specifically. These two are not prepared casters, they don’t need crazy magical reagents for their strongest abilities, they have stronger Short Rest benefits than prepared, full-progression casters… Basically, via metamagic for sorcerers and the build-a-bear approach for Warlocks, you can have a theme/identity for your character. These two are not (generally) Ritual Casters either, just as the Dragon Slayer mages aren’t the sort who prepare delicate solutions to incoming problems; sorcerers and warlocks can be thrown at problems and come out on top.


I think Red X from the first Teen Titans cartoon is a good example of a high level Arcane Trickster rogue, an artificer, or some specific forms of Bard. A focus on disabling spells/gadgets, highly evasive, intelligent, capable of operating alone, competent even if they are stuck in an Anti-Magic bubble due to magic-free skills…


Wolverine is a barbarian. Logan is THE barbarian who can storm a castle single handed without having to sneak. Take the 2013 The Wolverine movie in Japan- robots, advanced weapons, environmental threats… He doesn’t smash the big threats in one hit, he dismantles them after surviving multiple surprise techniques. Some portrayals of Wolverine, like those where he has amnesia, might lead you to think he is a Monk or a Paladin or even a Ranger. I’ll counter with Spider-Man in his Iron Spider suits; those portrayals of Spider-Man are Artificers and Monks. Meanwhile Wolverine does not rely on tools. Frankly I think Barbarians should get Epic Boons automatically at high levels, or gain them temporarily at the cost of a Rage, but oh well.


Arthas Menethil as the Lich King is what I think of for a level 20 to level 25 Paladin/Blackguard. Whereas Clerics have 9th level spells and Divine Intervention, Paladins are defiance incarnate. They are made to cross blades with the commanders of infernal legions, survive drinking cursed soup from a hag’s cauldron, and stand stalwart when a living tornado shreds a cottage around them. Count Dooku could be a level 10 to 13 Paladin I think, seeing as he lacks a number of Monk traits you’d expect from a Jedi.


So Ranger; I can’t name the character, but I have this mental image of a businessman, head of some crew (poachers? Miners? Archeologists?) who wind up in every zone/realm prior to the arrival of the protagonists. Not Ratchet & Clank, no one from World of Warcraft (though they remind me of goblin poachers from WoD), no one from DC Comics… Some sort of colony manager? Deus from Grrl Genius and Vandal Savage fit the attitude I remember… but this is someone who put his money where his mouth is at times of crisis. Any ideas?

[Witty Username]

Link from Legend of Zelda feels pretty close to what I want from a Ranger, less equipment more spells.

Adora, as She-Ra is pretty close to what I want from paladin.

And weird call, but I feel Inigo Montoya is closest feel to what I want from barbarian rage.

[animorte]

I want to see high level benders for each element.
Air - Tenzen
Earth - Toph
Fire - Iroh
Water - Katara

Except each of them would likely acquire access to all forms of sub-bending upon reaching higher levels. I don't think each sub-bending can completely fill enough to be its own sub-class, but it's possible.

[Tanarii]

Asha'man
Knight Radiant
Mistborn
Thor (marvel)

Note that all of these are typically skilled and powerful at physical combat as well as magical combat. I personally like those kinds of characters, but they should be high level for balance reasons. So that a more powerful/skilled magic only or physical only character could exist, without the split focus. Or an equally powerful/skilled in one only could be lower level.

[Skrum]

Beowulf!!! High level fighter or even barb. More even than martial skill, I want high level martial classes to bust out with physical feats beyond mortal comprehension. Swimming miles through a hurricane while slaying sea monsters with a dagger. This is what a level 20 fighter should be able to do. Or even Saitama - a bit exaggerated, but the general concept of nullifying technique or magic with sheer athleticism (I don't need to teleport, I can break the sound barrier with my side-jumps!)

[Rukelnikov]

As usual it is relative. Consider if I want a high level mage to be a global scale force that can travel anywhere in the planes. They could travel to Avernus and run a campaign to take it over and maintain control. If I want the mage to have that scale and range, then I would want the other high level characters to have similar scale and range. The means may be different but the power would be comparable.

On the other hand if I want a high level mage to warp reality with Wish ...

Or maybe I ban* some spells for a campaign, in order to lower the high level mage to a kingdom scale that can travel anywhere on the globe in a timely manner. (* Alternatively I could just have the campaign stop leveling after the desired level). Then I would want the other high level characters to have a similar kingdom scale force and ability to travel the globe in a timely manner.


Zariel victorious (rather than defeated and fallen) with the ability to create/find portals would be a partial example of something I sometimes want a 20th level Knight or Paladin to be comparable to. Can the character defeat a plague? A famine? Natural disasters happening across the globe while an Elder Evil awakens (specifically the natural disasters part, not the boss fight afterwards)?


D&D is usually good at handling combat scaling (although sometimes it overlooks mobility qualitative scaling and anti-army scaling). So most of the improvement is about out of combat scaling.

I'd say its an odd example, because its a CR 26 creature, so the game expects it to be a Deadly x7 challenge to a single lvl 20 character.

Do you mean you'd like lvl 20 paladins to be able to stand up to zariel alone, or to mean they should be capable of doing the things Zariel does, but still remain less powerful overall?


So Ranger; I can’t name the character, but I have this mental image of a businessman, head of some crew (poachers? Miners? Archeologists?) who wind up in every zone/realm prior to the arrival of the protagonists. Not Ratchet & Clank, no one from World of Warcraft (though they remind me of goblin poachers from WoD), no one from DC Comics… Some sort of colony manager? Deus from Grrl Genius and Vandal Savage fit the attitude I remember… but this is someone who put his money where his mouth is at times of crisis. Any ideas?

Hmm not really.

My idea of a ranger is more in line with Link or Talion.


Link from Legend of Zelda feels pretty close to what I want from a Ranger, less equipment more spells.

My first Ranger, which I started playing in 2e, and ended up in the low epics in 3.5 was originally based on Link


Adora, as She-Ra is pretty close to what I want from paladin.

I've vague memories of her in He-Man from when I was a child, but I'm not really familiar with the character.


And weird call, but I feel Inigo Montoya is closest feel to what I want from barbarian rage.

I assume you mean his fight against the 6 fingered man, and I agree that's a cool example of a Dex based rage. However, I don't recall him entering a similar state at any other moment.


I want to see high level benders for each element.
Air - Tenzen
Earth - Toph
Fire - Iroh
Water - Katara

Except each of them would likely acquire access to all forms of sub-bending upon reaching higher levels. I don't think each sub-bending can completely fill enough to be its own sub-class, but it's possible.

I'm not that familiar with ATLAB, can't those archetypes be emulated with Sorcerer or warlock?


Asha'man
Knight Radiant
Mistborn
Thor (marvel)

Note that all of these are typically skilled and powerful at physical combat as well as magical combat. I personally like those kinds of characters, but they should be high level for balance reasons. So that a more powerful/skilled magic only or physical only character could exist, without the split focus. Or an equally powerful/skilled in one only could be lower level.

I'm unfamiliar with the first 3.

On marvel Thor, I think MCU pre Ragnarok Thor I could see as a T4 or "low epic" character, post Ragnarok it's definitely in the "epic tier" (more powerful than what I'd expect from a T4 character), and comics Thor I'd consider demigod level at least.


Beowulf!!! High level fighter or even barb. More even than martial skill, I want high level martial classes to bust out with physical feats beyond mortal comprehension. Swimming miles through a hurricane while slaying sea monsters with a dagger. This is what a level 20 fighter should be able to do. Or even Saitama - a bit exaggerated, but the general concept of nullifying technique or magic with sheer athleticism (I don't need to teleport, I can break the sound barrier with my side-jumps!)

Beowulf I can definitely see as a T4 character.

Saitama though, is at least 1 tier removed from what I want T4 characters to be like (not up to date with manga, but I heard they went all DBZ, in which case its probably farther removed).

[Sneak Dog]

While reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series I felt like the Bridgeburners should be possible as D&D characters. There's a wide variety of power levels in the series and ways to express them. Similar to D&D's goals. Oh. Brys specifically is a weirdly cool fighter. But the key is that the skill difference is shown. (It's been some years since I read the series though.)

In D&D 5e, a fighter doesn't seem that better of a swordsman than a barbarian. You get more attacks, but in the end both are making attacks to deal damage by rolling a couple of attack and damage rolls. It feels similar to me. In this book series the differences between Karsa Orlong, a blatant high level barbarian (though a lot of it is from racial bonuses? Eh, close enough) and Brys the master swordsman are clear from the way they fight.

[KorvinStarmast]

I disagree with the premise of this thread. The character made in a D&D game is a self contained character whose story and abilities and exploits are unique to the game and to the campaign that it is in. That's the whole point, and has been since the game was introduced.
The point isn't to mimic other stories and other characters - but to make choices and dare greatly in the course of living the adventuring life such that when one retires or dies, the stories told of that character's various accomplishments are their own story.
Each character may be somewhat inspired by Fafhrd or Boromir, but they are explicitly NOT Fafhrd nor Boromir.
It's a unique fictional character, and the story is what happened along the way.

[Brookshw]

I disagree with the premise of this thread. The character made in a D&D game is a self contained character whose story and abilities and exploits are unique to the game and to the campaign that it is in. That's the whole point, and has been since the game was introduced.
The point isn't to mimic other stories and other characters - but to make choices and dare greatly in the course of living the adventuring life such that when one retires or dies, the stories told of that character's various accomplishments are their own story.
Each character may be somewhat inspired by Fafhrd or Boromir, but they are explicitly NOT Fafhrd nor Boromir.
It's a unique fictional character, and the story is what happened along the way.

You have my +1

[Tanarii]

I'm unfamiliar with the first 3.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time
Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn

That'd be the best fantasy author of the 1990s and the best fantasy author of the 2010s. And so far 2020s.

[Rukelnikov]

I disagree with the premise of this thread. The character made in a D&D game is a self contained character whose story and abilities and exploits are unique to the game and to the campaign that it is in. That's the whole point, and has been since the game was introduced.
The point isn't to mimic other stories and other characters - but to make choices and dare greatly in the course of living the adventuring life such that when one retires or dies, the stories told of that character's various accomplishments are their own story.
Each character may be somewhat inspired by Fafhrd or Boromir, but they are explicitly NOT Fafhrd nor Boromir.
It's a unique fictional character, and the story is what happened along the way.

You seem to misunderstand the premise. I'm not saying the character should try to emulate being X. Rather, the character should be capable of doing things of a scale comparable to the things that X does.

@OldTrees1 gives an example here:


Zariel victorious (rather than defeated and fallen) with the ability to create/find portals would be a partial example of something I sometimes want a 20th level Knight or Paladin to be comparable to. Can the character defeat a plague? A famine? Natural disasters happening across the globe while an Elder Evil awakens (specifically the natural disasters part, not the boss fight afterwards)?

[animorte]

I disagree with the premise of this thread. The character made in a D&D game is a self contained character whose story and abilities and exploits are unique to the game and to the campaign that it is in. That's the whole point, and has been since the game was introduced.
The point isn't to mimic other stories and other characters - but to make choices and dare greatly in the course of living the adventuring life such that when one retires or dies, the stories told of that character's various accomplishments are their own story.
Each character may be somewhat inspired by Fafhrd or Boromir, but they are explicitly NOT Fafhrd nor Boromir.
It's a unique fictional character, and the story is what happened along the way.

I think the premise of the thread may have taken the turn you disagree with, but I don't think it's closed from the direction you gave an excellent example of.

I've been inspired many times by other sources. In fact, my first character I ever made (in 3.5e) was an Elf Bard, modeled after Kvothe.

I completely agree that just because you want something to be comparable to or resemble something that already exists, you are still free to make your own story. You can go your own direction and learn your own things along the way. I struggle to see where that was presented so clearly for you to feel this way.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You seem to misunderstand the premise. I'm not saying the character should try to emulate being X. Rather, the character should be capable of doing things of a scale comparable to the things that X does.

@OldTrees1 gives an example here:

You mean generally cause extra cinematic property damage while basically punching each other in the face in a treadmill[1] sort of way?

I've read tons of fantasy fiction. And generally, it falls into one of two categories (or maybe both).

1. MORE NUMBERS. Bigger, flashier "powers", but everyone else scales up. So all you get is narrated property damage and Big Awesome Things...that don't actually matter at all as far as the story goes. They fundamentally interact with the world in the same way everyone else does, just with more purple prose attached. And everyone ignores the fact that they're walking disaster zones unless the fiction happens to be a deconstruction of that trope, in which case the effect is maximized and everything else falls apart.
2. Speed of the plot powers. In these works, the protagonists (and villains) have exactly the powers they need to make things dramatic. And two depictions of them may vary 100%. If the story needs them to fall prey to a relatively simple villain, they will. If it needs them to beat unconquerable odds, they will.

Neither of those are actually useful for a TTRPG, at least if you want some semblance of a consistent world. Case 1 can work...but it's kinda pointless in my mind. It's the route both 3e and 4e took--amp up the numbers and the flashiness (ok, in 3e only the favored few got that, but...) but fundamentally don't change anything. Sure, you're FIGHTING IN THE CLOUDS at high levels or maybe throwing down with a notional god...but in the end, it's exactly the same sort of thing you were doing at level 1. Just with fancier descriptions and more numbers to track. Only enemies right at your own power band are relevant--everything else is either a bystander or a scene dressing (because either they'll evaporate or will one-shot you).

Case 2 only works in authored fiction. In a TTRPG it's railroading, hard.

Instead, look at what the rest of the system supports. And I'll say it's really nothing like any of the characters mentioned, except maybe Link. Except for a couple broken spells (almost all of which are wizard ones), everyone has 2-4 Special Things. But they're all personal scale, limited use things that are (and shouldn't be) encounter-enders or world-shaking abilities. Enemies (are supposed to) stay relevant longer at both ends--you can punch well above your level AND be threatened by things below your level. Or at least that's the design. You're mortals all along, never demigod class, never "reshaping reality on a whim". Sure, you can move fast at high levels. But that's only as good as the plot/world allows.

[1] superheroes and supervillains can all take all the damage any of them dish out, despite that being absurd on its face. And in fact, the amount of damage they can take and deal is exactly determined by the needs of the plot, not any kind of fixed, mechanizable scale.

[NichG]

I don't have specific tiers in mind necessarily, but generally speaking I think the mid-high level characters should be able to accomplish with personal power what leaders of real-world modern countries can accomplish via the workforces, technology, military, and economic networks available to them. Or at least, if a real-world country can accomplish something, I wouldn't say it should be out of scope for something that could reasonably be expected to be achieved. In addition to that, character archetypes should have things which go beyond that boundary even at mid-level (and not just in fluff ways like 'well the real world doesn't have magic, so done' but in qualitative ways like making death reversible) - basically things that make the fantasy world and fantasy societies fundamentally have different orders and truths than the real world.

Among max level characters, (to my tastes) there should be paths to be able to transcend even that rubric and go into mythological stuff like drinking oceans or creating worlds from nothing. But that transition shouldn't necessarily just be a matter of getting more levels but instead require the character to do things and interface with the power structures of the world - kill a god and take its power, perform a working in stopped time during the conjunction of the planes, etc kinds of things. Those are things that in some sense should remain as motivations or aspirations even for max level characters - but achievable ones. And that kind of side path should exist in some form at all levels, so that there is an in-setting logic for someone who wishes to be more powerful to be able to reason about how to achieve that in-fiction.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't have specific tiers in mind necessarily, but generally speaking I think the mid-high level characters should be able to accomplish with personal power what leaders of real-world modern countries can accomplish via the workforces, technology, military, and economic networks available to them. Or at least, if a real-world country can accomplish something, I wouldn't say it should be out of scope for something that could reasonably be expected to be achieved. In addition to that, character archetypes should have things which go beyond that boundary even at mid-level (and not just in fluff ways like 'well the real world doesn't have magic, so done' but in qualitative ways like making death reversible) - basically things that make the fantasy world and fantasy societies fundamentally have different orders and truths than the real world.

Among max level characters, (to my tastes) there should be paths to be able to transcend even that rubric and go into mythological stuff like drinking oceans or creating worlds from nothing. But that transition shouldn't necessarily just be a matter of getting more levels but instead require the character to do things and interface with the power structures of the world - kill a god and take its power, perform a working in stopped time during the conjunction of the planes, etc kinds of things. Those are things that in some sense should remain as motivations or aspirations even for max level characters - but achievable ones. And that kind of side path should exist in some form at all levels, so that there is an in-setting logic for someone who wishes to be more powerful to be able to reason about how to achieve that in-fiction.

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Personal power is fundamentally not able to be projected like authority can. No individual can create a modern pencil by themselves, and that's one of the simplest things.

And personally, that kind of "high power" thing just makes coherent settings impossible. Because if high level PCs can trivially reshape the world as we know it, then the world must be in constant chaos. Unless the PCs are the only people to have ever reached those power levels, in which case they can't be challenged. Or there already are people of that scale who prevent changes from happening...in which case you don't have that power. Neither option is good.

[OldTrees1]

I'd say its an odd example, because its a CR 26 creature, so the game expects it to be a Deadly x7 challenge to a single lvl 20 character.

Do you mean you'd like lvl 20 paladins to be able to stand up to zariel alone, or to mean they should be capable of doing the things Zariel does, but still remain less powerful overall?

I said "As usual it is relative." because my expectations for a high level character tend to be tied to my expectations for the high level mages but abstracted to the point that it is relevant for all the high level characters in that paradigm.

If I want a high level mage to be a global scale force that can travel anywhere in the planes:
Then I want a lvl 20 paladin to be comparable to a victorious Zariel. The Paladin can travel anywhere on the planes (Avernus is somewhere) and be a global scale force (conquering a layer is an example of a global scale force).

If I expect a high level mage to be comparable to a character outperforming Zariel's failure, then I expect a high level knight to be comparable to a character outperforming Zariel's failure. (Notably CR only weakly correlates with the scale at which an NPC can impact the world.)

[NichG]

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Personal power is fundamentally not able to be projected like authority can. No individual can create a modern pencil by themselves, and that's one of the simplest things.

And personally, that kind of "high power" thing just makes coherent settings impossible. Because if high level PCs can trivially reshape the world as we know it, then the world must be in constant chaos. Unless the PCs are the only people to have ever reached those power levels, in which case they can't be challenged. Or there already are people of that scale who prevent changes from happening...in which case you don't have that power. Neither option is good.

I mean, this gets into a whole 'philosophy of fantasy vs sci-fi' thing. Fantasy to me is basically a call to the idea of 'what if the whims and motives and decisions and quests of individuals actually had the power to determine the direction of the world?'. This goes with magic as personal power that someone can reach for on their own, and which belongs wholly to them once attained, and which is fundamentally individual-scale in its psychology and ways of action, as opposed to more science/tech things. Even without magic, the call back to ideas like monarchy with individual decision-makers at the top with little accountability as a fantasy trope resonates with that idea.

So in some sense, it comes down to 'what if I and my friends could just change the world, right the wrongs, personally?'.

And as far as what the world looks like in that view, yes, you're talking about unstable worlds, but that's sort of the point of high level play to me - you've got characters who do get to make decisions that determine the shape of the world, because the world is able to change in response to the decisions of people. Maybe it changed fifty years or a hundred years or whatever ago as well - a necromancer made an undead army and now entire kingdoms cease to exist, etc. Stability in such a world comes from the same things that make interpersonal relationships stable, as the world in those cases is fundamentally a fractal story about small groups of people deciding things, rather than large-scale social forces, movements, etc.

Anyhow, if a high level character can act as a country would, their ability to reshape the world is not necessarily stronger than a country's ability to reshape the world, and worlds do have countries. But those shapes will be much more fantastical and weird and idiosyncratic, since they represent the whims of one person rather than the consensus of a whole society. Again which works well for a fantasy vibe for me.

[Tanarii]

I'm down with systems where power gained isn't always personal. AD&D had followers for many classes at Name Level. BECMI Fighters got domains, Clerics got holy orders, Thieves got Guilds, while Wizards got either a Tower with a dungeon under it or to work for Fighters with domains.

[Talionis]

I think this thread is very good. If I have the premise correct it should help to fix the problem of the caster at high levels being godly and the level 20 Barbarian being a guy at the gym. When you try to answer what do level twenty versions of each class look like you help to see if each classes paragon could actually be in the same story. How do you find ways to make Batman and Superman be in the same story and feel relevant. I can tell you it’s been done. I can also tell you it’s hard to do well.

[Trask]

All the brothers from Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber" series. Some are stronger than others but they all share the ability to travel between planes, strength to lift cars over their heads with ease, have awesome magic powers, and fight dozens of trained soldiers without breaking a sweat, often without even proper fighting equipment.

As a side note, Zelazny's characters and works in particular feel very much like D&D characters to me. High powered chaotic good/neutral types. Not quite antiheroes, but definitely not knights in shining armor. My own experience with the game over dozens of players tells me that the amount of people who actually want to play a dyed-in-the-wool hero are rare.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Personal power is fundamentally not able to be projected like authority can. No individual can create a modern pencil by themselves, and that's one of the simplest things.

And personally, that kind of "high power" thing just makes coherent settings impossible. Because if high level PCs can trivially reshape the world as we know it, then the world must be in constant chaos. Unless the PCs are the only people to have ever reached those power levels, in which case they can't be challenged. Or there already are people of that scale who prevent changes from happening...in which case you don't have that power. Neither option is good.

I think that's why in the stereotypical fantasy stories with currently existing high level characters you see the "good" ones are typically motivated by keeping things running in positive directions, only intervening when the "bad" ones have escalated the pace towards their idealized visions.

Powerful characters can shape the worlds in fantasy, those who do so "trivially" and without regard to the larger majority of people who lack such powers often have names like "Vecna", "Sauron", "Thanos" or "Darkseid". They're opposed by people like "Epic Level D&D Party", "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Avengers" and "The Justice League"

Do you see the pattern?

That said, I do understand at least a little bit of your point, even if I don't agree with it. FR often sees a lot of flak for having huge names like Laeral Silverhand and Elminster just sitting around at set pieces while a group of novice adventures bumble their way into success. That's fine though, in my opinion. Your own reasoning is part of why - they can't do it all on their own. Even collectively they can only be so powerful. It would be foolish of them not to rely on potential talents that could grow to be as powerful as them. That, I think, is the real function those sorts of names in fiction should serve and what I believe the point of this thread is trying to communicate.

We play a pretty customized version of FR for our home game, and we're very near the end of our Mad Mage campaign. For years, in and out of game, our characters have grown to a level of power that will allow them to contest who is probably the current most powerful magic wielder in the forgotten realms. If we accepted fantasy as you describe it, this scenario wouldn't exist. Halaster wouldn't be recognized as such a singular dominant force, previously uncontested in strength, and our characters wouldn't have had figures of power to aspire towards.

What you describe as "coherent", to me, reads "boring and unexciting". It's also in itself not consistent, unless I'm misinterpreting the bolded section, to suggest that simultaneously that figures can exist to force change but that PC's shouldn't be able to reach a level of power that can force the same change. Why would you say "both are bad" when the solution is for both to be true.

This is all an idealized thought experiment anyway, not necessarily limited to the actual bounds of what a 5e character can actually be, but what you want them to be.

I don't have a particular character I aim for, I go for Archetypes more often. For example, I want my Paladin to be at the very edge of self realized divinity. The very border between what constitutes rising to the celestial realms and serving his God at the pinnacle of human strength but with a spark of power that blends what he could be with what he is. Among mortals he's a paragon of strength and endurance, his abilities could be called otherworldly but he'd tell you he's simply a human who's done his very best in the service of good. All very achievable in 5E, at least at a narrative level, more or less mechanically achievable too with enough epic boons or mark of prestige. I hadn't planned to be so grandiose in goal from the beginning but as we grew stronger it just sort of happened. When you start an adventure scared of a single Behir and you're later making mince meat out of both sides of a battle of the Blood War, your ambitions grow a bit. We killed Klauth.

[sithlordnergal]

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Personal power is fundamentally not able to be projected like authority can. No individual can create a modern pencil by themselves, and that's one of the simplest things.

And personally, that kind of "high power" thing just makes coherent settings impossible. Because if high level PCs can trivially reshape the world as we know it, then the world must be in constant chaos. Unless the PCs are the only people to have ever reached those power levels, in which case they can't be challenged. Or there already are people of that scale who prevent changes from happening...in which case you don't have that power. Neither option is good.

Yes and no. You're right that a single individual is limited in scale. One person can't be in multiple places at once, though technically I guess a Wizard or Bard could if you run Simulacrum RAW without any limits what so ever. However, these single characters do have enough power that they can basically match most of what a city or more can throw at them. After all, consider how many soldiers would be needed to kill one dragon, compared to a party of 3 to 4 adventurers. Those 3 or 4 adventurers are basically worth that many soldiers.

And I also don't think it makes creating a coherent setting impossible, nor does it mean the world is in constant chaos. Its more along the lines that those massive powers balance each other out. Yeah, the insanely strong, level 20 evil Necromancer can make Thay if they want by wiping out a country and making every citizen into an undead monster. But the second they start doing that on a scale large enough to be noticed, the equally strong Paladin and Cleric put a stop to it before it can become a national problem because they don't want their nation destroyed.

Its similar to how the powers of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos balance each other out in FR. Yeah, each side has a lot of power on their own, but the second they try to wield what power, the other three are probably gonna join forces to keep the status quo. Thus creating a stalemate where those powers can exist in a coherent setting. Of course, once the stalemate ends then all hell will break loose, but that has the making of a campaign right there.

[AvatarVecna]

I'd like it if a higher percentage of top-tier martial characters could complete a 5 minute mile.

[OldTrees1]

I'd like it if a higher percentage of top-tier martial characters could complete a 5 minute mile.

There are fewer than I expected.

This goal is roughly 105 feet (rounding) per 6 seconds.
Baseline is 60 feet per 6 seconds.
Wood Elf is 70 ft/6s
Barbarian 5 or Mobile is 80 ft/6s
Wood Elf with Mobile is 90 ft/6s
Rogue 2 is 90 ft/6s
Barbarian 5 with Mobile is 100 ft/6s
Wood Elf Rogue 2 is 105 ft/6s
Wood Elf Barbarian 5 with Mobile is 110 ft/6s
Rogue 2 with Mobile is 120 ft/6s
Monk 2 10 is 120 ft/6s
Edit: Monk needs Ki

So ignoring faster species, this is 2 base classes that pass your threshold (and one need a feat).

[Tanarii]

Its similar to how the powers of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos balance each other out in FR. Yeah, each side has a lot of power on their own, but the second they try to wield what power, the other three are probably gonna join forces to keep the status quo. Thus creating a stalemate where those powers can exist in a coherent setting. Of course, once the stalemate ends then all hell will break loose, but that has the making of a campaign right there.
Depends. A post-apocalyptic wasteland is coherent, sure. Dark Sun, post-cataclysm Dragonlance, or Lord of the Rings are all good examples of why that's inevitable under the "balanced high powers" model, and how it can still be coherent afterwards.

But if you try it without the inevitable destruction, you end up with Forgotten Realms or Mystara. Totally incoherent. Still fun tho, if you can put it aside.

[AvatarVecna]

There are fewer than I expected.

This goal is roughly 105 feet (rounding) per 6 seconds.
Baseline is 60 feet per 6 seconds.
Wood Elf is 70 ft/6s
Barbarian 5 or Mobile is 80 ft/6s
Wood Elf with Mobile is 90 ft/6s
Rogue 2 is 90 ft/6s
Barbarian 5 with Mobile is 100 ft/6s
Wood Elf Rogue 2 is 105 ft/6s
Wood Elf Barbarian 5 with Mobile is 110 ft/6s
Rogue 2 with Mobile is 120 ft/6s
Monk 2 is 120 ft/6s

So ignoring faster species, this is 2 base classes that pass your threshold (and one need a feat).

This is all great for 105+ ft/round, and as long as that can be maintained for 5 minutes, that's fine. The race thing you point out is something I also agree with: this is something many human teenagers can do, elves that are faster than humans being able to do it is a gimme. But also, the monk actually can't do it, at least not at such a low level: Monk 2 has 40 ft move speed, which is 80 ft per round if they dash, and 120 ft per round if they double dash. But the monk can only double-dash if they have ki remaining, and they only have 2 ki. Monk 2 goes 120 ft for 2 rounds, and 80 ft for 48 rounds, going a total of 4080 ft...or ~17/22 miles. You need Monk 10 to cross the threshold for an actual 5 minute mile: 50 ft move speed, 10 rounds of double-dash, 40 rounds of dash, for a total of 150x10 + 100x40 = 5500 ft. Without weird races or feats, that's the earliest you can do it, and monk is the only one that can.

Bonus round! Can it be done without ignoring the part in the non-optional Chase rules where you can only dash so many times before you have to start making Con checks vs exhaustion? :smalltongue:

EDIT: Bonus bonus round! Can it be done following the Overland Travel rules? :smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm not saying the character should try to emulate being X. Rather, the character should be capable of doing things of a scale comparable to the things that X does. That depends on the campaign, though. Each character is unique to the campaign they are in, and campaigns are not required to go 1-20. Some do, and I can see your point for those that do, certainly. Thanks for the follow up. :smallsmile:

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Tanarii stole my thunder. I just got Matt Coleville's book for wars and kingdoms ... and I am not sure I am going to use it. Adding another layer of rules is something neither of my tables that I DM for is interested in.

All the brothers from Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber" series. Some are stronger than others but they all share the ability to travel between planes, strength to lift cars over their heads with ease, have awesome magic powers, and fight dozens of trained soldiers without breaking a sweat, often without even proper fighting equipment.

As a side note, Zelazny's characters and works in particular feel very much like D&D characters to me. High powered chaotic good/neutral types. Not quite antiheroes, but definitely not knights in shining armor. My own experience with the game over dozens of players tells me that the amount of people who actually want to play a dyed-in-the-wool hero are rare. That's a decent example.

[NeoVid]

I disagree. Personal power is fundamentally limited in a way that national power isn't. It doesn't scale--a single individual can't be in multiple places at the same time. Personal power is fundamentally not able to be projected like authority can. No individual can create a modern pencil by themselves, and that's one of the simplest things.

And personally, that kind of "high power" thing just makes coherent settings impossible. Because if high level PCs can trivially reshape the world as we know it, then the world must be in constant chaos. Unless the PCs are the only people to have ever reached those power levels, in which case they can't be challenged. Or there already are people of that scale who prevent changes from happening...in which case you don't have that power. Neither option is good.

My favorite RPG of all time, Aberrant, is all about this, so the concept definitely can make for a working game. Of course, it's far from easy to run a game in a setting where the core concept is a world with no status quo protection and dozens of individuals with the the ability to change things radically, but I've seen it done well enough times that it made for several of my favorite experiences in tabletop. So my answer to the OP's question is "Reed Richards or Tony Stark, but with the option for their inventions to affect normal society."

[Catullus64]

A high-level Rogue should be Bronn from late-season Game of Thrones.

Because only some of the capstone Rogue features explain that character's absurd survival and success over the final run of that show.

[Dork_Forge]

I'd like it if a higher percentage of top-tier martial characters could complete a 5 minute mile.

Down these real world comparisons only frustrations lie. D&D isn't a simulator, and measuring raw speed often neglects that D&D allows you to do these things wearing armor and carrying obscene loads.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Serious question (that's obvious to me, but obviously not so to others)--

if you, as a TTRPG character, have a "class feature" or otherwise system-given power that you can't use lest the whole world turn on you and destroy you, aka "MAD, D&D edition"...do you really have that power? And if you do have it, should you?

IMO, no player in the game should have explicit "If I press this system-given button, rocks fall and the campaign ends" buttons. Especially not unilateral ones. Sure, the party may find themselves in a position where their actions bring about the end of the campaign/world/whatever. But not as a system-side button. That just seems to call itself out as one of
1) troll fodder--just the sort of thing the toxic player would like, because they can (credibly) threaten to push it if not appeased
2) something that will just get ignored (as there's nothing mechanically forcing the DM to follow through.
3) noob bait

Not at all something that meaningfully gives people capabilities.
-----
Paper threats and restrictions (e.g. ones that don't actually get enforced because the consequences for the game are too dire) are actually worse than no limits at all. Because at least "no limit" is honest. It's how I feel about things like
a) expensive components
b) gating powerful effects behind things like exhaustion (unless handled very carefully)
c) many of the earlier-edition limits on casting.

If you don't want someone doing X more than Y per Z time...just don't let them do that. Don't try to create restrictions that maneuver them in that direction, because either they'll be ignored as "annoying" (leaving you broken) or they actually will bite...and no one will have fun.
-----

As for overall power and personal power--

Each game system has a "comfortable range" of mechanically significant power, dictated in part by its level of mechanical abstraction. Generally, the more mechanical weight things have, the narrower the range. The absolute values of the endpoints aren't that important--systems can be set up at the "grubby hobo" level or the "actual real gods" level and work fine. What systems struggle with (if they want to be "crunchy" at all) is broad ranges. Zero to Demigod just doesn't work in D&D. It never has. It can't work, because neither the fiction nor the game systems nor the settings can really handle that. For me, 5e's "sweet spot" is somewhere between "action hero" (more durable than the average person, with some skills others don't have, but nothing even a street-level marvel hero would envy) to "low-mid-power super hero". That latter part is well below any kind of mythic hero--5e doesn't even pretend to get there. Really, other than a few notably out-of-bounds wizard spells, nothing in the system is really that high power. It's only the broken (meaning "have big shards of ways to cut yourself", not "OP") spells, and specifically the abuse of those spells that creates a high-power system.

That means a high level 5e character should mostly have two types of power
a) personal power. This is bigger than at lower levels--they're faster, more durable, hit harder, can move between places easier, can get to places they otherwise couldn't. But it's not different in kind. It's mostly just more of what they had. A low-level wizard can burning hands, a high-level wizard can meteor swarm. Both are basically "big fire thing over an area". Yeah, the numbers are different, but it's still personal-scale. A wizard doing some blasting has gone from a portable mortar to a (more limited) self-propelled artillery piece. They haven't become an aircraft carrier or a space dreadnought. They can face a small company of soldiers, but not hope to come out victorious against an army alone.
b) derived power. This power comes from the connections made, favors owed to them, reputations gathered, and other events of the campaign itself and is very much not mechanistic or "buttons to press". This is where the real ability of high-level (and low level!) characters to move the world comes from IMO. You can be an absolute murder machine. And move the needle not at all--the only ones you can murder for disobeying you are the ones right around you. Your power only extends to the ends of your arms. What absolute despots, powerful politicians, etc have is systems. Their power comes because they have other people who are either loyal to them or otherwise have been encouraged to obey their commands. The despot themselves may be physically weak and incapable of enforcing their own demands as long as they have the system's support.

A high-level party (not individual, since this is a team game) has tons of power. When they walk around, people should pay attention. Nations should pay attention to where they are and what they're doing and figure out how to help or oppose. But that's less due to their personal, on-character-sheet power and more due to their derived power. And that derived power can start early--a level 5 party probably has significant derived power in a small area and is probably known/has a reputation in a slightly wider region. By T3, the party should be known at a national scale at least.

All of this preserves the structure of the game best--
1. "Legendary" big foes are still a tough battle at this point. You don't need platoons of ancient dragons and demon princes to challenge them on their way during T4 (which does awful things to the worldbuilding). The BBEG at level 20 can be a demon prince, where you've been gathering allies to go against him and his armies throughout the campaign. And along the way, things make sense. You don't "outgrow" (in the sense that they'd need to occur in painful-to-run numbers or simply can't pose a challenge) simple monsters until much later, meaning that the palette of foes expands as you level up, instead of (as it is in a high-optimization game currently) contracting sharply.
2. The basic game "loop" of the on-camera time being mostly going places, handling dangerous situations, then coming back stays the same. You don't need to transition to some half-baked, rarely-used "campaign management" system, your abilities stay relevant all the way along.
3. Settings remain stable unless they're intentionally pushed to the breaking point. I have no problem with parties changing the world. It's been a constant of my setting since the beginning, and not just at high levels. But I want those changes to happen because someone decided to and worked towards that, not because someone pushed a button on their character sheet that said "now you're in funhouse land!". I want those changes to come about over time incrementally as a result of people's actions, plural, in a way that fits the particulars of the situation and the world. Not be a built in class ability.
4. The game remains focused on the party, not on a bunch of individuals who happen to occasionally collaborate. That's one big downside of the "name level" idea--you inevitably end up breaking up the party. Either you don't spend any time on the "strategic management" aspect (in which case...why have it?) or you're spending more and more time on individual concerns and less on the party as a whole. And you encourage "protagonist" thinking. The party is the fundamental unit, not the character. That's very different than a Marvel movie, even one of the ensemble ones. One of the key differences between D&D and other properties according to the developers is that D&D is fundamentally about the idea that the party, working together, can do things that none of them can even hope to do individually.

[Tanarii]

A high-level Rogue should be Bronn from late-season Game of Thrones.

Because only some of the capstone Rogue features explain that character's absurd survival and success over the final run of that show.Yeah, a lot of that kind of hidden to in-universe capability is what balanced classes in early D&D. Even a high level Magic user or Thief was in serious danger if someone skilled (or for monsters, powerful) got right up in their face and started with the stabbing (or clawing). That fell by the wayside with 3e.

Being powerful doesn't have to mean flashy and/or magical. It is in many folks minds, I mean the examples I gave were very flashy and magical. But "plot armor" in media can be translated directly into extremely able defenses and skills and even meta currency narrative effects.



b) derived power. This power comes from the connections made, favors owed to them, reputations gathered, and other events of the campaign itself and is very much not mechanistic or "buttons to press". This is where the real ability of high-level (and low level!) characters to move the world comes from IMO. You can be an absolute murder machine. And move the needle not at all--the only ones you can murder for disobeying you are the ones right around you. Your power only extends to the ends of your arms. What absolute despots, powerful politicians, etc have is systems. Their power comes because they have other people who are either loyal to them or otherwise have been encouraged to obey their commands. The despot themselves may be physically weak and incapable of enforcing their own demands as long as they have the system's support.
There's no reason that connections, favors owed, reputations gathered, etc can't be mechanistic class features. Same with followers, guilds, domains, etc.

If it's appropriate that "this archetype ends up with N" then it's appropriate for them to be a class feature. And the things you're describing are definitely appropriate to various archetypes.

They primary reason they aren't in D&D is because many or even most want to play a band of murder heroes, murdering their way through their "story" arc to saving the world or whatever. And they want all levels to support that all the way to the top. Giving these kinds of things as class features to archetypes in D&D might imply they're doing it wrong. As shown by rejection of things like BECMI's Companion level game play as a "paradigm shift".

[NichG]

Serious question (that's obvious to me, but obviously not so to others)--

if you, as a TTRPG character, have a "class feature" or otherwise system-given power that you can't use lest the whole world turn on you and destroy you, aka "MAD, D&D edition"...do you really have that power? And if you do have it, should you?

I don't particularly like the 'if anyone dares use this, the world will say no' thing either really... But that said, really really powerful deterrents are a certain kind of power that could be character defining in certain sorts of games. It's just not at all what I was getting at with 'a level 20 character leverages the power of a country'. I actually did mean 'and that sort of thing should get used', the same way that if someone is the leader of a country it wouldn't be outside of the normal actions within that job if they were to use that power to, say, enact country-wide infrastructure projects, mobilize hundreds of emergency response teams in the face of a natural disaster, make the sorts of decisions impacting tens and hundreds of thousands of lives in the case of war, etc.

High level neighbors, should they exist, would certainly have opinions about those acts. But I see it more as (or at least prefer to write settings such that it is...) a detente where each individual realizes the need to compromise and to allow people to do things, so long as certain boundaries are maintained. As opposed to a standoff where the moment anyone moves at all everyone opens fire. Of course you can have the super-oppressive 'powers that be police the emergence of high level powers' setting where anyone who wants to join those ranks has to do it on the sly, but that's a particular kind of mood and not what I'd generally want to be running.



As for overall power and personal power--

Each game system has a "comfortable range" of mechanically significant power, dictated in part by its level of mechanical abstraction. Generally, the more mechanical weight things have, the narrower the range. The absolute values of the endpoints aren't that important--systems can be set up at the "grubby hobo" level or the "actual real gods" level and work fine. What systems struggle with (if they want to be "crunchy" at all) is broad ranges. Zero to Demigod just doesn't work in D&D. It never has. It can't work, because neither the fiction nor the game systems nor the settings can really handle that. For me, 5e's "sweet spot" is somewhere between "action hero" (more durable than the average person, with some skills others don't have, but nothing even a street-level marvel hero would envy) to "low-mid-power super hero". That latter part is well below any kind of mythic hero--5e doesn't even pretend to get there. Really, other than a few notably out-of-bounds wizard spells, nothing in the system is really that high power. It's only the broken (meaning "have big shards of ways to cut yourself", not "OP") spells, and specifically the abuse of those spells that creates a high-power system.


I mean, I've played it, so I think this is a limit of imagination?

The highest power campaign I was in was based on 3.5ed, very very heavily homebrewed, but still had the basics of hitpoints, rolls, etc. It started with Lv3 characters, got up to level ranges in the 30-40, but basically by then there was enough other stuff going on that level was a weaker determiner of power than other things available in that campaign. The campaign premise was 'the multiverse was wiped clean by some sort of roving apocalypse that still waits out there in the dark for anything whose future would be able to resist it, you're all that's left, and you have a place to stand which gives you the chance to rebuild'. The campaign spanned everything from fighting undead pirate skeletons on a ship at sea to fighting armadas of spaceships at character-scale to literally packaging and physically transporting a galaxy to a cosmic being as a wedding present, and other things of that order. All within the mechanical framework of that campaign which was, granted, augmented far beyond what base 3.5 allows in order to support it. But it actually did work, numbers remained meaningful and furthermore known benchmark numbers were things players could shoot for as actual plans to achieve specific things, and the extra homebrew stuff meshed with existing D&D stuff to allow characters to touch higher and higher levels of abstraction. It was absolutely gonzo and absolutely not going to be to everyone's taste.

But its sort of like, once I've seen that it can actually work at those scales and even play well with it, when I see someone calls it quits earlier out of fear of 'it might not be stable' or 'it might not be balanced' or whatever it just seems like giving up, not like its a reflection of anything actually true about the mechanical or conceptual underpinnings.

And if you didn't have the homebrew stuff at all, its not like something like Team Solars would have been that ill-suited to the game. You'd have to drop the setting-specific metaphysics and some of the really cosmic-scale shenanigans and it'd require a lot more rules savvy of the players. But this is also a campaign that went a few steps above what would normally be the remit of unstatted overdeities in standard D&D settings anyhow, so its not like I'm saying that any Lv20 character should be doing that particular stuff...

Anyhow, it might indeed be the case that it's harder to get 5e to that point than it would be for 3.5ed.

But I guess my point is, there's space in my ability to imagine interesting and compelling things for characters of that kind of level of power to do in the context of the sorts of settings D&D has. So if the system chooses to stop well short of that, then that's a disappointment to me. I know that it doesn't have to, because I've seen systems go that distance, so 'well its hard to make it make sense and make it work' or 'its better for the game this way' just feels like 'alright, this variation isn't going to be for me'.

[Ulsan Krow]

Martials


Low to mid level Barbarian examples
Khal Drogo, A Song of Ice and Fire
Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Barbarian

Mid to High level Barbarian examples
Thorkell the Tall, Vinland Saga

High level Barbarian examples
Cú Chulainn, the Ulster Cycle
Achilles, The Illiad


Low Mid to Mid level Fighter examples
Apollyon, For Honor
Legolas, The Lord of the Rings
Gimli, The Lord of the Rings


High level Fighter examples
Thors Snoresson, Vinland Saga
Beowulf, Beowulf
Guan Yu, Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Varian Wrynn, World of Warcraft
Guts, Berserk
Gilgamesh, The Epic of Gilgamesh



Mid level Rogue examples
John Wick, John Wick
The Spy, Team Fortress 2
Ezio Auditore, Assassin's Creed


High level Rogue examples

Corvo Attano, Dishonored
Jin Sakai, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Low to Mid level Ranger examples
Jon Snow, A Song of Ice and Fire

Mid to High level Ranger examples
Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings
Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher

High level Ranger examples
Trevor Belmont, Castlevania (Netflix version)
The Hunter, Bloodborne



By verse.

1-4 (listed characters are at 5 or 6 or so, the paragons of this tier) = Game of Thrones is the most perfect comprehensive fantasy to depict these levels, for martials anyhow. Perhaps some characters break into level 6 or so, but they cap out here, unless they're the big bad who's into the double digits (i.e. the Night King). 'Gritty fantasy' as the term goes = anywhere from regular humans to elevated humans, until they break out of the tier at 5, making them paragons/influential big players in the setting.

Level 4-6 ish representatives by class

Barbarian (Path of the Berserker) - Tormund Giantsbane
Barbarian/Fighter (Cavalier) - Khal Drogo (some serious unarmed defense going on)
Cleric (Light Domain) - Melisandre
Fighter (Battlemaster) - Jaime Lannister
Fighter (Champion) - Sandor Clegane
Paladin (Oath of Devotion) - Beric Dondarrion
Ranger (Beastmaster Conclave) - Jon Snow
Rogue (Assassin) - Arya Stark
Rogue (Mastermind) - Petyr Baelish

6-10 = Tolkienverse tier ('Heroic Fantasy') and the favored child of most campaigns, for good reason. Most classic range. Most of these characters break into the level 11-12ish range, making them paragons/influential big players in the setting.

Druid (Land Circle) - Beorning
Fighter (Champion) - Gimli
Fighter (Samurai) - Boromir
Fighter (Samurai) - Legolas
Ranger (Hunter Conclave) - Aragorn
Rogue (Thief) - Bilbo Baggins (Book version)

[AvatarVecna]

Down these real world comparisons only frustrations lie. D&D isn't a simulator, and measuring raw speed often neglects that D&D allows you to do these things wearing armor and carrying obscene loads.

It's not supposed to be perfect, but it shouldn't be laughable either - or at the very least, if it's going to be absurdly unrealistic, it should be absurdly unrealistic in the other direction. That's what they did with carrying capacity and jumping distances - the average person can jump 3 ft off the ground without even trying, apparently, and who knows how high they could get with a good Athletics check (nobody knows, cuz those skill guidelines never got written).

The fact that PCs can maintain invalid speeds while carrying insane amounts of gear doesn't change that it's exactly as fast as they are when they're completely unencumbered. This wasn't a problem in 3rd edition, at least not to nearly the same degree: there, you could spend your whole turn running and doing nothing else, and you'd get to move quadruple your speed. There was more involved rules for how long you could maintain such speeds, but it was still at least plausible that some low-level nobody could pass that fitness goal if they got lucky or pushed themselves. 12 mph was the expectation of an average unencumbered human - Con 10, no feats, no weird mechanics, just the simple ability to put one foot in front of the other, and you too can meet the only-slightly unrealistic expectations of a high school gym coach. I've been a couch potato all my life and I got like a 20 minute mile, and guess how fast most characters can do it in 5e?

I know 5e is supposed to be a lower power level in general, sure, that's a big reason bounded accuracy is here, but like...we have that big thread about how martials aren't much allowed to surpass the GatG, and here he's not even matching him. I don't need a barbarian 1 to be a perfect runner, but I'd like this to be trivial for high-level martial characters. This wild man has strength and endurance roughly comparable to a goddamn terminator, and this is the best he can do? Am I really asking too much??

[Tanarii]

The fact that PCs can maintain invalid speeds while carrying insane amounts of gear doesn't change that it's exactly as fast as they are when they're completely unencumbered. Youve missed the point. Don't use the (wrong part of) the abstraction when it doesn't apply, because it's not a physics engine. If you have a question of resolution, do ability checks instead.


This wasn't a problem in 3rd edition, at least not to nearly the same degree: there, you could spend your whole turn running and doing nothing else, and you'd get to move quadruple your speed. There was more involved rules for how long you could maintain such speeds, Thatd be an example of trying to turn the rules into a physics engine.


I've been a couch potato all my life and I got like a 20 minute mile, and guess how fast most characters can do it in 5e?As fast as their character can in the in-world universe. There aren't specific rules modeling it. "It" being for an unencumbered character in gym shorts on a flat asphalted surface in a straight line.

[AvatarVecna]

People asked for examples of what folks want high-level PCs to be comparable to. I'm sorry I didn't intuitively understand that "average joe" was setting the bar too high.

[Tanarii]

People asked for examples of what folks want high-level PCs to be comparable to. I'm sorry I didn't intuitively understand that "average joe" was setting the bar too high.
The problem is you're assuming that "average joe" translates into something specific within the rules on combat movement speeds when it doesn't, because you're trying to extrapolate them to cover something unintended: running in a straight line while on a track or asphalt while unencumbered.

[AvatarVecna]

The problem is you're assuming that "average joe" translates into something specific within the rules on combat movement speeds when it doesn't, because you're trying to extrapolate them to cover something unintended: running in a straight line while on a track or asphalt while unencumbered.

I don't understand why you're deciding to die on the hill of "asking a 5 minute mile of an unencumbered demigod of fitness is too high an expectation".

[AvatarVecna]

Idk it's just really galling to me, because in general 5e is a bit better about being nice to noncasters. A halfling with the right core-only build can heft 16 times his body weight onto his shoulders and jump 10 ft off the ground without even having to make an Athletics check (which would, presumably, let him jump even higher), and can do so for several minutes while holding his breath the whole time. He can sprint somewhere around thrice as fast as most people walk, but his marathon time is exactly the same as theirs because Overland Travel Rules. He's fast and tough by the standards of his own world, but that doesn't matter because his marathon time is like 4 times the length of real-world average joes. I don't necessarily want realism - the jumping rules aren't realistic, the carrying rules aren't realistic, the breath-holding rules aren't realistic. You look through the example checks in books, and DC 15-20 stuff is surprisingly cool given that it's in range for a lucky commoner. Squeezing through barbed netting without getting hurt or stuck? DC 15. Climb up a smooth wet stone wall? DC 20. Find your way through a pitch-black underwater tunnel in time to avoid drowning? DC 15. Monk 2 can theoretically have as much as a 24 ft high jump without making a skill check to extend it.

Maybe your DMs differ, but the ones I've played with don't tend to appreciate players suggesting skill uses, especially if they feel it's going against the rules. Making the argument that you could run faster by making a good Athletics check, whether that's over the course of an hour, or the course of a round, would not be well-received in my experience.

[OldTrees1]

I don't understand why you're deciding to die on the hill of "asking a 5 minute mile of an unencumbered demigod of fitness is too high an expectation".

... to be fair, most PCs are not actually unencumbered to quite the degree an average Joe is when they run a mile on the track. The PC's backpack has stuff in it. (Imagine a gym class running the mile with their backpack of textbooks)


Oh and I forgot something

Totem Barbarian 6 (3:Bear, 6:Elk) has a doubled overland travel pace.
That is 800ft per minute or 76% of a mile in 5 minutes if we assume Speed does not increase Travel Pace.
(although maybe it would if everyone was faster/slower?)

Totem Barbarian 5 (3:Elk) has +25ft speed. That is 110 ft/6s.


The Elk totem Barbarian might be comparable with the Monk when modeling a demigod of fitness

[Dork_Forge]

Idk it's just really galling to me, because in general 5e is a bit better about being nice to noncasters. A halfling with the right core-only build can heft 16 times his body weight onto his shoulders and jump 10 ft off the ground without even having to make an Athletics check (which would, presumably, let him jump even higher), and can do so for several minutes while holding his breath the whole time. He can sprint somewhere around thrice as fast as most people walk, but his marathon time is exactly the same as theirs because Overland Travel Rules. He's fast and tough by the standards of his own world, but that doesn't matter because his marathon time is like 4 times the length of real-world average joes. I don't necessarily want realism - the jumping rules aren't realistic, the carrying rules aren't realistic, the breath-holding rules aren't realistic. You look through the example checks in books, and DC 15-20 stuff is surprisingly cool given that it's in range for a lucky commoner. Squeezing through barbed netting without getting hurt or stuck? DC 15. Climb up a smooth wet stone wall? DC 20. Find your way through a pitch-black underwater tunnel in time to avoid drowning? DC 15. Monk 2 can theoretically have as much as a 24 ft high jump without making a skill check to extend it.

Maybe your DMs differ, but the ones I've played with don't tend to appreciate players suggesting skill uses, especially if they feel it's going against the rules. Making the argument that you could run faster by making a good Athletics check, whether that's over the course of an hour, or the course of a round, would not be well-received in my experience.

You acknowledge the rules aren't realistic, and for the most part they lend to the PCs doing fantastical, unrealistic if not superhuman things compared to our world. (And before anyone @s the things they can do, they're doing them all, whilst armored and carrying stuff, not specialising in a single task in modern conditions).

The bold really highlights part of the issue here. Overland travel isn't for running a marathon. It's for traveling. You'd be better suited comparing them to hiking, not marathon running. A person that runs a marathon isn't carrying anything, they're probably running on a road, and they're probably being handed water etc. as they go. They're not doing anything before or after, but prep and recover. And then... they're specialists, marathons is what they do. Even a novice spends their spare time practicing for it, and those novices are expected to run it in times that 5e characters can run it laden down with all their stuff anyway...

D&D doesn't really rule out doing certain distances for speed, because there is no practical use for it for the majority of people. 26.2 miles? You're traveling somewhere, if you're literally running a marathon... most people don't and if your DM is putting that in front of you then they can work it out.

What's more important is how it feels in game, are adventurers stronger, faster etc. that commoners? Pretty much across the board yes, adventurers are more special than commoners in every way.


In terms of suggesting skills, I'm not a fan of it but I don't bite my players heads off or anything,though yes that is very table specific.

[Azuresun]

High level Fighter examples
Guts, Berserk

He's my model for a high level fighter as well. Exceptionally strong and tough, but he is (within the setting) working with human grit and determination, as well as his magical / technological items. He's not using Sword Magic to do overtly supernatural wuxia stuff, like everyone on forums seems to want.



I don't understand why you're deciding to die on the hill of "asking a 5 minute mile of an unencumbered demigod of fitness is too high an expectation".

Because the speed rules are for moving in combat. Why do you want to try to apply that to situations that are not combat?

3e tried "rules as universally applicable laws of physics", and we got the man-ball being the best way for large groups to travel, and characters being unable to see the moon.

[Drascin]

A question is - what power level and scale do we want to go with?

Because the whole caster/fighter stuff basically comes down to the fact that caster fantasies "scale up" as you level, while the martial ones don't. A wizard starts as a very smart guy with some clever magical tricks, and ends up as a monster god-thing beyond anything in most mythologies, conjuring armaggeddon from the skies and breaking time and space. Fighter man starts out as a grizzled man good with a sword and ends up as a grizzled man good with a sword, but faster.

So the idea, in my mind, is that first we have to pick a lane. Either everyone's fantasies scale up, or they don't. If we let the wizard go up to calling down meteors from the heavens, then the equivalent-level fighter needs to be able to grab a bow and shoot the meteor out of the sky Hou Yi style. And if the Fighter starts and ends as grizzled man with a sword, then the Wizard needs to remain a clever guy with a bunch of smart tricks. Otherwise, ain't much of an equivalence.

If what you want is to go high power, then I'd look at both myth and manga, as they both have a lot of examples of people actually doing cool things with swords.

Cu Chulainn's Warp Spasm is very rage-y, and it feels like he should be someone a top level Barbarian should feel like, but as is, the Barbarian resembles the Hound of Chulainn in about the same way a housecat resembles a tiger. If we're going to equalize things with the guys who have the Wrath of God on speed dial, stopping a Barbarian on a charge should require more or less dropping a goddamn mountain on their head. I can't help but think of that one X-Men story where the X-Men are fighting the Juggernaut. "We tried to stop him with fire and atomic beams. Result: An even angrier Juggenaut that is now also radioactive and on fire".

For Fighter, something like Guts is a solid inspiration. To put things into perspective: at one point, Guts mounts a giant demon and charges in to battle head to head what could be very reasonably described as a hurricane made of lightning with no physical form. And wins. His sword isn't magical because it's enchanted by a wizard - rather, it's unclear if the sword became magic just from how sheer many monsters he killed with it, or if it also became ontologically powerful due to becoming a sort of Platonic Ideal Of Asskicking by the sheer fact of recognizably being Guts' unique sword. Etcetera. He's far beyond "dude with sword" - he's survived so much crap and become so good at killing things that he's basically a walking middle finger to the natural order of the universe.

A Rogue and similar skillmonkey should, by the end, basically not give a crap about the laws of physics when it comes to their skill rolls. He's just that good. We're talking Carmen Sandiego stealing the Mona Lisa when the entire police department of Paris and the cameras of half the world are watching it directly or Erlang Shen immediately detecting Sun Wukong when he's five miles away and also shapeshifted into a bird or Batman suddenly appearing behind a dude when he was literally on the other end of the room and there was no way for him to make it there, kind of "good at skills".

Etctera.

However this, as you can imagine, gets a bit hard to implement in the D&D skeleton as is. The current D&D rules don't really have much space to hang what is basically Exalted or Godbound kind of stuff. So it might, perhaps, be a lot easier to meet in the middle. Reduce high level caster fantasy scope a bunch, raise the fighting guys' a bit, see if you can about meet in the middle.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A question is - what power level and scale do we want to go with?

<snip>

However this, as you can imagine, gets a bit hard to implement in the D&D skeleton as is. The current D&D rules don't really have much space to hang what is basically Exalted or Godbound kind of stuff. So it might, perhaps, be a lot easier to meet in the middle. Reduce high level caster fantasy scope a bunch, raise the fighting guys' a bit, see if you can about meet in the middle.

I agree with this. It's the central question. D&D (5e at least) is actually fairly low powered throughout most of it. Sure, you've got some flashy spells, but they're mostly things that someone with a mortar could do. Even meteor swarm isn't as good as a mobile artillery cluster round. It's just that there are a small handful of spells that are ripe for abuse in ways that produce abnormally high power.

Could martials have more? Sure. I have no problem with that. But trying to keep up with the highest possible optimization of the most broken spells and abilities is futile--doing so will just make them stronger (by giving more things to multiclass with if nothing else and setting precedent) and around and around it spirals. The rest of the game (resolution system, monsters, etc) doesn't actually handle those high power things well at all. So to do that you need to revamp the whole thing. Or just find a happy medium, as you say.

[Amechra]

This thread is honestly kinda hilarious.

"What do you think high-level characters should be capable of?"
"I think that high-level martial characters should be like SUPERHEROES or LEGENDARY HEROIC FIGURES."
"Oh, yeah, that's dope."
"I think martial characters should be slightly faster."
"How dare you make such a suggestion? Don't you know ? I bet you just feel [I]silly."

And, of course, any discussion of what a high level spellcaster should look like is conspicuously absent from most of this thread...

[Witty Username]

What should high level casters be capable of?
<Looks at book>
Seems about right

[ProsecutorGodot]

This thread is honestly kinda hilarious.

"What do you think high-level characters should be capable of?"
"I think that high-level martial characters should be like SUPERHEROES or LEGENDARY HEROIC FIGURES."
"Oh, yeah, that's dope."
"I think martial characters should be slightly faster."
"How dare you make such a suggestion? Don't you know ? I bet you just feel [I]silly."

And, of course, any discussion of what a high level spellcaster should look like is conspicuously absent from most of this thread...

The speed discussion is a non-starter. Every creature in the DND Fiction is equally slow compared to real life, even Quickling's, the 5e epitome of speed, barely register as "fast" under real world constraints. This isn't about suggesting "they should be able to be fast" is unreasonable, it's about suggesting "they are fast, under 5e's incredibly awkward speed standards".

I don't think anyone was calling the idea dumb, but I definitely agree on unnecessary. When our party Monk moves 300+ft in a turn running a circle around an enemy in combat and attacking 5 times I think "wow she's fast" not "too bad my couch potato body could run the a mile faster than that". If we make the goal to emulate real life, all we're doing is bloating numbers across the board. A more reasonable goal on this thinking is to make epic level PC's comparatively faster, which the system does do where the designers felt appropriate like with Monk, Rogue and Barbarian.

[NichG]

A question is - what power level and scale do we want to go with?

Because the whole caster/fighter stuff basically comes down to the fact that caster fantasies "scale up" as you level, while the martial ones don't. A wizard starts as a very smart guy with some clever magical tricks, and ends up as a monster god-thing beyond anything in most mythologies, conjuring armaggeddon from the skies and breaking time and space. Fighter man starts out as a grizzled man good with a sword and ends up as a grizzled man good with a sword, but faster.

So the idea, in my mind, is that first we have to pick a lane. Either everyone's fantasies scale up, or they don't. If we let the wizard go up to calling down meteors from the heavens, then the equivalent-level fighter needs to be able to grab a bow and shoot the meteor out of the sky Hou Yi style. And if the Fighter starts and ends as grizzled man with a sword, then the Wizard needs to remain a clever guy with a bunch of smart tricks. Otherwise, ain't much of an equivalence.

If what you want is to go high power, then I'd look at both myth and manga, as they both have a lot of examples of people actually doing cool things with swords.

Cu Chulainn's Warp Spasm is very rage-y, and it feels like he should be someone a top level Barbarian should feel like, but as is, the Barbarian resembles the Hound of Chulainn in about the same way a housecat resembles a tiger. If we're going to equalize things with the guys who have the Wrath of God on speed dial, stopping a Barbarian on a charge should require more or less dropping a goddamn mountain on their head. I can't help but think of that one X-Men story where the X-Men are fighting the Juggernaut. "We tried to stop him with fire and atomic beams. Result: An even angrier Juggenaut that is now also radioactive and on fire".

For Fighter, something like Guts is a solid inspiration. To put things into perspective: at one point, Guts mounts a giant demon and charges in to battle head to head what could be very reasonably described as a hurricane made of lightning with no physical form. And wins. His sword isn't magical because it's enchanted by a wizard - rather, it's unclear if the sword became magic just from how sheer many monsters he killed with it, or if it also became ontologically powerful due to becoming a sort of Platonic Ideal Of Asskicking by the sheer fact of recognizably being Guts' unique sword. Etcetera. He's far beyond "dude with sword" - he's survived so much crap and become so good at killing things that he's basically a walking middle finger to the natural order of the universe.

A Rogue and similar skillmonkey should, by the end, basically not give a crap about the laws of physics when it comes to their skill rolls. He's just that good. We're talking Carmen Sandiego stealing the Mona Lisa when the entire police department of Paris and the cameras of half the world are watching it directly or Erlang Shen immediately detecting Sun Wukong when he's five miles away and also shapeshifted into a bird or Batman suddenly appearing behind a dude when he was literally on the other end of the room and there was no way for him to make it there, kind of "good at skills".

Etctera.


Agree with aiming for this spot.



However this, as you can imagine, gets a bit hard to implement in the D&D skeleton as is. The current D&D rules don't really have much space to hang what is basically Exalted or Godbound kind of stuff. So it might, perhaps, be a lot easier to meet in the middle. Reduce high level caster fantasy scope a bunch, raise the fighting guys' a bit, see if you can about meet in the middle.

This on the other hand... well, if we're talking about what we'd like things to be rather than what they are, I don't see any reason why not to build the infrastructure of D&D with those sorts of feats eventually being meaningful in mind. I don't think its particularly that big of a gap to bridge. Exalted for example doesn't actually give me this feel with its mechanics even though the fluff is very much all in on selling things as that kind of scale.

I think the mechanical elements that contribute to that sort of feeling of scale have to do with shifting from number comparisons to sorts of interacting systems of absolutes that can 'cut through the numbers' in localized ways. So 'your weapon has a 15ft range' is one thing, but 'if you can see it, you can land a strike on it' gives that epic scale feeling because if at some point in the sequence of events something like attacking a flea on the surface of the moon becomes a meaningful in-scope thing to consider, well, you as the Attacker Of Things are there to step up and do that. The sort of fixed packet of mechanics-via-natural-language that underlies spellcasting has a tendency to allow those absolutes to start showing up at every level, and the ascendancy of caster classes is when those little micro-absolutes become dense enough that they join up and combo. So you could certainly rebuild D&D with an eye to keeping those sort of absolute abilities at Lv15+ and removing them from lower levels entirely.


And, of course, any discussion of what a high level spellcaster should look like is conspicuously absent from most of this thread...

I mean its kind of a joke because the books don't really follow through on implications, but the upper end of the stuff people can demonstrably get up to in Harry Potter books would be fine for high level casters.

The Dominator and the Lady from Black Company would be good reference points for 'correct scale of agency + actually following through with implications'.

[Brookshw]

For Fighter, something like Guts is a solid inspiration. .

Do love me some oversized sword action.

Unrelated, let me toss this out there as a tangent to the main question. A lot of inspiration people mention are characters who regularly fight as the sole hero. D&D contemplates parties. At the higher end people keep mentioning, doesn't seem that ancient dragons and demon lords in the current form would really be much more than a cake walk. What does an normal challenge look like for a party of demigods? What about a deadly challenge?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Do love me some oversized sword action.

Unrelated, let me toss this out there as a tangent to the main question. A lot of inspiration people mention are characters who regularly fight as the sole hero. D&D contemplates parties. At the higher end people keep mentioning, doesn't seem that ancient dragons and demon lords in the current form would really be much more than a cake walk. What does an normal challenge look like for a party of demigods? What about a deadly challenge?

And what kinds of worlds would accommodate and make sense for such beings? Comic book settings work because they're entirely set dressing without any attempt at coherence. Exalted's setting "works" because it's all gonzo from the get go--normal people don't really matter at all and random BS is the name of them game.

[NichG]

Do love me some oversized sword action.

Unrelated, let me toss this out there as a tangent to the main question. A lot of inspiration people mention are characters who regularly fight as the sole hero. D&D contemplates parties. At the higher end people keep mentioning, doesn't seem that ancient dragons and demon lords in the current form would really be much more than a cake walk. What does an normal challenge look like for a party of demigods? What about a deadly challenge?

Planar stuff is pretty good - steal something from the realm of a deity, invade and hold a city on Baator, etc. Mythological conceptual things like having to fill in for Death for a day while she's getting over some food poisoning.

Stuff involving dealing with other nations writ large, and replacing their systems and organizations once force has been applied to change things to the PCs' vision such that they stick even when the characters step away.

Or the usual apocalyptic stuff - self-replicating living spells from a spell engine gone awry, overcrowding in the afterlife, causality broke because someone was messing around with an ether gap and the PCs and other similarly high powered entities are the only ones with enough tricks to continue to chain cause and effect on their own in the frozen moment that time ended in order to try to find a way to glue everything back together.

Or you can expand the timescale of the campaign and have ten or twenty or fifty year downtimes and being able to transcend mortality actually starts to matter.

Or if you're lucky enough to have proactive PCs, the universe can be filled with mysteries to poke at which require a certain level of ability to touch the abstract to make progress with, and even if nothing is a threat it doesn't mean the characters have nothing to do. Hunt down clues about something that is invading the conceptual structure of reality, strung across multiple different eras. Deal with the machinations of the characters' future selves. Raid other cosmologies for the raw stuff of meaning in order to enrich their own. PCs decide or interact with people who have decided things like: 'we don't like the Wall of the Faithless, we're going to knock it down' or 'we don't like the existence of alignment as a cosmic concept, we're going to destabilize that' or 'what is this belief = truth stuff, lets create a space in which there is no belief and see what is really true' or things like that. Work to change the relationships between cosmic forces, planes, overdeities, etc.

Or heck, you can have the occasional low intensity thing where the party might be trying to mentor or support lower level characters and they get to play the golden finger / cryptic elder teacher for a bit.

[Brookshw]

snip

Those are fine high level adventure ideas, but they're all things I can/have run now. How are these changing to address a new power scale? How would you modify enemies?

[Azuresun]

The speed discussion is a non-starter. Every creature in the DND Fiction is equally slow compared to real life, even Quickling's, the 5e epitome of speed, barely register as "fast" under real world constraints. This isn't about suggesting "they should be able to be fast" is unreasonable, it's about suggesting "they are fast, under 5e's incredibly awkward speed standards".

I don't think anyone was calling the idea dumb, but I definitely agree on unnecessary. When our party Monk moves 300+ft in a turn running a circle around an enemy in combat and attacking 5 times I think "wow she's fast" not "too bad my couch potato body could run the a mile faster than that". If we make the goal to emulate real life, all we're doing is bloating numbers across the board. A more reasonable goal on this thinking is to make epic level PC's comparatively faster, which the system does do where the designers felt appropriate like with Monk, Rogue and Barbarian.

The combat speed numbers seem to be mainly set where they are, so that combats don't involve someone racing off the edge of the map every turn and positioning / cover actually matters.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The combat speed numbers seem to be mainly set where they are, so that combats don't involve someone racing off the edge of the map every turn and positioning / cover actually matters.

Grid combat is a variant option so I don't know if that was really a primary concern. I'll agree though, they probably did consider map/grid scaling at least a bit when it came to decide on speeds.

[NichG]

Those are fine high level adventure ideas, but they're all things I can/have run now. How are these changing to address a new power scale? How would you modify enemies?

Well casters are more or less able to operate on this level already, or can get themselves there with loose interpretations of certain natural language aspects of spells. But expanding that with non-casting mythic abilities would increase the surface area along which the party can choose to interact with these elements without there needing to be a prepared path, MacGuffin, plot-device NPC to be swayed, one-off ritual, etc.

As far as modifying enemies, you can of course make things with stats that are appropriate to the numerical scale of things, but this also lets you have enemies that act as sort of puzzle fights. How do I fight something that only exists in the half-second before the now? How do I fight the egregore formed from the conceptualization and personification of the idea of paranoia, that exists so long as anyone anywhere experiences paranoia and which has no corporeal or even localizable form?

You don't even have to go full Nobilis like that. Pick one or two absolutes and build an encounter around it. This is the Demon who personifies the Curse of Sisyphus - it fights by surprise-attacking the party and then teleporting away, and its absolute power is that a combat started with it cannot end until it is defeated, so things like Short Rests, Long Rests, etc cannot be performed until it is tracked down and slain. This is Charybdis, whose absolute power is that those within a mile of it cannot move or be moved to become further from it than they currently are - all motion must circle it or approach it. This is the Corrupted Watcher of Histories, who normally would be a neutral natural force that talks with historical figures as great decisions are made and then makes itself forgotten but by virtue of its corruption it has now turned that into the ability to prevent people from forming even short term memories of its presence and actions, and is now basically an assassin who you forget exists the moment you take your eyes off of it.

[Lord Raziere]

Serious question (that's obvious to me, but obviously not so to others)--

if you, as a TTRPG character, have a "class feature" or otherwise system-given power that you can't use lest the whole world turn on you and destroy you, aka "MAD, D&D edition"...do you really have that power? And if you do have it, should you?


*laughs in Solar Exalted, uses power anyways*

[Brookshw]

Well casters are more or less able to operate on this level already, or can get themselves there with loose interpretations of certain natural language aspects of spells. But expanding that with non-casting mythic abilities would increase the surface area along which the party can choose to interact with these elements without there needing to be a prepared path, MacGuffin, plot-device NPC to be swayed, one-off ritual, etc.

As far as modifying enemies, you can of course make things with stats that are appropriate to the numerical scale of things, but this also lets you have enemies that act as sort of puzzle fights. How do I fight something that only exists in the half-second before the now? How do I fight the egregore formed from the conceptualization and personification of the idea of paranoia, that exists so long as anyone anywhere experiences paranoia and which has no corporeal or even localizable form?

You don't even have to go full Nobilis like that. Pick one or two absolutes and build an encounter around it. This is the Demon who personifies the Curse of Sisyphus - it fights by surprise-attacking the party and then teleporting away, and its absolute power is that a combat started with it cannot end until it is defeated, so things like Short Rests, Long Rests, etc cannot be performed until it is tracked down and slain. This is Charybdis, whose absolute power is that those within a mile of it cannot move or be moved to become further from it than they currently are - all motion must circle it or approach it. This is the Corrupted Watcher of Histories, who normally would be a neutral natural force that talks with historical figures as great decisions are made and then makes itself forgotten but by virtue of its corruption it has now turned that into the ability to prevent people from forming even short term memories of its presence and actions, and is now basically an assassin who you forget exists the moment you take your eyes off of it.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, your proposal is to remove traditional adventure tropes, and redo monsters from the bottom up, including giving them abilities to effect/negate the mechanics of the game. Is that right? Not criticizing, I've certainly done plenty of weird things in epic campaigns, just wanted to clarify what you're proposing the game should look like in a higher level paradigm.

[OldTrees1]

Unrelated, let me toss this out there as a tangent to the main question. A lot of inspiration people mention are characters who regularly fight as the sole hero. D&D contemplates parties. At the higher end people keep mentioning, doesn't seem that ancient dragons and demon lords in the current form would really be much more than a cake walk. What does an normal challenge look like for a party of demigods? What about a deadly challenge?


I gave multiple benchmarks for high level, for this post let's assume:
I want high level characters to be global scale forces with the ability to travel to any plane


You have a party that is able to engage in global scale conflicts on any plane. I would consider an NPC Archfiend/Archduke with their infrastructure resources to be a comparable encounter. A normal adventure for this party could be conquering Avernus from Archdevil Bel while both sides deal with Blood War conflicts as notable distractions. Deadly challenges would include "when a Demon Lord decided to make a splash in the blood war", "when Bel outmaneuvered the party and they faced a heavy concentration of strong devils", "when the party/Bel cornered the other for a head to head clash".


Another example normal adventure would be handling the fallout and then confrontation with a global scale elder evil. Imagine Atropus is incoming. Their arrival is heralded by mass undead risings across the world. The party would be tasked with keeping all of those undead under control despite them being all over the world. Finally when the death moon Atropus arrives, the party would defeat a moon in whatever way makes sense for their characterization.

Edit:
Now those are just the combat or militaristic non combat encounters. As global scale forces, I expect they will also deal with global scale non combat challenges. A high level Paladin might end a war through diplomacy, provide food during a famine, end a plaguing pestilence, and decrease the natural disaster death rate. This might annoy 4 horsemen, but maybe not.

Edit 2:
Alternatively the non combat actions don't need to just deal with reactive actions (global forces tend to react to global threats). What about proactive actions. If you had the power to do good on a global scale, what would you do?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I gave multiple benchmarks for high level, for this post let's assume:
I want high level characters to be global scale forces with the ability to travel to any plane


You have a party that is able to engage in global scale conflicts on any plane. I would consider an NPC Archfiend/Archduke with their infrastructure resources to be a comparable encounter. A normal adventure for this party could be conquering Avernus from Archdevil Bel while both sides deal with Blood War conflicts as notable distractions. Deadly challenges would include "when a Demon Lord decided to make a splash in the blood war", "when Bel outmaneuvered the party and they faced a heavy concentration of strong devils", "when the party/Bel cornered the other for a head to head clash".


Another example normal adventure would be handling the fallout and then confrontation with a global scale elder evil. Imagine Atropus is incoming. Their arrival is heralded by mass undead risings across the world. The party would be tasked with keeping all of those undead under control despite them being all over the world. Finally when the death moon Atropus arrives, the party would defeat a moon in whatever way makes sense for their characterization.

So you have to have different world ending threats every couple days. Yeah. Not a fan.

[OldTrees1]

So you have to have different world ending threats every couple days. Yeah. Not a fan.

Huh? Where did you grab a timescale of "every couple days" from? How long do you think it takes to resolve a conflict between 2 global scale forces? I said an example adventure might be ...

Also consider the non combat encounters they might deal with too. (Edited in while you replied, posted here too)

Now those are just the combat or militaristic non combat encounters. As global scale forces, I expect they will also deal with global scale non combat challenges. A high level Paladin might end a war through diplomacy, provide food during a famine, end a plaguing pestilence, and decrease the natural disaster death rate. This might annoy 4 horsemen, but maybe not.

Alternatively you don't need to just deal with reactive actions (global forces tend to react to global threats). What about proactive actions. If you had the power to do good on a global scale, what would you do?


Edit: Also, just like there is theoretically downtime at low levels (it is not life and death struggle every day) there is downtime at high levels.

[Brookshw]

I gave multiple benchmarks for high level, for this post let's assume:
I want high level characters to be global scale forces with the ability to travel to any plane


You have a party that is able to engage in global scale conflicts on any plane. I would consider an NPC Archfiend/Archduke with their infrastructure resources to be a comparable encounter. A normal adventure for this party could be conquering Avernus from Archdevil Bel while both sides deal with Blood War conflicts as notable distractions. Deadly challenges would include "when a Demon Lord decided to make a splash in the blood war", "when Bel outmaneuvered the party and they faced a heavy concentration of strong devils", "when the party/Bel cornered the other for a head to head clash".


Another example normal adventure would be handling the fallout and then confrontation with a global scale elder evil. Imagine Atropus is incoming. Their arrival is heralded by mass undead risings across the world. The party would be tasked with keeping all of those undead under control despite them being all over the world. Finally when the death moon Atropus arrives, the party would defeat a moon in whatever way makes sense for their characterization.

Edit:
Now those are just the combat or militaristic non combat encounters. As global scale forces, I expect they will also deal with global scale non combat challenges. A high level Paladin might end a war through diplomacy, provide food during a famine, end a plaguing pestilence, and decrease the natural disaster death rate. This might annoy 4 horsemen, but maybe not.

Edit 2:
Alternatively the non combat actions don't need to just deal with reactive actions (global forces tend to react to global threats). What about proactive actions. If you had the power to do good on a global scale, what would you do?

I don't find adventure ideas particularly helpful, not that there's anything wrong with them, but you can run any of those at varying levels of power (and certainly at the higher limits of today's power), and there's too many variables in encounter design and approach to draw anything meaningful. The question isn't so much high level, as much higher than current power. If you're answer is 'I wouldn't change stuff', no problem, that's an answer.

[OldTrees1]

I don't find adventure ideas particularly helpful, not that there's anything wrong with them, but you can run any of those at varying levels of power (and certainly at the higher limits of today's power), and there's too many variables in encounter design and approach to draw anything meaningful. The question isn't so much high level, as much higher than current power. If you're answer is 'I wouldn't change stuff', no problem, that's an answer.

You could run adventures at varying power levels, provided the characters can still act at the appropriate scale. However if the character's can't act at the appropriate scale, then you can't run the adventure. A local scale force will fail an adventure to conquer a plane. My underlying answer is I would not substantially change the combat for an Archduke, but the encounters are now more than just the combat.

A local scale force Paladin could wander into plague and provide relief to a town, but that relief would be temporary. When they moved to the next town, the plague would retake the previous one. In contrast a regional scale force Paladin could cure a plague and a global scale force Paladin could cure a plague while also occupied by tasks elsewhere as one of multiple things they did that day.


I am sorry you don't find adventure ideas particularly helpful, however it was the actual answer to your question. When I expect high level characters to be able to be global forces, I expect high level characters to be able to be global forces. Conquering a plane is an example adventure because the issue is not about the challenge of a single combat encounter, the issue is about the capabilities of the character and the challenges they could face.

[NichG]

So if I'm hearing you correctly, your proposal is to remove traditional adventure tropes, and redo monsters from the bottom up, including giving them abilities to effect/negate the mechanics of the game. Is that right? Not criticizing, I've certainly done plenty of weird things in epic campaigns, just wanted to clarify what you're proposing the game should look like in a higher level paradigm.

Basically. The way I see it, the low levels establish tropes, then as you grow in level you get to experience being on the other side of those tropes and ultimately see those tropes subverted and replaced. That's what makes it feel qualitatively transformative to me as opposed to just having numbers go up or refluffing orcs into colossi or whatever.

And as far as monster design, those unique powers are mostly for the bosses - the generals, centerpieces, etc. But they're sort of in parallel with the kind of unique powers I would see PC mythic archetypes getting. The PC with the ability to summon any improvised weapon of their choice in any circumstances versus the monster with the ability to voluntarily disintegrate any nonliving material within 30ft of itself. I don't personally like the idea of a 'generic Lv20/CR 20 character' - anyone who is at that power level should be a unique being with their own quirks and oddities, such that it's hard to pin down exactly what they're going to be capable of or how they'd go about doing it from first principles. That can either function via a complex enough build system that rules interactions and build options let you construct surprising things, or just make unique stuff on the fly as needed, or both.

You can of course have hordes of regular monsters with fairly simple mechanics acting as support or even just as environmental factors to keep in mind. 'How do we deal with an army of 100000 quasits?' can occasionally be an interesting puzzle, even if its not an every-encounter sort of thing.

[Trask]

When I expect high level characters to be able to be global forces, I expect high level characters to be able to be global forces. Conquering a plane is an example adventure because the issue is not about the challenge of a single combat encounter, the issue is about the capabilities of the character and the challenges they could face.

I agree with OldTrees, to really create adventures in high level play where PCs can project power on a global and planar scale, it can be good practice to make the "adventure" something more like a grand undertaking. It helps if you have proactive players.

I'm playing in an epic level text RP in thats been going on for 3 years now and one player has created a huge kingdom out of isles of the northern Sea of Swords by a mixture of conquest and diplomacy. It might sound a little mundane compared to the popular idea of many epic level D&D adventures, but I think its a pretty epic goal, worthy of a 20th level character and it helps break up the monotony of endless world ending threats. Creating a kingdom is hard, and it gives the DM a lot of wrenches to throw, the different cultures and races all united under one monarch, the logistical problems, making treaties and agreements, outside forces looking to take advantage of the situation or corrupt the mission, and thats all before you even get to the idea of battles themselves.

[2D8HP]

Captain Sinbad from “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” film, Conan from the Howard stories, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser from the Leiber, Indiana Jones from “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” film, Robin Hood from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” film, Sir Percival from the film “Excalibur”, and Tonto from the “Lone Ranger” television show.

Only one is a spell caster.

Most of those wouldn’t be too different at level one than level 20.

[OldTrees1]

Captain Sinbad from “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” film, Conan from the Howard stories, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser from the Leiber, Indiana Jones from “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” film, Robin Hood from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” film, Sir Percival from the film “Excalibur”, and Tonto from the “Lone Ranger” television show.

Only one is a spell caster.

Most of those wouldn’t be too different at level one than level 20.


Hmm, I still need to read about Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, but I recognize the others. What differentiates their level 1 from their level 20? What role do you see levels serving? Is that compatible with mage levels increase the mage's scale, range, and power?

I can see Sinbad growing from a sailor to being a famous captain able to request and expect assistance from other ships. I know Conan became a king for a while. Both of those grow in scale.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Hmm, I still need to read about Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, but I recognize the others. What differentiates their level 1 from their level 20? What role do you see levels serving? Is that compatible with mage levels increase the mage's scale, range, and power?

I can see Sinbad growing from a sailor to being a famous captain able to request and expect assistance from other ships. I know Conan became a king for a while. Both of those grow in scale.

Neither of those are really changes in personal power. They're changes in derived power. Which only fits "growth through level up" really really poorly, since ship captaincy and kingdoms and allies don't just magically appear one day when you're out in the wilderness. They're basically the equivalent of quest boons -- rewards that come because of your actions, not some inherent growth in your own power level via training, experience, or whatever. In fact, the strongest fighter isn't always or even usually the king, and the king isn't always or even usually abnormally strong. They're completely separate scales. At least in any kind of consistent world.

His point, I think, is that being high level doesn't have to mean that you're exponentially more powerful. Leveling up can be linear or even sub-linear growth without a change in overall nature, rather than some categorical change. I don't know that I'd go that far (functionally O(1) power scaling), personally, but I'm fine with everyone being more like a sqrt(x) curve or linear at most. Rapid personal power growth in the early part of the career, but then slowing down and mostly broadening later. It's way more friendly to settings, for one thing. And systems might actually be able to handle it tolerably without having to rewrite the entire book every few levels.

[OldTrees1]

Neither of those are really changes in personal power. They're changes in derived power.
Who cares? Nobody bats an eye when a necromancer's capacity to command undead increases. It is not like undead will magically appear to fill those ranks either. I don't care whether you call it _____ power. I recognized the characters and noticed 2 of the characters grew in scale. So I mentioned that when asking 2d8 my question. Nothing more.


His point, I think, ...
From my experience talking to you and to 2d8, I will wait for 2d8 to elaborate. I too have theories about what they mean. However I asked them for clarification rather than assuming.

[2D8HP]

Hmm, I still need to read about Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, but I recognize the others.


Here you go:

Hristomilo laughed cacklingly and grinned, showing his huge upper incisors, while Slivikin chittered in ecstasy and bounded the higher.
The Mouser hurled Cat's Claw with no better result — worse, indeed, since his action gave two darting smog-strands time to curl hamperingly around his sword- hand and stranglingly around his neck. Black rats came racing out of the big holes at the cluttered base of the walls.
Meanwhile other strands snaked around Fafhrd's ankles, knees and left arm, almost toppling him. But even as he fought for balance, he jerked Vlana's dagger from his belt and raised it over his shoulder, its silver hilt glowing, its blade brown with dried rat's-blood.
The grin left Hristomilo's face as he saw it. The sorcerer screamed strangely and importuningly then and drew back from his parchment and the table, and raised clawed clubhands to ward off doom.
Vlana's dagger sped unimpeded through the black web — its strands even seemed to part for it — and betwixt the sorcerer's warding hands, to bury itself to the hilt in his right eye.
He screamed thinly in dire agony and clawed at his face.
The black web writhed as if in death spasm.
The cucurbits shattered as one, spilling their lava on the scarred table, putting out the blue flames even as the thick wood of the table began to smoke a little at the lava's edge. Lava dropped with plops on the dark marble floor.
With a faint, final scream Hristomilo pitched forward, hands still clutched to his eyes above his jutting nose, silver dagger-hilt still protruding between his fingers.
The web grew faint, like wet ink washed with a gush of clear water.
The Mouser raced forward and transfixed Slivikin and the huge rat with one thrust of Scalpel before the beasts knew what was happening. They too died swiftly with thin screams, while all the other rats turned tail and fled back down their holes swift almost as black lightning. - Ill Met in Lankhmar (1970) by Fritz Leiber

FWLIW here's Gygax on what tales helped inspire Arneson and Gygax to create Dungeons & Dragons

"....those who don't care for Burroughs'
Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste."-E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

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

Frankly I think D&D is best when it imitates my favorite author that inspired Dungeons & Dragons, and named a genre!:

"I feel more certain than ever that this field should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story—and (quite incidentally) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story too!
—Fritz Leiber, Amra, July 1961

http://www.howardandrewjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/leiber.jpg

I met a very frail seeming Fritz Leiber at a book signing just before he died and he had an impressive smile (I also met Michael Moorcock at a book signing and he has an impressive scowl).

Here’s a few of the stories, which were published from 1939 to 1977:

Induction (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0087/ERBAEN0087___1.htm)

Swords and Deviltry (https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1487545862582.pdf)

The Jewels in the Forest (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0088/ERBAEN0088___2.htm)

The Bleak Shore (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791528/9781625791528___2.htm)

Lean Times in Lankhmar (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0089/ERBAEN0089___2.htm)

In the Witch's Tent (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0090/ERBAEN0090___1.htm)

The Circle Curse (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0088/ERBAEN0088___1.htm)

The Sadness of the Executioner (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092___1.htm)

Beauty and the Beasts (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0092/ERBAEN0092___2.htm)

The Cloud of Hate (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0089/ERBAEN0089___1.htm)

Sea Magic (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0093/ERBAEN0093___1.htm)

Throw in Howard's Conan, Moorcock's Elric, and Moore's Jirel tales for a great mix!


What differentiates their level 1 from their level 20?

A little more wounded, a little more wiser and respected.


What role do you see levels serving?


Same as now, a way to measure learning.


Is that compatible with mage levels increase the mage's scale, range, and power?


“Balance” issues have been there at the start of D&D.
I can very much remember how in the very late 1970's and early ‘80's it was hard to get anyone to play a "Magic User" (even when the Intelligence score roll was higher their Strength), simply because at low levels they had the least they could do (and the lowest hit points).
Most everyone played "Fighting-Men" to start, but those few who played for "the long game" found that "Magic Users" vastly overpowered other classes at high levels. Thematically and for "world building" it made sense, magicians should be rare, and "the great and powerful Wizard" should be more fearsome then the "mighty Warrior". But as a game? Having separate classes each doing their unique thing is more fun, and always hanging in the back while another PC does everything isn't.

While in theory Magic-Users became the most powerful characters (it even suggested so in the rules:

1974 - Dungeons & Dragons Book 1: Men & Magic,
(Page 6)

"Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long hard road to the top, and to begin with they are very weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."...)

IIRC, in practice Mages were so weak that no one I knew played them long. We only did it when we rolled badly or (briefly) wanted a challenge, so I never saw many Mages past second level that weren't NPC's at my usual tables.

Besides being weaker at low levels Magic-Users (as Wizards were then called) also took longer to gain levels ‘cause back then it took more XP for them to gain levels compared to other classes (each class gained levels at different XP points).

I still prefer orthodox (TSR) D&D at higher levels, but reformed (5e WD&D) is a fine game, probably the best version of D&D at first level there is.

Frankly as a player I just don’t have much interest in the shenanigans of the spell casters, as long as my PC gets to lob some arrows I’m happy, but to answer your question: have mages be very weak until somewhere between level 15 to 20.


I can see Sinbad growing from a sailor to being a famous captain able to request and expect assistance from other ships. I know Conan became a king for a while. Both of those grow in scale.


Sounds good, and a bit like “strongholds”, “guilds”, and “towers” which hit around levels 9 to 11 (depending on class) in TSR D&D

[georgie_leech]

Who cares? Nobody bats an eye when a necromancer's capacity to command undead increases. It is not like undead will magically appear to fill those ranks either.

While I understand your general point, I have to point out that this is in fact how necromancers expand their capacity to command undead :smalltongue:

[OldTrees1]

Here you go
A nice snippet and reading list. Thank you.


A little more wounded, a little more wiser and respected.

Same as now, a way to measure learning.
If I understand: They grow in experience, wisdom, knowledge, respect, reputation, etc. It sounds like no direct power growth but a growth of knowledge and influence for indirect power.

You might even appreciate if D&D had less direct combat power growth. More horizontal growth in combat rather than vertical growth.


Frankly as a player I just don’t have much interest in the shenanigans of the spell casters, as long as my PC gets to lob some arrows I’m happy, but to answer your question: have mages be very weak until somewhere between level 15 to 20.

If leveling is going to fill such different roles for the spell casters, then maybe it would be nice if there were some mage classes (ex: a cantrip mage class) that leveled in a similar way to the martial classes. You could have a campaign with martials and mages where their level 1 and level 20s were not that different from each other.


Sounds good, and a bit like “strongholds”, “guilds”, and “towers” which hit around levels 9 to 11 (depending on class) in TSR D&D

Yeah. The character might have a big enough reputation and enough interest in forming a guild. When they find members to join the guild, doing so gives them agents that expands their scale.


While I understand your general point, I have to point out that this is in fact how necromancers expand their capacity to command undead :smalltongue:

I have played several necromancers. I find the undead rarely magically appear. I have to go find a corpse/wild undead when I want to fill my increased capacity. :smallsigh: This is similar to a pirate captain finding crew rather than "crew magically appear". The growth in command capacity and the time/action cost to go fill that capacity are comparable.

[georgie_leech]

I have played several necromancers. I find the undead rarely magically appear. I have to go find a corpse/wild undead when I want to fill my increased capacity. :smallsigh: This is similar to a pirate captain finding crew rather than "crew magically appear". The growth in command capacity and the time/action cost to go fill that capacity are comparable.
What I mean is, either you make your own via magic, or they are created by another necromancer and you steal them (via magic), or they spontaneously appear and you take control of them (magic both ways). Again, I get that you meant more magic more in the sense of "without effort," but I was amused at the specific example being one that explicitly requires magic to happen :smallbiggrin:

[OldTrees1]

What I mean is, either you make your own via magic, or they are created by another necromancer and you steal them (via magic), or they spontaneously appear and you take control of them (magic both ways). Again, I get that you meant more magic more in the sense of "without effort," but I was amused at the specific example being one that explicitly requires magic to happen :smallbiggrin:

Ah, yes. Magic is required but they don't "magically appear" (appear without in game actions/effort). :smallbiggrin:

I chose that example intentionally to have that wordplay (although mostly to have it include a mage obtaining minions through in game actions/effort).

[Schwann145]

Instead of picking a character or two, I'll simply say I want to be able to create and play characters who are capable of what all characters of literature are inherently capable of doing: interact in a meaningful way with the world, something 5e D&D explicitly disallows.

I'll pick on FR and magic users as an example:
If I'm journeying through the lens of a Wizard in Faerun, I want the ability to study and interact with the Weave. I want trial and error in devising new and unique spells. I want the ability to craft magical items; a common past-time in the world that is wholly unavailable to gamers. I want to be able to build magical defenses and wear them as a mantle; another realism in the Realms that no longer exists mechanically. I want to be able to combine my Art with the Art of other casters in grandiose ways to achieve miraculous ends, like coming together as a community or coven or school or whatever to use Circle Magic to defend/assault a location, or construct a Mythal. I want to be able to attune with the spirits of the land in Rashamen to empower my spellcasting in defense against assaults by Thayan enemies, or build permanent summoning circles for my fiendish summoning and dealing in Narfell or elemental summoning in Calimshan. I want the Faerzress of the Underdark to be distinct and relevant in a way that can be interacted with, studied, etc. I want to know that it's possible, even if never achieved, to master understanding of the Weave enough to manipulate it through force of will alone (ie: Weavemaster). I want unique parts of the world to actually exist not just in a novel, but in the game as well (Spellfire).
I want anything an NPC can be capable of to also be available to a PC, with enough time, effort, study, etc.

[Odessa333]

I'd like an ability to change weapons freely, a fighter using a sword one round, then grabbing a foe's axe, tossing a spear from his back, etc. It reminds me of Garet Jax from Terry Brooks Shannara series, or even Dian Wei supposedly using the bodies of his enemies as weapons in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.


I'd like better ways to handle disabilities in the game, like being blind without massive drawbacks (many examples of this, from Marvel's Daredevil to Avatar's Toph). Consider someone with a hook hand, like well, Captain Hook. DC comics had martials artists 'the Armless Master' and 'the Legless Master' which despite the poor names, WERE armless and legless fighters.

For spell casters, I'd love to have a way to learn spells from enemies, akin to 'blue' magic in Final Fantasy games. I love that gimmick/mechanic, and it can quite frustrating to rely on scrolls/tutors/ enemy spell books / etc as those things can be easily 'noped' by the DM by not being available.

[sithlordnergal]

So you have to have different world ending threats every couple days. Yeah. Not a fan.

I mean, you don't really need world ending threats for adventures. I'm in a party that's about to reach level 20, our DM recently had us hunt down a powerful dragon, now we're hunting down an equally powerful Leviathan. Now, he has modified certain stat blocks. For example, we've learned that the leviathan we're hunting has an affinity for Cold, and some sort of special regeneration that prevents it from being fully killed that we're going to find a way to deal with. Its also in the Plane of Air and has obtained a Fly speed from being there for so long. Exceptionally powerful? Yes. Has it wiped out cities? Absolutely. "Is it a world ending threat? Not even close, people just avoid going into its area and it leaves them alone. And wanna know why we're hunting it? Our boss wants a very rare spell component that can only be found by killing it.

Meanwhile the dragon we killed wasn't a world ending threat, but she was the leader of a faction in a civil war. We had to kill her and two of her generals in order to end a civil war that has been going on for a while in-game. We basically did what an entire country couldn't. And that wasn't some one off encounter either, that was a full fledged adventure with research, detailed planning, luring out our targets, ect. Now, we did hit up multiple forts, and basically crushed any resistance we found there, but that only served to draw out the generals we needed to face. We also were quietly working behind the scenes to weaken the faction we were working for cause our ultimate goal was to leave the country weak to allow our real allies to invade and take over the country. Which we succeeded in.

Our actions in that adventure have irrevocably changed the entire world, which is what T4 adventurers do, but none of those are "world ending threats". As for the current Leviathan hunt, our actions aren't really going to do much other than "We open a trade route" and "We get the spell component". Heck, a single mini-encounter had us facing off against a giant, powerful, modified crab in order to get something for a Hag. You can still have a mundane adventure at level 20, a consistent world, and all of that. You just need to realize there's a lot more in the world than just low CR creatures.

[Dork_Forge]

I mean, you don't really need world ending threats for adventures. I'm in a party that's about to reach level 20, our DM recently had us hunt down a powerful dragon, now we're hunting down an equally powerful Leviathan. Now, he has modified certain stat blocks. For example, we've learned that the leviathan we're hunting has an affinity for Cold, and some sort of special regeneration that prevents it from being fully killed that we're going to find a way to deal with. Its also in the Plane of Air and has obtained a Fly speed from being there for so long. Exceptionally powerful? Yes. Has it wiped out cities? Absolutely. "Is it a world ending threat? Not even close, people just avoid going into its area and it leaves them alone. And wanna know why we're hunting it? Our boss wants a very rare spell component that can only be found by killing it.

Meanwhile the dragon we killed wasn't a world ending threat, but she was the leader of a faction in a civil war. We had to kill her and two of her generals in order to end a civil war that has been going on for a while in-game. We basically did what an entire country couldn't. And that wasn't some one off encounter either, that was a full fledged adventure with research, detailed planning, luring out our targets, ect. Now, we did hit up multiple forts, and basically crushed any resistance we found there, but that only served to draw out the generals we needed to face. We also were quietly working behind the scenes to weaken the faction we were working for cause our ultimate goal was to leave the country weak to allow our real allies to invade and take over the country. Which we succeeded in.

Our actions in that adventure have irrevocably changed the entire world, which is what T4 adventurers do, but none of those are "world ending threats". As for the current Leviathan hunt, our actions aren't really going to do much other than "We open a trade route" and "We get the spell component". Heck, a single mini-encounter had us facing off against a giant, powerful, modified crab in order to get something for a Hag. You can still have a mundane adventure at level 20, a consistent world, and all of that. You just need to realize there's a lot more in the world than just low CR creatures.

This is really interesting, my biggest question here is why? Why does your group have a 'boss' and what compensation are they, the hag etc. providing to hire a group of demigods?

[PhantomSoul]

This is really interesting, my biggest question here is why? Why does your group have a 'boss' and what compensation are they, the hag etc. providing to hire a group of demigods?

A hag seems perfect for such play in practice -- pulling strings, being owed favours, having the most varied of knowledge! Perhaps that knowledge might even include actually becoming demigods should that be a party desire! :)

[sithlordnergal]

This is really interesting, my biggest question here is why? Why does your group have a 'boss' and what compensation are they, the hag etc. providing to hire a group of demigods?

Well, its complicated for our boss, and requires some backstory of the adventuring world. Cause we're actually adventuring here on Earth. Its sort of similar to Breath of the Wild's Hyrule, where it used to be super technologically advanced, then a calamity happened, and everything got reset for thousands of years. Only the calamity that happened in our campaign was a meteor hitting the earth that unleashed a ton of magic, opened portals to multiple planes and summoned multiple demons and fae, and the world ended because of it.

After a while the world eventually rebuilt, but with magic, orcs, goblins, and all the other fantasy races. Our boss was a soldier back when the meteor hit the earth, and was at ground zero. As a result, he absorbed a ton of magic, basically stopped aging entirely, gained a boat load of power, and over the years has quietly built up a nice cult for himself, of which we are a part of.

As for the hag...we were strapped for gold at the time, so a favor and some money was what we wanted. We may have killed that one dragon general, but we were only able to keep a small portion of her hoard. The rest went to a far more dangerous and far more powerful dragon that was in on the scheme to kill her and over throw the nation she was at war with.

[Rukelnikov]

After a while the world eventually rebuilt, but with magic, orcs, goblins, and all the other fantasy races. Our boss was a soldier back when the meteor hit the earth, and was at ground zero. As a result, he absorbed a ton of magic, basically stopped aging entirely, gained a boat load of power, and over the years has quietly built up a nice cult for himself, of which we are a part of.

You are basically the champions of a god, that's cool.

[Psyren]

Instead of picking a character or two, I'll simply say I want to be able to create and play characters who are capable of what all characters of literature are inherently capable of doing: interact in a meaningful way with the world, something 5e D&D explicitly disallows.

I'll pick on FR and magic users as an example:
If I'm journeying through the lens of a Wizard in Faerun, I want the ability to study and interact with the Weave. I want trial and error in devising new and unique spells. I want the ability to craft magical items; a common past-time in the world that is wholly unavailable to gamers. I want to be able to build magical defenses and wear them as a mantle; another realism in the Realms that no longer exists mechanically. I want to be able to combine my Art with the Art of other casters in grandiose ways to achieve miraculous ends, like coming together as a community or coven or school or whatever to use Circle Magic to defend/assault a location, or construct a Mythal. I want to be able to attune with the spirits of the land in Rashamen to empower my spellcasting in defense against assaults by Thayan enemies, or build permanent summoning circles for my fiendish summoning and dealing in Narfell or elemental summoning in Calimshan. I want the Faerzress of the Underdark to be distinct and relevant in a way that can be interacted with, studied, etc. I want to know that it's possible, even if never achieved, to master understanding of the Weave enough to manipulate it through force of will alone (ie: Weavemaster). I want unique parts of the world to actually exist not just in a novel, but in the game as well (Spellfire).
I want anything an NPC can be capable of to also be available to a PC, with enough time, effort, study, etc.

You appear to be conflating "no written rules for X" with "wholly unavailable." Just because you need to go through your DM to do something - because they didn't want to codify a way for you to go around your DM - doesn't make it impossible. If inventing new spells or new owlbears is your jam, chat with them about it.

[sithlordnergal]

You are basically the champions of a god, that's cool.

It is, its also kinda funny. Cause we're actually on our second party. Our original party was trying to stop him cause he wants to basically revert the world back to a pre-magic era, but we ended up with a TPK during one encounter. DM asked if we wanna make a new party and continue where we left off, or try something new. So now we work for the big bad. XD

[Lucas Yew]

In FF VII AC (the 3D animation), the climax had Cloud vs the revived Sephiroth duking it out on a high speed aerial battle, not limited to the latter slicing ruined skyscrapers down and the former cutting down the falling debris while jumping up to continue trading sword blows. At least, that kind of grand scale even on a personal duel is what I envision for a high level martial character. ALL WITHOUT MAGIC ITEMS or similar external aide.

Out of combat, to be worth their paycheck they should be some sort of a Renaissance Man (gender neutral) with task performances to compete with the sure and strong capabilities of spells. Something like 90% ability compared to: INT of Sherlock Holmes, WIS of Yoda, and CHA of Steve Rogers.


I mean, this gets into a whole 'philosophy of fantasy vs sci-fi' thing. Fantasy to me is basically a call to the idea of 'what if the whims and motives and decisions and quests of individuals actually had the power to determine the direction of the world?'. This goes with magic as personal power that someone can reach for on their own, and which belongs wholly to them once attained, and which is fundamentally individual-scale in its psychology and ways of action, as opposed to more science/tech things. Even without magic, the call back to ideas like monarchy with individual decision-makers at the top with little accountability as a fantasy trope resonates with that idea.

So in some sense, it comes down to 'what if I and my friends could just change the world, right the wrongs, personally?'.

And as far as what the world looks like in that view, yes, you're talking about unstable worlds, but that's sort of the point of high level play to me - you've got characters who do get to make decisions that determine the shape of the world, because the world is able to change in response to the decisions of people. Maybe it changed fifty years or a hundred years or whatever ago as well - a necromancer made an undead army and now entire kingdoms cease to exist, etc. Stability in such a world comes from the same things that make interpersonal relationships stable, as the world in those cases is fundamentally a fractal story about small groups of people deciding things, rather than large-scale social forces, movements, etc.

Anyhow, if a high level character can act as a country would, their ability to reshape the world is not necessarily stronger than a country's ability to reshape the world, and worlds do have countries. But those shapes will be much more fantastical and weird and idiosyncratic, since they represent the whims of one person rather than the consensus of a whole society. Again which works well for a fantasy vibe for me.

This was a very good insight on one possible premise for the Fantasy genre...