Guy at the Gym: High Level Martials

[LibraryOgre]

Ok, so it's come up a couple times on the Playtester Questionnaire thread, but:

What should a high-level martial look like? What kind of things should they be able to do, while keeping that they are "martials"?

[Kurald Galain]

I'd say a top-level fighter should be able to attack an enemy for about twice his at-will damage (including mods). But, you know, only once per day; it wouldn't be fair otherwise.

[Just to Browse]

Given that this is a 4e thread, isn't the answer "whatever you want as long as it involves a weapon"? Being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition.


I'd say a top-level fighter should be able to attack an enemy for about twice his at-will damage (including mods). But, you know, only once per day; it wouldn't be fair otherwise.

Not that this is relevant to your actual point, but isn't it about three times? e.g. Avalanche of Steel dealing 8[W] + Str.

[Kurald Galain]

e.g. Avalanche of Steel dealing 8[W] + Str.

2x ( 2W + Str +6 weapon +6 item +3 feat ) ≈ 8W + all that stuff. Actually, the former is probably higher.

[Just to Browse]

ah that's true, not sure why I was only thinking of it str bonus.

[Thirdtwin]

Given that this is a 4e thread, isn't the answer "whatever you want as long as it involves a weapon"? Being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition.



Not that this is relevant to your actual point, but isn't it about three times? e.g. Avalanche of Steel dealing 8[W] + Str.

The amount of cognitive dissonance on display in this post is quite fascinating really. You're simultaneously agreeing with Kurald Galain that fighter powers don't have a broad enough scope, i.e. that they only do some amount of weapon-based damage (weapons of course being "things that pretty much only do damage,"), and holding that they also let you do "whatever you want." Well, yes, obviously, of course. Fighter powers let you do whatever you want as long as it's 8[w]. The way people talk about 4e fighters it sounds like they shoot fire out of their *****, or turn every encounter into a tragic play about illness and suicide with the enemy as the star, or just stab the substrates of reality until they resolve into wishes. In such an environment 8[w] would be stupid in exactly the opposite way: it wouldn't enable creative exploration of character concept through combative acumen at all, instead just being a hunk of raw numbers, which everybody knows can't be used creatively for anything of real import. Which is it? Is Avalanche of Steel too gonzo or not gonzo enough? Is it magic or isn't it? Make up your mind one way or the other, because it can't be both at the same time.

Anyway none of that answers the question LibraryOgre asked so I'll do some of that too. Here's a few ideas:


Always Hit with their Weapon
Maybe a "power" that channeled the essence of a fighter would simply be the ability to choose to hit, and then hit. To be so skilled that luck never comes into play. To always roll a 20 when they make an attack roll. That's a thing that has deeper implication than just larger and larger numerical bonuses to damage. That's a thing that can have story-telling implications. That's also a thing that would harm the tactical skirmish game balance 4e is designed around. Nobody would write that as a power, even as a daily, even as an Epic Destiny power. You'd get bonuses to attack, but not "ignore the attack roll entirely and just roll a 20." If that's what you would expect from a high-end fighter power, and instead you got 8[w] damage (Reliable) or whatever, then of course I'd understand being disappointed. (I, personally, was disappointed.) But that's not due to the ostensible magical-ness of either this theoretical perfect attack or Avalanche of Steel. That's due to the way WotC chose to balance the game. I understand the complaints about how "WotC overbalanced the game" or even "balance itself is bad" a lot more easily than "the fighter is magical," because 4e's balance around the tactical skirmish minigame in part reined in a lot of the crazy of 3e (and comparable sorts of crazies in AD&D and so forth). But I see a lot less complaints about 4e's balance as a whole than about the 4e fighter's ostensible occult nature.
Not Be Subject to the Numerical Scaling Necessary to Interact with High-Level Beings
By which I mean, they don't need to have a magic item treadmill to be competitive with on-level monsters. They get that equivalent +6 to hit from a 30th level weapon just by being a Fighter at 30th level and the sword's bonus to hit is just gravy. Now there is an inherent bonus option for 4e so that in theory you don't have to have a magic treadmill, but that's a campaign-level choice the DM probably makes. It wouldn't be a unique, defining feature of having chosen the fighter instead of the ranger or the wizard or the invoker. And that still wouldn't give the benefit of both having a +6 weapon and being a fighter with +6 extra attack bonus at the same time. This latter thing would probably take the fighter's hit rate off the randomizer even when fighting high-level monsters. I'm going to propose that being off the randomizer's scale may be a good thing actually, in at least some contexts. Of course maybe I just also hate missing that much. But WotC balanced things around the expectation that everybody's accuracy fits within the ranges of a d20 when fought within the range of levels you're supposed to be fighting in. That's a game design choice that, again, nobody has to like, but also doesn't make the fighter magical.
Fly
By this I don't mean flapping their arms or doing whatever yellow sun voodoo Superman uses to levitate himself. I'm talking about taking (say) a sword, throwing it, catching the sword while it's being thrown, and propelling yourself that way, as far as you can throw the weapon (which would perforce also be really far). Like Marvel's Thor used to do in the comics. That would be doing "whatever you want as long as it's a weapon." That capability is also strangely absent from a 4e fighter of any stripe; in fact flight capability in 4e is pretty limited in general. Let's see, a couple of level 22 Utility prayers for the Cleric, a level 20 attack power of a Cleric paragon path... there's something at Paladin 11 that lets the paladin (only) fly, but they have to charge in the direction they're flying... Star Warlocks get an insubstantial + fly move (for themselves only) for five minutes, Infernal Warlocks get an encounter utility flight power that lets them fly (Speed + 2) squares at level 16, and can just straight up grow wings for five minutes as a level 22 daily. Wizard's Fly spell is also a five-minute long daily obtained at level 16... Only two powers let a character take everyone up on a flight (the level 22 Cleric and Wizard utilities), although to be fair this weapon-throwing exploit would probably be fighter-only as well. But yeah scanning the power listings I don't see a single martial power that lets you fly, and hardly any powers that even let you jump particularly well (i.e. above and beyond the limitations of the Athletics skill). Just a couple of Rogue ones, and Rogues aren't Fighters, now are they?
Shoot a Sword-Beam
Insert your favorite anime swordboy here. Or heck, Link from the Legend of Zelda used to do it. Here's a thing about weapon powers: they usually take on the properties of the weapons used. That's why they're listed as "Melee weapon:" they take the range of the weapon, which happens to be in melee. You are going to be hitting somebody with a sword. They might move when you hit them. You might call them out to move toward you, and then you hit them. They might have different things happen to them when you hit them, like getting dazed or something. But you have to physically hit them with your weapon at all, which means if it's a melee weapon you are going to be in melee with them. If we're talking about 4e powers letting you do "whatever you want as long as it's a weapon." then certainly there should be a power that makes a melee weapon not have to be used in melee. To make the weapon not be limited by its own properties as a weapon. That could be a literal laser, a slashed wave of compressed air, any number of things. That's the sort of rule break I would call magical. Indeed if fighters in 4e had swordbeams I'd have no problem saying "yeah, that's a magical guy right there. The haters were right, the 4e PHB is just a big grimoire." But oddly enough, they don't.
Cut a Non-Tangible, Like, Say, Somebody's Emotions
This one might not be fair if only because Dungeons and Dragons as a series of game systems almost never concerns itself mechanically with the emotions of the characters portrayed within it unless a) that emotion is fear or b) somebody's casting a magic spell to try and get over on somebody else. And to be frank this isn't my favorite sort of power either because it does tend ultimately to lead into "and then I stab reality itself and make it into whatever I want" which is just as gauche as plain wishes are. But yes, carving an actual feeling out of, or into, a person, or inflicting damage on its soul or mind rather than just the physical meat, that would be an interesting high-level capability on the part of fighters. Even then this would mostly be an extension of the fighter's combat capabilities, though. And really fighters already mostly get powers that have to do with fighting in its most direct D&D incarnation, i.e. doing HP damage. Even the so-called utility powers 4e fighters get often just add up to defensive abilities, which will mostly find use when the fighter needs to defend itself. ...i.e., in combat. Stuff like bonuses to Initiative or short-term healing or bonuses to defenses (AC or otherwise). There's no fighter power that charms anybody with your dashing good looks, or detects someone's killer intent before you can see them, or lets you build a secure house at a vastly accelerated rate of speed. Fighter utility powers really aren't the sorts of things people talk about when they refer to "utility spells" in D&D.
Be really, really, really, really, really strong. Really!
But of course, Strength is an attribute, which very few things increase. Fighters have positive incentives to increase Str in that the vast majority of their powers use Str to hit, but that doesn't make them (for lack of a non-gendered term) "strongmen." I.e. they aren't doing things above and beyond the normal expectations of Strength for a creature of their ostensible size and stature. There are ways to play with this sort of thing so you can have that effect without simultaneously giving the fighter literally 50 Str, bloating up their damage and taking them off the randomizer again. You could tweak some of the stats that are derived from Strength, such as carrying capacity, success rate at bending bars/breaking doors, stuff like that. The non-combat, "utility" aspects of Strength. The stuff that lets you pick up a boulder or a mountain or the celestial sphere or something. Yes, throwing that boulder at somebody would take it out of utility and into combat once again. On the one hand that's why you'd have to be careful balancing this sort of thing, but on the other hand many DMs claim to love it when their players take "non-combat" "utility" spells and use them in ways to defeat enemies, which is usually what combat entails. You can do this sort of thing with other stuff, like movement speed, jump height, one's level of endurance that doesn't also involve HP depletion. Make them good at the stuff that isn't (or at least isn't solely) raw combat capability, but that also isn't governed directly by skills. (of course my views on skills are also somewhat heterodox so I'm not going to go into them now.)


Anyway that's a couple of things. It's not going to compete with stopping time but it's not also stuff limited to what Arnold Schwarzenegger could do in his prime.

[Seerow]

So if given the choice, there'd be no such thing as a "pure" high level martial. Past mid levels, everyone should have something empowering them to let them break limits and do truly supernatural things. (Honestly this is what Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies should be doing across the board, but especially for Martials)

But that's not the question that was asked. So first, let's focus on what is meant by a high level martial. At its most fundamental state, a caster is an archetype where you use incantations, focii, somatic gestures, whatever, in order to indirectly cause an effect. What makes magic magic is that the output doesn't make sense for the input given ordinary physics. Someone waving around bat poo and speaking in faux latin you'd expect to result in the individual looking silly, not a deadly fireball appearing somewhere within a football field away.

By comparison, martials are direct. Even at their most supernatural, the cause and effect makes sense. It may exceed what you think is possible, but you can look at it and at least make the connection of how that just happened. Throwing a hammer then grabbing onto it and letting it carry you away, or throwing a spear then jumping onto it and riding it across the battlefield? These are effects that are not physically possible, but the cause and effect is obviously there, and fall under a martial purview.

Anything you may have heard of in legends and mythology, in terms of feats of strength or skill also falls under here. Cutting through a mountain? Yeah that should be doable. Creating the grand canyon? Paul Bunyan did it, why not a legendary hero? Ripping up a column from a building and using it as a weapon against huge numbers of mooks or to destroy the building? Sure sounds awesome. What does that look like as a game effect? I don't know. But these all pass the basic definition I provided, of the cause and effect being direct. A Wizard might be able to imitate similar effects indirectly using magic, but what makes a martial is that they don't use magic as a middleman, they get things done.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So if given the choice, there'd be no such thing as a "pure" high level martial. Past mid levels, everyone should have something empowering them to let them break limits and do truly supernatural things. (Honestly this is what Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies should be doing across the board, but especially for Martials)


The Charles Atlas superpower (power just by training hard enough) is absolutely a valid power source in a fantastic world. At least IMO.

[DammitVictor]

Not Be Subject to the Numerical Scaling Necessary to Interact with High-Level Beings
Fly
Shoot a Sword-Beam
Cut a Non-Tangible, Like, Say, Somebody's Emotions
Be really, really, really, really, really strong. Really!



I'm here for this. Basically, in 3.PF terms, any high level "martial" character should be able to learn/use any (but not all) of the (Ex) abilities of the Monk or any Monk subclass. Increased movement speed should be a default for low-to-mid level martials, and optional flight should come online around 9th-10th level. Defenders should have exceptional self-healing and status removal abilities; all martials should get better resistance to damage (in various forms) and negative status effects.

Skillmonkeys should get access to Epic Level Handbook skill abilities (or Pathfinder Unchained skill unlocks) at much lower levels. Rogues shouldn't necessarily be able to dispel a wall of force, but they should be able to climb over or squeeze through it. Fighters should be able to swim in heavy armor at single digit levels.

edit: Fun game: compare the DM's Option: High Level Campaigns rules to the 3.5 Player's Handbook and Epic Level Handbook and keep a tally of which "high level" (9th-12th) abilities became 1st-3rd level abilities in the PHB and which became 21st+ abilities in the ELH.

[Just to Browse]

The amount of cognitive dissonance on display in this post is quite fascinating really.

Instead of the weird psychoanalysis stuff, I'm gonna interpret this one as "I am a little confused about your comment. Could you clarify what you wrote?". So hell yeah, I'll gladly clarify my comment, Thirdtwin, I appreciate you asking! :smallsmile:
Sentence 1: Flavor and mechanics are broadly disconnected in 4e. You can write 4e powers with whatever wild flavor text you want.
Sentence 2: The ratio of damage from at-will effects and daily effects in extant published content is, broadly, about 3x (of course, this math was wrong).
I don't particularly care how "gonzo" avalanche of steel is or whatever. But I can confidently say that (1) it has some flavor text which doesn't affect its mechanics, and (2) it deals 8[W] damage.

[Thirdtwin]

Instead of the weird psychoanalysis stuff, I'm gonna interpret this one as "I am a little confused about your comment. Could you clarify what you wrote?". So hell yeah, I'll gladly clarify my comment, Thirdtwin, I appreciate you asking! :smallsmile:
Sentence 1: Flavor and mechanics are broadly disconnected in 4e. You can write 4e powers with whatever wild flavor text you want.
Sentence 2: The ratio of damage from at-will effects and daily effects in extant published content is, broadly, about 3x (of course, this math was wrong).
I don't particularly care how "gonzo" avalanche of steel is or whatever. But I can confidently say that (1) it has some flavor text which doesn't affect its mechanics, and (2) it deals 8[W] damage.

Oh, so it's flavor text you're worried about. Well, then, let's look at Avalanche of Steel and figure out what flavor text it--

--wait. I don't see Avalanche of Steel anywhere in the PHB. The only thing with "Avalanche" in its name is the fighter 15 attack daily "Unyielding Avalanche." Its flavor text reads as follows:


You twirl your weapon about and test the defenses of nearby foes while expertly parrying their blows.

So... you spin your sword around a lot. Wow. Such wild. Much unga bunga.

Or maybe the operative word here is "Steel," not Avalanche. Fighters have a lot of powers with Steel in the name. Let's look at a high level one, Supremacy of Steel. It's a level 25 Fighter Daily that does, hey look, 6[w] + Str damage, that's in the ballpark there, right? It also keeps the target from making anything but basic attacks until the end of your next turn. And the flavor text for that goes something like:


Your weapon blurs as you attack your foe a dozen times in the blink of an eye. You have an answer for every parry and every counterattack. Under your incredible assault, your enemy can do little more than defend itself.

What's so wild about that? I mean, wow, they said you hit a dozen times but you only get 6[w]s out of the thing, that's only half of a dozen! HOW DARE THEY POETICALLY EXAGGERATE A BIT. But besides that it certainly sounds consistent with a melee weapon ranged power that involves a Strength powered attack roll vs a creature's Armor Class to me. And the basic attack limit is obviously the "little more" the enemy can do besides defend itself.

Now it's possible that Avalanche of Steel does exist somewhere outside of the PHB. I'm too lazy to open up my other books and look. I threw Avalanche of Steel into Google and although that web browser gets worse at web browsing everyday, it points at a power someone on a message board was talking about called "Steel Avalanche." That, of course, is a monk power. Monks are of course psionic in 4e so I guess we can forgive them for having an ability that does a burst of damage instead of a melee touch like most of their moves do. But the exact name of the power really doesn't matter. The thing that's in question here is, how can I trust you to have an accurate inkling of how "wild" the flavor text of a given power might be, when you're making up powers that have whatever flavor text you want them to have? I look in my book that I actually have here and the flavor of the stuff is pretty grounded, actually; 9 times out of 10 it's the flavor of "and then I hit him with my sword again," which is all anyone really expects from the fighter anyway. Meanwhile on this message board, you feel some type of way about a power that you made up in your head. And in complaining about it you've let all the believability drain from your words.

Of course Kurald Galain will probably come in with his whole thing about how it doesn't matter that anti-4e people are factually wrong over and over and over again because 4e still isn't popular (see the previous topic (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25904412&postcount=123) when they used that as a post hoc ergo propter hoc regarding 5e's system being so different from 4e) and really, you know, they're sort of right. It really doesn't matter what the text actually says, and I really have no right to be upset about this sort of thing in the vaunted post-truth era. I should have gotten over caring about what books actually say in real life when certain political events occurred in the recent past. The only thing that matters is whether anybody besides you is playing your system so you can actually have a game of this multiplayer game we all supposedly play. ...as far as that goes I prefer 3.5/PF so I'm left high and dry by 5e too. And from an even broader perspective this is all far afield from the actual topic which is about giving fighters transmudane capabilities that people won't call magical. But it's becoming clearer and clearer now (if it was ever in doubt) that if people don't like the version of the game you're pushing, there's no way to dress up any sort of transmundane capability and not have somebody call it magic. Yes, even hitting somebody up the head so hard they get a concussion. That's an attack versus a save (or a non-AC defense, depending), therefore it's a spell. The hate comes first, the rationale (such as it is) comes after.

...well, anyway, your confidence is misplaced because a) "Avalanche of Steel" doesn't have flavor text at all and b) nothing in the PHB deals 8[w] damage. The cap such as I've seen appears to be 7[w], not counting multi-hit attacks (which are where all the damage actually is in 4e). Sorry.

[Ignimortis]

Anything (but probably not everything) a high-level adventure might expect them of doing, preferably in a dynamic player choice focused way. Then some extras to make basic combat more interesting. Then what they might need out of combat and what aforementioned powers don't really provide, but what a martial can have without doing everything at once.

As a basic example, if your high-level adventures often (not always, but often) have enemies that fly, do AoE attacks that are not resolved against AC, can go invisible, and can cast some nasty spells, a high-level martial should be able to deal with all of this on their own. Compensate for flying enemies by having similar mobility (flight, teleportation, at the very least "jump good" to the point it's basically flight), parry or evade fireballs so they don't affect you, detect foes unavailable to normal senses (see invisibility/true seeing/just having a Perception modifier so jacked they override the invisibility bonuses), and either block or clear save-or-suck effects with a burst of will/speed/raw toughness. Something more rare might require outside support, but things that come up every second or third fight should not have a martial asking for buffs just to be able to deal with them.

Then toss some sword beams into the mix, attacks that have you go "nothin personnel, kid" (spelling preserved), mass intimidation roars/aura flares, grabbing a giant and tossing them into a wall so hard something breaks, fancy execution/finisher moves that only work on targets below a certain HP threshold but basically finish them off instantly, etc.

Then make sure that the player has the ability to grab non-combat skills/abilities like "talking to people well", "sneaking around well", "understanding theory of magic well", "travel quickly without bothering about lugging around rations for 50 days", and all that general stuff. Oh, and that has to not hamper their combat abilities.

"Hit hard" is basically a given. It's not something you should consider a particular martial power, it's just what they do by default. It probably shouldn't even count as a feature for a dedicated martial, if you're doing feature budgeting.

[OracleofWuffing]

What should a high-level martial look like? What kind of things should they be able to do, while keeping that they are "martials"?
Is "Whatever the high-level arcane or divine characters look like, but with 'Martial' written on their character sheets" a valid cop out? :smalltongue: I know it is one of those ten thousand little things everyone wants changed with 4e, but there just isn't a practical distinction between power sources outside of Psionic. I think the entirety of what makes a power source a "Power Source" is just a sidebar that basically amounts to, "They're like fuel for your awesomeness."

The thing that determines what you should be able to do is your role. I was under the impression that Rangers are already top Strikers and Rogues are no slouches, Fighters are top Defenders, and Warlords are solid Leaders. Fiiine, while WotC does not directly consider the Fighter to be a Controller, there is sufficient ambiguity in the Controller role that Fighters may, arguably, be considered "unofficially" great Controllers. So, like, what are those classes doing right and wrong? I understand there are some sour spots with the Warlord doing nonmagical healing, but I'm of the opinion that the more closely you look at hit points, the more your head will hurt, so it's better to let it slide.

Separately, I remember people singing praises about Gamma World back during the time of 4e's rollout, is anyone familiar with how high level play works there? Anything noticeably different between that and 4e?

[Mando Knight]

Now it's possible that Avalanche of Steel does exist somewhere outside of the PHB. I'm too lazy to open up my other books and look.

Martial Power page 23. The point isn't about the exact number of dice anyway, it's that a lot of really boring powers made their way to print for Martial classes, though that's not exclusive to them either--as bad as No Mercy is (Reliable 7W), Clerics also have a couple of high-level powers that are similar absolutely boring "single target, single attack, dice+modifiers on hit" moves with no rider effects, even one of the two level 29 dailies for a class that splits its attack stats.

[Kurald Galain]

A good exploit (but by no means the only one) would be to remove obstacles from the map by hitting them with your sword - including huge obstacles and including spells.

Like, in Chrono Trigger, Frog/Glenn can bisect a mountain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQcS4xhhqo). In Kill Six Billion Demons, Murder The Gods And Topple Their Thrones (yes, that's her name) can simultaneously split a high-level enemy and the entire wall and room behind him (https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/wielder-of-names-6-112/). In Pathfinder, rather low-level barbarians can dispel cloud and zone effects (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/rage-powers/paizo-rage-powers/spell-sunder-su/) by just slashing them in half. Stuff like that is fun.

Other than that, just look at the exploits of e.g. Beowulf, Hercules, Sun Wukong, Saitama, or your favorite action movie hero. There's plenty of material there.

[dgnslyr]

A good exploit (but by no means the only one) would be to remove obstacles from the map by hitting them with your sword - including huge obstacles and including spells.

Like, in Chrono Trigger, Frog/Glenn can bisect a mountain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQcS4xhhqo). In Kill Six Billion Demons, Murder The Gods And Topple Their Thrones (yes, that's her name) can simultaneously split a high-level enemy and the entire wall and room behind him (https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/wielder-of-names-6-112/). In Pathfinder, rather low-level barbarians can dispel cloud and zone effects (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/rage-powers/paizo-rage-powers/spell-sunder-su/) by just slashing them in half. Stuff like that is fun.

Other than that, just look at the exploits of e.g. Beowulf, Hercules, Sun Wukong, Saitama, or your favorite action movie hero. There's plenty of material there.

The other thing I have to point out is that martial characters kind of just... don't exist outside of D&D, in the way D&D defines it. Both swordsmen in Chrono Trigger are capable magic-users, on top of being swordsmen. Aragorn isn't a "martial" in the sense of being purely mundane; his royal lineage makes him Inherently Magical and gives him actual magic powers, like healing people using Kingsfoil, on top of other, less-overt things like having increased longevity and superhuman (by the setting's standards!) physical ability. Sun Wukong has learned or stolen pretty much every single type of magic available to him in the universe. In fiction, "martial" characters use their physical prowess to do superhuman and supernatural feats, and physical prowess is considered a plausible explanation for supernatural feats; in D&D the "martial" label means they're definitionally unable to do the supernatural or superhuman. It's a purely negative label, in the sense that it clearly defines what your character isn't able to do, instead of, say, Arcane, that defines what your character can do, on top of anything a "mundane" person can do.

So yeah, the cop-out answer is that the only difference between, say, martial and arcane characters should aesthetic, because as it stands having the word "martial" written on your character sheet does nothing but create huge limitations on how much narrative power your character is allowed to have.

[Kurald Galain]

Both swordsmen in Chrono Trigger are capable magic-users, on top of being swordsmen.
But Ayla is not.


Aragorn isn't a "martial" in the sense of being purely mundane;
But Gimli is.

So this thread asks a fair question. It's not that martials don't exist outside D&D, it's that D&D specifically has decided that martials should not be stronger than the Guy At The Gym (and not all tabletop RPGs have this issue, either; it's mostly D&D). Even real-world Olympic feats are out of reach for a D&D martial.

[OracleofWuffing]

But Ayla is not.
:smallconfused: But... You didn't list any feats Ayla performed?

I mean, to your credit, one can get to the mountain bisecting scene without teaching Frog magic, but if we're going to point at Ayla as a Martial example, her martial feats are hitting thigns hard, riding pterodactyls, drinking lots of "soup" in a single night, seduction, summoning dinosaur butts in midair, and getting better weaponry without spending money.

[dgnslyr]

But Ayla is not.


But Gimli is.

So this thread asks a fair question. It's not that martials don't exist outside D&D, it's that D&D specifically has decided that martials should not be stronger than the Guy At The Gym (and not all tabletop RPGs have this issue, either; it's mostly D&D). Even real-world Olympic feats are out of reach for a D&D martial.

Gimli isn't a wizard, but he is a dwarf, which makes him inherently a little magical, and is armed to the teeth with dwarven axes in a setting where "masterwork-quality" is synonymous with "magical," so he's almost as magical as Aragorn by the standards of the setting, too.

Right, the point is that "martial" outside of D&D means "a different kind of magic," while "martial" within D&D means "no magic at all," which is a real issue in a game where most characters actually do have magic. And I agree it's uniquely a D&D problem too - Conan the Barbarian gets by on his guts and his wits, but has less sheer "power" compared to the wizard Thulsa Doom, but that's not a problem because Thulsa Doom is a major antagonist for Conan to overcome, and not someone he travels in a party with. D&D wants martials to be Conan, but they also want wizards to be Thulsa Doom, and also have them travel together in the same party as peers and equals, and you can't have all three of those things at the same time.

[Just to Browse]

...well, anyway, your confidence is misplaced because a) "Avalanche of Steel" doesn't have flavor text at all and b) nothing in the PHB deals 8[w] damage. The cap such as I've seen appears to be 7[w], not counting multi-hit attacks (which are where all the damage actually is in 4e). Sorry.

Forgive me if I miss something. There's a lot of pearl-clutching here about unga bunga and 4e haters and whatnot, so it's hard for me to pick out what I'm actually supposed to respond to. I think I distilled it down to:

You don't know avalanche of steel therefore it is fake: Avalanche of steel is a fighter exploit from Martial Power, the first expansion product in the 4e "core" line. It deals 8[W] + Str damage among some other stuff, and has some unimportant flavor text about your weapon guiding you.

I don't like that some flavor text for martial powers is exaggerated: I think this is what you mean by the whole "unga bunga" / "how dare they etc etc" stuff? Rest assured that I am not mad about exaggerated flavor text. I'm just saying that the flavor of martial powers is mostly unimportant.

4e was popular and I am pushing some kind of D&D?: I don't care about pushing editions of D&D or popularity or whatever this whole paragraph is about. I'm just remarking that being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition. That's is why I wrote "being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition."


Is "Whatever the high-level arcane or divine characters look like, but with 'Martial' written on their character sheets" a valid cop out? :smalltongue: I know it is one of those ten thousand little things everyone wants changed with 4e, but there just isn't a practical distinction between power sources outside of Psionic.

Be careful, saying this is apparently the equivalent of declaring war in this forum. :smallamused:

More constructively, I wanted to jump on your point about roles. Common examples of cool martial stuff in this thread involves jumping really far, dealing a bunch of damage to objects, executing big enemies, parrying attacks... a lot of these are striker powers, and more specifically melee striker powers. Hunter Rangers, Fighters, and Warlords are gonna need to have their high-level buffs and disruption effects and whatnot.

Much like other martials, you can just write whatever you want and justify it with some flavor text. For example, swap the 4d10 for 2[W] damage on hurl through hell and hand it to the Hunter. Say they shoot so hard that they cut a hole in reality, badaboom martial ability complete.

[Anymage]

More constructively, I wanted to jump on your point about roles. Common examples of cool martial stuff in this thread involves jumping really far, dealing a bunch of damage to objects, executing big enemies, parrying attacks... a lot of these are striker powers, and more specifically melee striker powers. Hunter Rangers, Fighters, and Warlords are gonna need to have their high-level buffs and disruption effects and whatnot.

This does get close to one of the other major things 4e did to balance things better. The fighter wasn't the mishmash of all hero types who hit things with a sword (except where that would overlap with barbarians or paladins) and the wizard wasn't the do-everything magic man (excepting healing). Instead each stuck to their role. Magic being able to do things that are hard to justify as expressions of physical skills is a lot less troublesome when magic also has things it can't do. Be that on the level of magic as a whole, magical traditions, or even individual magic users.

So either martials have to be able to do everything (ofen with flavor that would be derided as "anime"), and/or casters need to be brought back down. It's a two point balance problem instead of a one point one.

[Kurald Galain]

Right, the point is that "martial" outside of D&D means "a different kind of magic," while "martial" within D&D means "no magic at all,"

No, it's not.

The point is that, regardless of whether one might consider Frog, or Murder The Gods, or barbarians to be "martial" or "not martial", the point is that D&D martials should be able to perform feats similar to what these characters to.

Such as slicing a mountain in half. It doesn't matter whether you consider that "martial" or not, it matters that D&D fighters should be able to do that.

[Mando Knight]

Gimli isn't a wizard, but he is a dwarf, which makes him inherently a little magical, and is armed to the teeth with dwarven axes in a setting where "masterwork-quality" is synonymous with "magical," so he's almost as magical as Aragorn by the standards of the setting, too.

Right, the point is that "martial" outside of D&D means "a different kind of magic," while "martial" within D&D means "no magic at all," which is a real issue in a game where most characters actually do have magic.

That's definitely not true within 4e's concept of the Martial power source. Being an explicitly-magical race doesn't prevent a character from becoming a Martial class, but rather brings their innate magic into the realm of things they can master with their martial skills in post-PHB1 sources: Eladrin Warlords can learn how to teleport their allies, while Dragonborn, Genasi, and Tieflings get ways to improve their elemental affinities and mix them into their attacks, and so forth.

[Thirdtwin]

Forgive me if I miss something. There's a lot of pearl-clutching here about unga bunga and 4e haters and whatnot, so it's hard for me to pick out what I'm actually supposed to respond to. I think I distilled it down to:

You don't know avalanche of steel therefore it is fake: Avalanche of steel is a fighter exploit from Martial Power, the first expansion product in the 4e "core" line. It deals 8[W] + Str damage among some other stuff, and has some unimportant flavor text about your weapon guiding you.

I don't like that some flavor text for martial powers is exaggerated: I think this is what you mean by the whole "unga bunga" / "how dare they etc etc" stuff? Rest assured that I am not mad about exaggerated flavor text. I'm just saying that the flavor of martial powers is mostly unimportant.

4e was popular and I am pushing some kind of D&D?: I don't care about pushing editions of D&D or popularity or whatever this whole paragraph is about. I'm just remarking that being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition. That's is why I wrote "being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition."

Okay, so you got me there. I invited it myself, being lazy. That's fine! I like learning about different things, and I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the 4e powers, I just got a couple of the books to look through. Thanks for letting me know! :D

But here's the thing. You've said a lot of different things in this topic. Which is fine, people don't have to talk about one thing in a topic. But some of the stuff seems to clash with other things you've said. For instance you've said:


Given that this is a 4e thread, isn't the answer "whatever you want as long as it involves a weapon"? Being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition.

Now just to make sure we aren't misunderstanding one another, I parsed this as saying that you consider the flavor text of a given martial power frivolous. In other words your apparent claim is that flavor text doesn't match up with activity in the game's story. (again, I could be wrong, I don't always understand what peoples' points are). You then also say that "being a martial" is mostly flavor text in the edition. Forgive me for not seeing how that works? You're a guy with a weapon and you hit them with a weapon. Sometimes you inspire them. Sometimes you punch them in the face and drag them around. Those seem like martial things to me. (I don't think I have to go to the dictionary to look up what's meant by martial.) Those two statements combined made me think you might not have a good grasp on what the average flavor text of a fighter power actually is. You seemed to be saying that martial powers operated on a level far beyond what normal people would accept (see: "whatever you [as a presumable writer of 4e flavor text] want,"), i.e. that fighters were flying with their swords and shooting sword lasers and basically being epic in a way that wasn't congruent with the expectations of being a guy who hits people.

You were also replying to Kurald Galain in this topic. Now Kurald was making (what I parsed as, again, with my limited insight into language and intention) a sarcastic jab at the premises of the topic. LibraryOgre is asking what a high-level martial character should be doing, and Kurald said "about twice as much damage as usual, once a day" to paraphrase. The implication is that 4e is actually underwhelming at portraying a "real" high-level martial, at least in a context that D&D used to concern itself with and in 4e didn't manage to do so well. That two times base damage once a day is not epic enough at the levels 4e calls epic.

Broadly I agree with that. I think 4e made some sacrifices to character differentiation in the pursuit of tactical skirmish game balance. I don't mean "bwuh bwuh everybody has AEDU" by this; I think the role structure and the need for classes to do a specific thing also inevitably meant the classes had to not do specific things, like being arbitrarily strong or dealing enough damage in a single attack to kill literally any statted monster. Fighters, as defenders, don't do huge burst damage in quite the way they could in other editions. They still do a lot of damage, especially when optimized well, but they aren't hitting four times a turn for ten times base damage every round of every day. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on your viewpoint, but you aren't going to be able to optimize a fighter to do exactly the same things in exactly the same way as an optimized 3e fighter, for example.

Now what you said, in response to that, is:

Not that this is relevant to your actual point, but isn't it about three times? e.g. Avalanche of Steel dealing 8[W] + Str.
Now despite the fig leaf of you saying it wasn't relevant, it's hard to see why it wouldn't be so. "Three times base damage once a day" is not that much greater than "two times base damage once a day." You appeared to be indicating "Kurald's broader point is right, simply that the specific numbers were a little off." The contradiction that I thought was there, and argued against in my first post, was: you (in agreeing with Kurald) seem to be disappointed that fighter powers are ineffectual or sub-"epic," yet also think the fluff used to describe them is so far removed from actual melee fighting activity as to be meaningless. That fighter function was simultaneously distinct enough from melee fighting to make a mockery of what being martial is, and only capable of doing a piddling amount of damage once per day.

Too gonzo (or epic, if you prefer the word), yet not gonzo enough.

Magic (in description) yet mundane (in effect).

The key to the disagreement here, to be clearer, is that the martial powers I looked at, and later made a post about, say things like "you spin your sword around a lot" or "you hit your enemy a lot and they can't fight back so good." These seem, to me at least, I'm not the lord of the cosmos whose perceptions define reality, but these seem to be cromulent descriptions of what a fighter might generally do in a conflict. So cromulent, in fact, that saying they let you do

"whatever you want as long as it involves a weapon"
was inaccurate to the point of laughability. But I didn't want to come out of my face like "YOU ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET!" or even worse "you are a bald-faced liar," that's not conducive to healthy conversation. So instead I assumed that your perceptions were such that, yes, actually, spinning a sword around or hitting a guy a lot of times are not cromulent fighter things, they are nonsense space woo on par with levitating a building or splitting the Red Sea (not that there are powers that do that in 4e either, regardless of power source).
So my thought was, what would you prefer to have happen? Mechanics that hewed to descriptions like (for example) Unyielding Avalanche's "you spin your sword around a lot?" Or descriptions that say "every once in a while you do twice as much damage as usual, congratulations, you did it ⭐"--descriptions which from a more objective point of view aren't really all that different from "you swing your sword around a lot" except they didn't make you, personally, assume that swinging one's sword around a lot opened a portal to Pandaemonium or wherever?

Then we go to your next post. In that post you said:


You can write 4e powers with whatever wild flavor text you want.

(emphasis mine). Reading that, I figured, hey, your statement there is like the one you made earlier about how "whatever you want as long as it's a weapon" is what passes for flavor text. You might be trying to make a single point between those two. And that single point seemed to be "fighter power flavor text doesn't match story-level fighter activity." Now maybe I was too forward in assuming that you didn't like so-called wild flavor text. That's always possible too. You seemed to be using sarcasm in the first instance, and people generally don't use sarcasm to indicate things they actually like or find favorable. But maybe you think it's totally fine that fighter powers are as wild as... let's see...


"You trade damage for accuracy to land a much-needed hit on your opponent."

or


You swing your weapon in a terrific arc, hitting with such force that your foe stumbles backward.

or


Let nothing stand between a warrior and the object of his wrath.

Let me be frank. Assuming "wild" means "not having to do with what's going on in the gamespace," these aren't wild at all. I grabbed three fighter powers that had flavor text to go with the two I already grabbed, and all of those are basically "you hit the guy" or "you swing the sword around a bunch." Or is it that only bards can have objects of their wrath? And these are higher level, and thus implicitly later game, powers. If I were to expect powers that knocked stars out of the sky and reversed causality of the attack such that you've already hit before you've swung and other "wild" things like that in their description, I'd expect them here. It's entirely possible this changed later down the line and all the powers in MP1 and 2 are about making pacts with demons and commanding the undead and whatnot, I suppose. But the stuff I'm looking at now is honestly just as grounded as I expect from a somewhat linguistically-expanded upon way of saying "you hit the guy."

So yes. I was sarcastically poking at your use of the word "wild" to describe fighter powers. As noted above, people are usually sarcastic about things they don't like or find favorable. I find it difficult to be charitable to your position when you say things like


For example, swap the 4d10 for 2[W] damage on hurl through hell and hand it to the Hunter. Say they shoot so hard that they cut a hole in reality, badaboom martial ability complete.

while the book that I have and can quote from simply doesn't describe fighter powers like that. Resolving that doesn't require you to be "mad about exaggerated flavor text," it merely requires you to work on your reading comprehension.

(Also I don't have any pearls. Them ***** expensive tho. And really how do you parse me literally saying "4e wasn't popular" as saying it was popular? Reading comprehension, my fellow internet discussion person.)

[Wildstag]

What should a high-level martial look like? What kind of things should they be able to do, while keeping that they are "martials"?

Looking through the thread and ignoring the many quibbles and pointless arguments, it looks like the answer most people agree with is that martials should be forces of nature in high-level D&D, because that's what they are in modern fantasy settings.

Personally, I think the examples being given are either too modern (heck, several of them are younger than 4e!) or too divine in origin (Gods or Demigods). And Beowulf slays a dragon, but also dies in the process, and I assume that part of the fantasy isn't what Kurald pictures for a high-level martial... Or alternatively, they're citing characters that don't really do anything greater than a high-level 4e martial can do (Aragorn/Gimli? Really? They barely do anything noteworthy through force of arms!).

The martial as a force of nature relies on D&D being the highest sort of fantasy possible, whereas I think at most 4e is low or middle fantasy in design.

[Just to Browse]

But here's the thing. You've said a lot of different things in this topic.

I'm trying very hard to say just 2 things. The stuff about whether something is wild is just me throwing a word in to make my sentences slightly different.

kurald galain comment: My comment to kurald galain is limited to this: without making commentary on any joke(s) they made, they're clearly talking about the ratio of damage from daily abilities to at-will abilities. I thought that ratio was ~3 and kurald thought it was ~2. That is, literally, 100%, pinkie-promise the complete extent of my commentary with no subtext.

flavor text comment: This comment is about a broad trend in 4e martial abilities. It sounds like you're not familiar with this, and this would be useful for the thread at large, so here's a list. A lot of these aren't in the PHB, so I'll try to source them to avoid getting yelled at for making things up. You will still have to look them up on your own because of my bad reading comprehension etc etc:
Avalanche of steel (MP) has flavor text about being unconcerned about getting hit, but has a tag mechanic where you get temp HP if you have Endurance. It's not connected to the flavor text at all.
Suffering's end can only hurt enemies that are bloodied. Why? Eh, not important.
Craven's bane (MP2) scares enemies when you hit them. Just stab 'em.
Ghost on the wind, hide from a light (PHB), and at least a few other powers just grant invisibility. Why? You're a badass, you get to be invisible. The powers say something about how you can't be seen, it doesn't bother to justify them.
Mountebank's flight (MP) lets you teleport.
Multiple martial abilities from tiefling paragon paths deal fire damage. You just hit someone and burn them with your tiefling powers... but it has the martial tag!
High-level martials can just continue following this pattern. They can already teleport, induce fear, turn invisible, create explosions. If you want to make 'em fly or send someone to the shadow realm, you can do it. Just write a line or two of flavor text and slap the [Martial] tag on there, and you're good to go.

RE: 4e being popular or not popular - yeah, I definitely didn't read that paragraph in detail. As soon as I realized it was irrelevant to anything I wrote, I skimmed it and threw a question mark on my summary. Same thing with the psychoanalysis and how I'm making powers up in my head. Just not really worth reading in detail to make sure I get internet points, ya know? I'd rather spend that time on my session prep.

[Thirdtwin]

I'm trying very hard to say just 2 things. The stuff about whether something is wild is just me throwing a word in to make my sentences slightly different.

kurald galain comment: My comment to kurald galain is limited to this: without making commentary on any joke(s) they made, they're clearly talking about the ratio of damage from daily abilities to at-will abilities. I thought that ratio was ~3 and kurald thought it was ~2. That is, literally, 100%, pinkie-promise the complete extent of my commentary with no subtext.

flavor text comment: This comment is about a broad trend in 4e martial abilities. It sounds like you're not familiar with this, and this would be useful for the thread at large, so here's a list. A lot of these aren't in the PHB, so I'll try to source them to avoid getting yelled at for making things up. You will still have to look them up on your own because of my bad reading comprehension etc etc:
Avalanche of steel (MP) has flavor text about being unconcerned about getting hit, but has a tag mechanic where you get temp HP if you have Endurance. It's not connected to the flavor text at all.
Suffering's end can only hurt enemies that are bloodied. Why? Eh, not important.
Craven's bane (MP2) scares enemies when you hit them. Just stab 'em.
Ghost on the wind, hide from a light (PHB), and at least a few other powers just grant invisibility. Why? You're a badass, you get to be invisible. The powers say something about how you can't be seen, it doesn't bother to justify them.
Mountebank's flight (MP) lets you teleport.
Multiple martial abilities from tiefling paragon paths deal fire damage. You just hit someone and burn them with your tiefling powers... but it has the martial tag!
High-level martials can just continue following this pattern. They can already teleport, induce fear, turn invisible, create explosions. If you want to make 'em fly or send someone to the shadow realm, you can do it. Just write a line or two of flavor text and slap the [Martial] tag on there, and you're good to go.

RE: 4e being popular or not popular - yeah, I definitely didn't read that paragraph in detail. As soon as I realized it was irrelevant to anything I wrote, I skimmed it and threw a question mark on my summary. Same thing with the psychoanalysis and how I'm making powers up in my head. Just not really worth reading in detail to make sure I get internet points, ya know? I'd rather spend that time on my session prep.

Oh, I see what's going on now. You're dissatisfied with what martial powers are actually mechanically capable of in 4e. You're just framing it as the fluff being outlandish and overwrought rather than the mechanics being so. Before I go on, lemme check. Do you think HP are never meat points, sometimes meat points, or always meat points? Anyway, unlike you I don't have a game to prepare for. While that's unfortunate in many senses, it does give me the free time to look up several of these examples you've given, so I'm going to do that now because I'm bored. Avalanche of Steel goes:


You crash forward with the unrelenting fury of a landslide, letting your weapon be your guide and having no concern other than burying your foe.

"All you care about is hitting a guy, so you go and hit a guy." That's the fluff. The descriptive text. That's what it says. Looking at the power, there are multiple mechanics going on in there, actually. It's got the Invigorating keyword, which means that if you're trained in Endurance you get a burst of temporary HP. The fluff fails to mention that part. I didn't know fluff failing to mention something made it more outlandish than it doing so. You do a lot of damage at the same time. 8[w] is incrementally larger than the maximum of 7[w], which was the upper limit (as far as I could tell) in the PHB. I assume that's what you're doing when you "crash forward with the fury of a landslide." That's called a metaphor, by the way. It's a literary device where you compare something to something else, without explicitly using the comparative words "like" or "as." The fighter's sword is not turning into a literal avalanche when they hit a guy really hard. Anyway, you also grant combat advantage to every enemy automatically until the start of your next turn, without having to be flanked or anything. Combat advantage grants +2 to hit, and some special attacks can occur against targets you have advantage over. So enemies who attack the fighter for a moment after they do Avalanche of Steel can hit the fighter more often than normal, and sometimes harder than normal. That's the part the fighter has "no concern" about: getting hit and/or hurt more.

So yeah I wouldn't call that fluff outlandish or wild or *ahem* dissociated at all. It describes at least two parts of the attack (hit hard, don't care) with fidelity. It doesn't mention the invigorating thing in the fluff text, although the implication that the Invigorating keyword provides is that powers with that keyword, well, invigorate the user. If anything I would say skipping that part makes the description more grounded, if less accurate, because if you try to explain that you have to go into the whole hit point morass and people will disagree with you no matter what tack you take.

Suffering's End. That goes like:

Intending to slay your foe one way or another, you strike with deadly force.
Again, barely outlandish at all. "You hit a guy hard because you're trying to kill him." Arguably that's what everyone that's fighting a monster with a sword is trying to do, no matter what special moves they happen to do. It's still perfectly cromulent fluff for a melee weapon Str-based attack against a creature's armor class. You can only target a bloodied foe with it. Why? I don't know. That's odd. It makes a certain degree of sense that you're going for a finishing blow type of thing when you see that your foe is already significantly wounded (i.e. bloodied, at half HP or less), but making it a hard targeting limitation rather than a soft one is pretty weird.

But see, I was talking about, and I assumed you were talking about, whether the fluff text matches the flavor of a martial character. The flavor of a martial character is a pretty simple taste. 9 times out of 10 "you hit the guy" is going to suffice. The power itself may have effects or limitations that are odd, but as long as the fluff is accurately describing that you're going up to a guy to hit them, it is probably just fine. What you, and I now that I'm looking at it, have a problem with is the mechanics, the actual rule stuff part. It's weird to only be able to hit a bloodied foe this way. Like it's similar enough to a coup de grace that you can see it as a coup de grace if you stretch your brain a little bit, but that act of stretching may be something someone doesn't want to or is incapable of doing. But the little italicized fluff piece, "you hit a guy," is pretty work-a-day and pedestrian all other things considered.

Craven's Bane says something of this flavor:

A mix of threats and slashes leaves your foe in fear and agony.
Okay. You cut the person and you threaten them while cutting them. I know a guy stabbing me with a knife would have more power to intimidate me while they were stabbing me, because that **** hurts and indicates they're going to hurt me more probably, or maybe kill me. Nothing in the mechanics seems to contradict any of that. It's Fear keyworded because they're scary. It's Rattling keyworded because if you know how to intimidate people, you can startle them with a direct combat move rather than just standing there and waving your sword up and down threateningly. It's weapon because obviously. Dex vs AC because rogues use Dex to hit instead of Str most of the time. You do 3 ws, and if you bloody (i.e. lower to half HP or less) your target it runs away from you (using its actual speed, i.e. not a push or pull effect) because, hey, you scared it and it doesn't want to be around you for a bit. And if your build is right you make them so scared they grant combat advantage.

I just, I'm at a loss. What about the fluff or the mechanics here is in objection? Is it because it has a Fear keyword? All the fear keyword means in 4e is "effects that inspire fright." It doesn't say anything about the source of the fear, simply that it makes fright happen. I mean, we agree people in real life can make other people afraid, right? Having a guy who's trained in being scary stabbing me in the face as scarily as possible is an effect that would inspire fright in me at least.

Ghost on the Wind goes:

You vanish, then strike out of nowhere!

The power says that you turn invisible and then hit the guy. The effects of the power are that you hit the guy and then turn invisible, so cause and effect are a little muddled there. But that's what's happening. On this line you say something curious, though. You say "The powers say something about how you can't be seen, it doesn't bother to justify them."

That.

That's right.

The fluff on a particular power doesn't justify why it has these specific effects. It doesn't have to. It's fluff. It's descriptive text. It describes what happens. It doesn't have to go "well actually it's not literally an optical camouflage device the rogue pulls out, he just hides in the enemy's shadow, hiding in shadows having been a thing since AD&D 1e if not earlier." I mean, it's nice if it does do that, if it helps the specific player get into the mindset of a world where these sorts of things happen. But descriptive text should, at first, describe what's going on. The PHB even says:


The [flavor text] section of a power description gives a brief explanation of what the power does, sometimes including information about what it looks or sounds like.

(Brackets and emphasis mine.) It's explaining what it does. It doesn't explain how it does it, or why it does it. This is somewhat of a break from other D&Ds, where spell text could have paragraphs on paragraphs explaining all five Ws and an H about the thing. 4e text isn't quite as thorough in its descriptive text. But your complaint wasn't that it wasn't thorough, it was that "You can write 4e powers with whatever wild flavor text you want." But that's not true. Flavor text is written to explain a power's effects. Not necessarily its causes or its intentions. The flavor text, even in these examples you've cherry picked, do that every time. You may not think martials "should" be able to vanish and then reappear, but that doesn't mean the flavor text is wrong or outlandish, it means you disagree with the designer over what martial characters should be capable of.

Now let's see. Mountebank's Flight. That one says

You steal a bit of magic to stow away on another creature’s teleportation.

That's pretty cool actually. It's also a level 22 power. Level 22 is in the early stages of the Epic levels. Your character has an Epic Destiny by now that they're busy growing into. They aren't exactly mortal the same way you and I are. This is a case where stealing an intangible, much like stabbing an intangible, seems like, yes, it actually should be a power a martial should be capable of. My expectation was that this was going to be some sort of flash step-esque power that just relied on you moving so fast that you looked like you were teleporting, but no, it keeps teleportation within the realm of magic. I was going to say that actual teleporting was a bridge too far for me; in my mind it's too wrapped up in concepts of space and its warpability that just don't align with my conception of martial stuff (which probably matches up with what Seerow put across earlier in this topic re: directness). Even your floofy anime people are usually not capable of (say) going through walls when they disappear from sight while moving. Son Goku's Instant Transmission from Dragon Ball Z is explicitly an exception in-universe. Is the line arbitrary when I've already made allowances for invisibility? Eh maybe. But the impetus of the effect of Mountebank's Flight isn't "I disappear and reappear someone else," it's "I use my supernal, post-human ability to steal things, to lift a bit of a creature's teleport magic and follow them with it." And the flavor text describes that exactly. It's an outlandish thing (although again, in epic things should probably be getting a little outlandish by now), but the text describes its outlandishness very plainly.

Anyway, what game are you prepping for? It's good that you have enough people to run a game with. I wish I did :/



Anyway now that we're done with that. Hey LibraryOgre, I got a few more things high level martials should be capable of! How about these:

Reinvigorate yourself upon hitting a foe successfully, because you're emotionally invested in succeeding and gain a second wind from your successes
Intimidate people and stab them at the same time (shock and boggle)
Project fire, at least if you happen to be a member of a race that naturally produces or otherwise has affinity with fire, like say you're a spawn of a demon from hell
Steal magic, at least if you're inclined toward larceny
Turn invisible, because you're just that badass, yeah I went there

[dgnslyr]

No, it's not.

The point is that, regardless of whether one might consider Frog, or Murder The Gods, or barbarians to be "martial" or "not martial", the point is that D&D martials should be able to perform feats similar to what these characters to.



And I agree with you there; "martial" in D&D means that characters can't do supernatural feats, but it should mean they're capable of accomplishing the superhuman through physical prowess alone.


That's definitely not true within 4e's concept of the Martial power source. Being an explicitly-magical race doesn't prevent a character from becoming a Martial class, but rather brings their innate magic into the realm of things they can master with their martial skills in post-PHB1 sources: Eladrin Warlords can learn how to teleport their allies, while Dragonborn, Genasi, and Tieflings get ways to improve their elemental affinities and mix them into their attacks, and so forth.

Right, that proves my point exactly. A "magical" race can bring their magic wherever they go and add it to anything they do, but being Martial-keyworded doesn't itself expand your ability to "do" things and impact the fiction; the "martial" part of the character doesn't add anything to a character's ability to do the supernatural. An arcane character can hit people magically, a divine character can hit people divinely, a primal character can hit people primally, but a martial character only ever hits people, full stop; the scope of what they can do is always less than what anyone else can do. Any martial power can be reflavored as divine or arcane or something and make as much (if not more) sense, but there are plenty of arcane or divine powers that would be a lot harder to re-flavor as purely mundane. That's what I mean when I say the martial descriptor is purely negative. I don't think it should be that way, of course, but that's how things currently are.

[Mando Knight]

Right, that proves my point exactly. A "magical" race can bring their magic wherever they go and add it to anything they do, but being Martial-keyworded doesn't itself expand your ability to "do" things and impact the fiction; the "martial" part of the character doesn't add anything to a character's ability to do the supernatural. An arcane character can hit people magically, a divine character can hit people divinely, a primal character can hit people primally, but a martial character only ever hits people, full stop; the scope of what they can do is always less than what anyone else can do. Any martial power can be reflavored as divine or arcane or something and make as much (if not more) sense, but there are plenty of arcane or divine powers that would be a lot harder to re-flavor as purely mundane. That's what I mean when I say the martial descriptor is purely negative. I don't think it should be that way, of course, but that's how things currently are.

If that's how you're limiting yourself, sure. You "only ever hit people, full stop"... but the death knight can't see you even though you're standing right there. "What you can do is always less than what anyone else can do" but when somebody kills you, they don't. The "martial descriptor is purely negative" because you're looking at the Cleric's angel of "this guy can fly now" and the Warlock banishing a dragon into the Nine Hells for a couple of turns and not allowing for the flipped script of that being what they bring to keep up with the martial characters just tag-team disemboweling everything.

[Ignimortis]

If that's how you're limiting yourself, sure. You "only ever hit people, full stop"... but the death knight can't see you even though you're standing right there. "What you can do is always less than what anyone else can do" but when somebody kills you, they don't. The "martial descriptor is purely negative" because you're looking at the Cleric's angel of "this guy can fly now" and the Warlock banishing a dragon into the Nine Hells for a couple of turns and not allowing for the flipped script of that being what they bring to keep up with the martial characters just tag-team disemboweling everything.

Except the whole "martial characters kill things much better" hasn't really been true for a while. Both 3e and 5e, which have highly "distinct" martials and not just as as "power source name", are designed in a way that martials usually do significantly more damage than casters only at the lowest and the highest optimization points. A simple EB spam Warlock can generally keep up with martials in 5e, while retaining their spellcasting, and most gishes built on the Cleric or Druid foundations can outdo low-op martials pretty handily in 3e.

As for "can't see you, though you're standing right there", it doesn't really work out in either 3e or 5e, too. 3e-wise, unless you've gotten your hands on Hide in Plain Sight (which is not a part of a Hide/Move Silently/Stealth skill, but rather a specific and situation-limited ability a few classes get), it just doesn't work. Same for 5e, except HiPS is much worse and liable to get pierced through without magical support or grabbing Expertise out of class.

Core 3e and the general bent of 5e do a lot to make the stance of "martial carries a purely negative connotation in D&D" reasonable. Getting access to the aforementioned HiPS is much, much harder than gaining access to Invisibility - and far more limiting.

[Just to Browse]

Except the whole "martial characters kill things much better" hasn't really been true for a while. Both 3e and 5e, which have highly "distinct" martials and not just as as "power source name", are designed in a way that martials usually do significantly more damage than casters only at the lowest and the highest optimization points. A simple EB spam Warlock can generally keep up with martials in 5e, while retaining their spellcasting, and most gishes built on the Cleric or Druid foundations can outdo low-op martials pretty handily in 3e.

I'd also like to add to this that I, personally, don't want my 4e martial classes to be stuck with the "good at murder" niche. Rolling buckets of dice is cool, but it shouldn't be their exclusive domain, much like the cleric shouldn't be shackled to granting flying (they could also magically heal, boost morale, or shoot lasers) and the warlock shouldn't just be shackled to their removal effects (they could also summon the dead, create armor, or shoot lasers).




Oh, I see what's going on now. You're dissatisfied with what martial powers are actually mechanically capable of in 4e. You're just framing it as the fluff being outlandish and overwrought rather than the mechanics being so. Before I go on, lemme check.

Bro I can't anymore. You've written what appears to be ten paragraphs of rebuttal based off some imagined version of me that is dissatisfied with something. I am not dissatisfied with things! I am not calling anything overwrought! There are no secret meanings behind my words, no psychological contradictions, no fake powers, no edition-pushing. I am saying one very very simple thing: Being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition. I am saying that thing because it is true, not because I am tormented by mechanics or I dislike 4e or whatever the flavor of the week dismissal is.

It's not clever when you decide for me that there are secret psychological underpinnings to my comments. It's weird and uncomfortable.

[Thirdtwin]

Bro I can't anymore. You've written what appears to be ten paragraphs of rebuttal based off some imagined version of me that is dissatisfied with something. I am not dissatisfied with things! I am not calling anything overwrought! There are no secret meanings behind my words, no psychological contradictions, no fake powers, no edition-pushing. I am saying one very very simple thing: Being a martial is mostly flavor text in this edition. I am saying that thing because it is true, not because I am tormented by mechanics or I dislike 4e or whatever the flavor of the week dismissal is.

It's not clever when you decide for me that there are secret psychological underpinnings to my comments. It's weird and uncomfortable.

Well then, I'll try to be straight and to the point about this:

You're wrong.

Being a martial is not mostly flavor text in 4e.

That is untrue.

Martials hit things with pieces of metal. That is what they do. In the fluff and in the game. They do not summon meteors, time travel or turn enemies into cake. You can multiclass and do some of that. You can turn into a demigod and maybe get something that approaches that sort of. But a fighter is not natively doing those things, especially in heroic and paragon levels, and arguably not even enough in epic levels.

That is in fact the entire point of this topic existing, that people are dissatisfied that 4e fighters are not doing things on the order of summoning meteors (or whatever sort of thing would be equal to that in the story while still seeming like a thing a "martial" "should" be capable of).

I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you.

I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable.

I'm telling you that you are factually incorrect.

Is that clear enough for you?

I wrote a lot because being thorough and quoting things from the actual books is a virtue, or at least I thought it was. I wrote a lot because I felt it worthwhile to demonstrate the ways in which your statement was incorrect, of which there are several. I also wrote a lot because I'm bored and like to hear myself talk. That's all. There's no deeper meaning and I'm not trying to psychologically dissect your brain.

[OracleofWuffing]

Well, shucks, if all it takes to be martial is to hit something with metal, then I guess the Battlemind, Avenger, and Artificer are martial classes. Similarly, a Lazylord that uses its friends to attack is not martial. Sure hope the folks in Athas with obsidian and bone weapons have a way out of this... :smalltongue:

Maybe they just should've named the Martial Power Source any other possible name, and just flat out announced, "Everyone's special, there's no such thing as ordinary PC's now. Ordinary belongs to NPCs."

[sandmote]

Looking through the thread and ignoring the many quibbles and pointless arguments, it looks like the answer most people agree with is that martials should be forces of nature in high-level D&D, because that's what they are in modern fantasy settings.

Personally, I think the examples being given are either too modern (heck, several of them are younger than 4e!) or too divine in origin (Gods or Demigods). And Beowulf slays a dragon, but also dies in the process, and I assume that part of the fantasy isn't what Kurald pictures for a high-level martial... Or alternatively, they're citing characters that don't really do anything greater than a high-level 4e martial can do (Aragorn/Gimli? Really? They barely do anything noteworthy through force of arms!).

The martial as a force of nature relies on D&D being the highest sort of fantasy possible, whereas I think at most 4e is low or middle fantasy in design.I do think at least some of this general feeling (rather than you specifically) comes from a lot of older literature not being read very much.

Beowolf's claim to fame is being the grandkid of another famous hero. He's able to swim for a week straight (fighting monsters the whole way), used his bare hands to rip the arm off a creature most people couldn't scratch with a weapon, holds his breath for days on end, and wields weapons sized for giants. That's before he has an extended conversation while extreme heat melts the shield he's holding and then takes days to succumb to a mortal wound.

The Aurthurian mythos had several generations of authors coming up with a new character they wrote into their stories and who would to procced with blowing the other characters out of the water with their abilities. Several had signs of how pure and amazing they'd grow up to be when they were born, and Arthur has some fey heritage (not really more than would be represented with the fey heritage feat in 3.5e, especially since its several generations removed), but that's about it. The rest of it is on account of the character's purity or training by fey creatures (including both Morgan and Lancelot).

In the Prose Edda Thjalfi is slower than the personification of thought, but he's still able to reasonably compete with it despite him having no supernatural heritage.

If I go back and double checked the stories featuring Ivan Tsarevich, I'm pretty sure the characters given that name only have the magical ability to befriend and get favors from magical creatures.

Even if we assume the fictional characters claimed to be divine in origin have more magical ability than the historical Uesugi Kenshin had, there are old texts to pull martial abilities from that D&D martials struggle to do.


They do not summon meteors, time travel or turn enemies into cake.
I would like to point out that in 4e non-martials aren't doing this very much either, and most of the actually interesting magic a martial can pick up at the cost of a feat and some gold. In 4e an annoying amount of the "summon meteors" stuff works out functioning very much like "a volley of arrows" with a different damage type. Martials aren't blowing away affects, or dominating, or putting up impassible walls (although a character that can "draw a line in the sand," and damage anyone who crosses it for the next turn might be neat), but they're doing most of the other mechanical effects. They just get flavor text saying they're doing it with a weapon swing instead of with natural, magical, holy, or psionic forces.

If there's a martial controller class I don't recall it of the top of my head, but I think most of the mechanical effects that requires a martial character to multiclass into other sources of power falls into that space.

[Just to Browse]

Maybe they just should've named the Martial Power Source any other possible name, and just flat out announced, "Everyone's special, there's no such thing as ordinary PC's now. Ordinary belongs to NPCs."

I do think that if a theoretical version of D&D changed the name "Martial" to "Badass", it could help sell some of the more outlandish abilities.


If there's a martial controller class I don't recall it of the top of my head, but I think most of the mechanical effects that requires a martial character to multiclass into other sources of power falls into that space.

The closest is probably the Hunter Ranger from Essentials, but that's cheating. IIRC they made it a Martial / Primal combo, and almost all the control stuff was primal.

[Thirdtwin]

Well, shucks, if all it takes to be martial is to hit something with metal, then I guess the Battlemind, Avenger, and Artificer are martial classes. Similarly, a Lazylord that uses its friends to attack is not martial. Sure hope the folks in Athas with obsidian and bone weapons have a way out of this... :smalltongue:

Maybe they just should've named the Martial Power Source any other possible name, and just flat out announced, "Everyone's special, there's no such thing as ordinary PC's now. Ordinary belongs to NPCs."

The statement "martials hit things with metal" does not imply the statement "non-martials (cannot/must not) hit things with metal." As for warlords, I don't think "telling someone to hit someone else" is a tremendous feat only attested in myth and on par with shaking the pillars of heaven and earth. It is technically not hitting your foe with metal yourself though, you got me there.


I would like to point out that in 4e non-martials aren't doing this very much either, and most of the actually interesting magic a martial can pick up at the cost of a feat and some gold. In 4e an annoying amount of the "summon meteors" stuff works out functioning very much like "a volley of arrows" with a different damage type. Martials aren't blowing away affects, or dominating, or putting up impassible walls (although a character that can "draw a line in the sand," and damage anyone who crosses it for the next turn might be neat), but they're doing most of the other mechanical effects. They just get flavor text saying they're doing it with a weapon swing instead of with natural, magical, holy, or psionic forces.

That is also true. Granted I've never played a D&D where Meteor Swarm was actually worth much; maybe it was better in the older ones. I don’t know what conclusion to draw from all this at this point tbh.

[Kurald Galain]

Granted I've never played a D&D where Meteor Swarm was actually worth much; maybe it was better in the older ones. I don’t know what conclusion to draw from all this at this point tbh.
A fair conclusion is that in 4E, most non-martials also dont get powers worthy of the title "epic".

[PhoenixPhyre]

A fair conclusion is that in 4E, most non-martials also dont get powers worthy of the title "epic".

I think there's a conversation that could be had around exactly what it means to be "high level". There's nothing baked into the nature of the term itself that says that it should be any particular thing--I could see a game working just fine where you go from action-hero equivalent (stronger, faster, more resilient than normal, but basically still just a person with a weapon) to something in the low-mid supers range (maybe a mid-range spiderman or low-end batman equivalent, with Captain America at the high end).

I can also see a game working well where you start at that mid-range supers level and progress to high-end supers/mythic heroes.

4e is very much the first type of game, through and through. Except dressed up in fancy words, mostly. For everyone. Which...you know...I'm kinda ok with. I prefer if my settings don't suffer catastrophic damage just from the incidental side-effects of kaiju-level heroes fighting. Something like One Punch Man, Dragonball, or the Marvel movies, where every significant fight causes massive collateral damage, where cutting holes in mountains with missed attacks or fireballs that take out square miles of the countryside just mean that you can't have a meaningful, persistent setting. It all falls apart or radically changes (mostly for the crap-sack) as soon as the first high-level party comes about. And as someone who has been running games in the same setting for the last 10 years straight...yeah. No me like.

That's not to say that the heroes can't have massive effects on the setting via their actions. Just not as an incidental side effect of their normal power set. Ask my parties--one of them is currently 1 for 3 in mountains they didn't blow up (one of them hard enough that it is now a thousand+ meter deep chasm). And nearly blew a hole in one of the moons by redirecting 10k years worth of stored elemental energy upward instead of letting it blow outward and nuke a chunk of a continent. Those events are climactic consequences of a chain of events, but each single action is much smaller.

[Kurald Galain]

4e is very much the first type of game, through and through. Except dressed up in fancy words, mostly. For everyone.
Basically, 4E is the first type of game in rules text, and the second kind of game in flavor text. Now people very rarely actually play Epic, but when they do, this disconnect becomes obvious and common complaints are that "epic doesn't feel epic" (because it plays identically to heroic tier), and that almost none of the epic destinies are really all that noticeable in gameplay (as opposed to paragon paths, which are very visible).

Essentially, that's similar to the martial issue (of not "being allowed" cool stuff), albeit at a higher level.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Basically, 4E is the first type of game in rules text, and the second kind of game in flavor text. Now people very rarely actually play Epic, but when they do, this disconnect becomes obvious and common complaints are that "epic doesn't feel epic" (because it plays identically to heroic tier), and that almost none of the epic destinies are really all that noticeable in gameplay (as opposed to paragon paths, which are very visible).

Essentially, that's similar to the martial issue (of not "being allowed" cool stuff), albeit at a higher level.

The disconnect is a problem, I agree -- it promises one thing and gives something else. Of course, a fix could go either way to remove that disconnect. Personally, I prefer in this case to bring the words down to like up with the mechanics. But that's subjective preference.

[Just to Browse]

Been noodling a few examples of epic-tier powers from other classes, tweaked to function as martial exploits. Here is one for each role. Each power taken from a different power source (primal, psionic, arcane, and shadow). Kudos to you if you can recognize the originals:
Impact Arc (Hunter Attack 23)
You let an arrow loose into the sky, which arcs to the ground with a thundering explosion.
Daily - Martial, Weapon
Standard Action, Area burst 1 within weapon range
Target: Each creature in the burst
Attack: Dexterity vs. Fortitude
Hit: 2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and you knock the target prone.
Effect: You may take your Minor Action when you use this exploit. If you do, the burst creates a zone of difficult terrain that lasts until the end of the encounter.


Steel Presence (Fighter Attack 23)
You strike in broad arcs. In your wake, your presence lingers, and your foes feel their eyes drawn inexorably towards you.
Daily - Martial, Weapon
Standard Action, Area close burst 2
Target: Each enemy you can see in the burst
Attack: Constitution vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Constitution modifier damage. The mark from your Combat Challenge applies to until the end of the encounter, until you use another daily power.


Poison Thorn Assault (Rogue Attack 23)
You lash forward with your envenomed weaponry, causing your foe's body to seize up.
Daily - Martial, Poison, Weapon
Standard Action, Melee or Ranged weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target is immobilized and takes a -2 penalty to AC and Reflex defense until the end of your next turn.


Vitality of Conquest (Warlord Attack 23)
You land an unerring blow against your foe, and feast upon their broken will to fuel your future conquests.
Daily - Martial
Standard Action, Melee 1
Target: One bloodied enemy
Effect: The target takes 15 + your Strength modifier bludgeoning damage. If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, you and one ally within 10 squares of you can each spend a healing surge.

Super quick and works for probably 80~90% of the non-martial powers.


The disconnect is a problem, I agree -- it promises one thing and gives something else. Of course, a fix could go either way to remove that disconnect. Personally, I prefer in this case to bring the words down to like up with the mechanics. But that's subjective preference.

Also from an ease-of-development perspective, one of those involves editing some (not even all) flavor text, and the other involves reworking basically every epic-tier power and changing how high-level combats work. Either way, I think this discussion is out of the scope of the OP.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Also from an ease-of-development perspective, one of those involves editing some (not even all) flavor text, and the other involves reworking basically every epic-tier power and changing how high-level combats work. Either way, I think this discussion is out of the scope of the OP.

Yeah. Basically, being more "epic" requires reworking the entire game at those levels. Which in 4e particularly, means either supporting two separate games (the mechanical system is tightly woven in) or having a weird disjoint mess.

[Just to Browse]

I remember an attempt to make a 4e retroclone on this forum (Project Force?) back in 2016-ish. I wonder if they discussed epic powers before the project died.

[Dr.Samurai]

Well then, I'll try to be straight and to the point about this:

You're wrong.

Being a martial is not mostly flavor text in 4e.

That is untrue.

Martials hit things with pieces of metal. That is what they do. In the fluff and in the game. They do not summon meteors, time travel or turn enemies into cake. You can multiclass and do some of that. You can turn into a demigod and maybe get something that approaches that sort of. But a fighter is not natively doing those things, especially in heroic and paragon levels, and arguably not even enough in epic levels.

That is in fact the entire point of this topic existing, that people are dissatisfied that 4e fighters are not doing things on the order of summoning meteors (or whatever sort of thing would be equal to that in the story while still seeming like a thing a "martial" "should" be capable of).

I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you.

I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable.

I'm telling you that you are factually incorrect.

Is that clear enough for you?

I wrote a lot because being thorough and quoting things from the actual books is a virtue, or at least I thought it was. I wrote a lot because I felt it worthwhile to demonstrate the ways in which your statement was incorrect, of which there are several. I also wrote a lot because I'm bored and like to hear myself talk. That's all. There's no deeper meaning and I'm not trying to psychologically dissect your brain.
For the little its worth, your posts so far come across as having a personal fixation with Just to Browse, as opposed to trying to speak to the OP or even to Just to Browse's comments. You seem hellbent on disagreeing with them absolutely in as many words as possible and with just enough snark to make it a chore to read. Just an observation.



With regards to cutting mountains in half... this is like stone age people leaping to intergalactic conquerors.

As someone that has never played in a game where ANYONE, let a lone a guy with a sword, is making mountains disappear with their Action, I am not really interested in that power. And more to the point, I'm (I think) more interested in stuff that comes along the way to that power (I hope).

Like... it's funny to think of a martial that can swing their sword two times with their action, target 1 enemy each time, for some base damage, and still generally moves and behaves almost exactly like they did at level 1. And also they can use an action to cut a mountain in half.

But their reach hasn't improved in normal combat, they're still only hitting one enemy per attack, doing base damage, haven't wildly improved their chances of dodging attacks, resisting damage or effects, they're not much faster, etc etc.

It's just straight from "You're basically level 1 but 19 levels later" to "annihilate reality with a swing of your sword".

I'd be much more interested in playing around and improving all the parameters that govern what martials do (fight in combat) so that they are truly terrifying to behold in battle. Achieve that first, then you can add super duper godly anime powers for those games where DMs and players lament "if only we had someone here to cut this mountain in half".

In other words... martials are so far below where they could be, that talking about chopping mountains in twain is like 100 steps ahead of itself. There's plenty to do between where we are now and "the soundwave of swinging my sword leveled that plateau in the distance".

Increased resiliences, either through improved hit points, damage/condition immunities, saving throw features, counter-attacks, etc.
Increased impact on enemies, like snuffing out enemy auras with a grapple, cutting off limbs, imposing conditions with your attacks
Better attacks, increased reach/range, target every enemy in reach/range with each single attack you make, reaction attacks based on broader sets of triggers
Improved mobility, higher speed, more actions, move as reaction to certain triggers, ignore certain impediments to movement, super jumps/climbing/swimming

I don't know, there's a bunch of stuff. It won't all be to everyone's tastes but that's the case with everything.

[sandmote]

Increased resiliences, either through improved hit points, damage/condition immunities, saving throw features, counter-attacks, etc.
Increased impact on enemies, like snuffing out enemy auras with a grapple, cutting off limbs, imposing conditions with your attacks
Better attacks, increased reach/range, target every enemy in reach/range with each single attack you make, reaction attacks based on broader sets of triggers
Improved mobility, higher speed, more actions, move as reaction to certain triggers, ignore certain impediments to movement, super jumps/climbing/swimming

I don't know, there's a bunch of stuff. It won't all be to everyone's tastes but that's the case with everything.
Some of this stuff looks familiar from Tomb of Battle. So while I do think it needs to come well before "split an object far away with a sword swing," its still going to see complaints. I've seen 3.5e claimed to be between E6 and E8, and you get complaints about Martials being able to compete with Olympic level athletes well past that point.

But yeah, paragon level play needs to add some of that stuff for "epic" feeling actions to fit. Before you can split a mountain at range, you should be able to force a Reflex save against your weapon on a consistent basis, blow away a creature (or flames) with your weapon, and make ranged weapon attacks that pierce multiple targets.

This is also more awkward to discuss in 4e, because while I only recall powers that target alternate defenses for martials, for all I know there are a few powers that do whatever other examples I come up with.

The other thing I'm noticing is that a lot of epic sounding martial stuff would require more work from the DM to function. How missing a limb is going to effect different creatures, for example, is going to take more work than most individual spell effects will.

Same for how a collapsing building or cave is going to turn out, much less a mountain that's been cleaved in half. Meteor Swarm is much simpler in comparison, only making you deal with the same rules for flammable objects you figured out for the fireball spell 12 levels ago.

[Beoric]

I'd be much more interested in playing around and improving all the parameters that govern what martials do (fight in combat) so that they are truly terrifying to behold in battle.

The impression that they are not is an illusion created by the way high level encounters and monsters are typically structured. It is because enemies are assumed to level with the party.

Imagine instead that 100 third level city guards (XP = 150 x 100 = 15,000) operated as a unit. Make that unit a gargantuan 29th level standard swarm (XP = 15,000). How long would it take a high epic level fighter to take out that unit of 100 trained and armoured guards? How many companies of 100 men at arms could your average party take on comfortably? What about an optimized party?

Epic level fighters are already truly terrifying to behold in battle.

[Dr.Samurai]

The impression that they are not is an illusion created by the way high level encounters and monsters are typically structured. It is because enemies are assumed to level with the party.

Imagine instead that 100 third level city guards (XP = 150 x 100 = 15,000) operated as a unit. Make that unit a gargantuan 29th level standard swarm (XP = 15,000). How long would it take a high epic level fighter to take out that unit of 100 trained and armoured guards?
I'm not really talking about hit point damage though. By making this thing a single swarm, you're actually removing some of the points I was making. If you revert back to 100 city guards, the fighter will exhaust their encounter powers and dailies in around 1 minute give or take, depending on actions. Let's say they remove 10 enemies from the battlefield, could be more or less, depending but some Dailies are instead Stances.

You still have around 90 enemies left on the battlefield, and you're going to have to target each one with your at-will action attack.

If we go back to the idea that fighters have to chop mountains in half, then wading through a company of armed soldiers with ease should be somewhere before then, I would think. Yeah, it's scary that the fighter could survive an encounter with that many soldiers, but it would take him almost an hour and a half to do so, assuming each attack killed a solider.

If we look to Berserk, Guts (and Casca, but mostly Guts) kills half of the "100 men" in minutes, definitely less than an hour. And Guts doesn't going around cutting mountains in half.

My point being that the martial has to, at some point, move away from the static move+attack single target dynamic. Close Burst powers and stances that deal damage at start of turn help to emulate this, but I don't think it's enough.


Epic level fighters are already truly terrifying to behold in battle.
That's from the perspective of a common guard. As opposed to a balor that just watched his demonic horde obliterated by a mere human fighter right before that fighter leapt over, hit it so hard it was stunned, ripped its wings off with his bare hands and then made an Intimidation check against the reserve horde marching toward him.


If martials can't advance beyond normal ranges, meaning something like Bounded Accuracy is in play, then yeah you can't do this stuff.

[Beoric]

I'm not really talking about hit point damage though. By making this thing a single swarm, you're actually removing some of the points I was making. If you revert back to 100 city guards, the fighter will exhaust their encounter powers and dailies in around 1 minute give or take, depending on actions. Let's say they remove 10 enemies from the battlefield, could be more or less, depending but some Dailies are instead Stances.

You still have around 90 enemies left on the battlefield, and you're going to have to target each one with your at-will action attack.


You can't revert back to individual guards without ignoring 4e design parameters. Level 3 monsters are too low level for an epic level fighter. Even if you convert them to 11th level minions, they are still too low. If you want to use guards at that level, you have to convert them to a swarm.

I mean, if your argument is, "4e doesn't work the way I want when I refuse to use its design features," I really don't know how to respond.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You can't revert back to individual guards without ignoring 4e design parameters. Level 3 monsters are too low level for an epic level fighter. Even if you convert them to 11th level minions, they are still too low. If you want to use guards at that level, you have to convert them to a swarm.

I mean, if your argument is, "4e doesn't work the way I want when I refuse to use its design features," I really don't know how to respond.

Exactly this. 4e does not pretend to simulate certain types of fights or stories. That's not an objective design flaw--that's a design choice that may or may not work for individual tables. Mass combat is one of those design choices--it "simulates" them using swarms. That's the peril of an abstraction--it abstracts things away.

It should also be mentioned that the fighter in 4e is squarely a defender, not a striker. And 4e is a very intentionally role-based game, where individual people just aren't the central element--parties are. It's job is not to scythe through the crowds. It's to hold the big guys' attention so the controllers and strikers can do their job of blowing away the hordes and reducing the big guy to pieces (respectively), while the leader keeps them going and gets them out of bad spots. The defender can't and shouldn't do the strikers' or controllers' or leaders' jobs, at least not nearly as well.

More abstractly, D&D is centralized around the party being the underdog in all the important fights. Whether that's because they're vastly outnumbered or because the enemies individually are much tougher than they are, they're never designed to one-shot significant, on-level enemies. They're supposed to win because of teamwork, pluck, etc. Not just take them out as a cinematic stepping stone. Minion-class enemies, sure. But even a horde of minion-class enemies should still be a significant challenge!

No, high-level characters are not supposed to face armies. Especially not alone. Not in 4e. Not in 5e. Again, design decision, not design flaw.

[Dr.Samurai]

You can't revert back to individual guards without ignoring 4e design parameters. Level 3 monsters are too low level for an epic level fighter. Even if you convert them to 11th level minions, they are still too low.
Correct. They should be too low level. What exactly is a level 24 "guard"?

If you want to use guards at that level, you have to convert them to a swarm.
Good point, it's been years since I've played 4E. In that sense, we're both aiming for the same thing. I think it's terrifying to wade through a horde of low level monsters; you also think it's terrifying that the high level fighter can easily defeat a high level swarm representing that swarm of monsters.

I mean, if your argument is, "4e doesn't work the way I want when I refuse to use its design features," I really don't know how to respond.
Nice, stay classy lol.

Exactly this. 4e does not pretend to simulate certain types of fights or stories. That's not an objective design flaw--that's a design choice that may or may not work for individual tables. Mass combat is one of those design choices--it "simulates" them using swarms. That's the peril of an abstraction--it abstracts things away.

It should also be mentioned that the fighter in 4e is squarely a defender, not a striker. And 4e is a very intentionally role-based game, where individual people just aren't the central element--parties are. It's job is not to scythe through the crowds. It's to hold the big guys' attention so the controllers and strikers can do their job of blowing away the hordes and reducing the big guy to pieces (respectively), while the leader keeps them going and gets them out of bad spots. The defender can't and shouldn't do the strikers' or controllers' or leaders' jobs, at least not nearly as well.

More abstractly, D&D is centralized around the party being the underdog in all the important fights. Whether that's because they're vastly outnumbered or because the enemies individually are much tougher than they are, they're never designed to one-shot significant, on-level enemies. They're supposed to win because of teamwork, pluck, etc. Not just take them out as a cinematic stepping stone. Minion-class enemies, sure. But even a horde of minion-class enemies should still be a significant challenge!

No, high-level characters are not supposed to face armies. Especially not alone. Not in 4e. Not in 5e. Again, design decision, not design flaw.
The thread title is asking what people expect out of high level martials.

These comments about team-work etc are missing the point. Low level monsters don't require a party of adventurers. No, absolutely not it shouldn't take "teamwork" to beat a bunch of level 3 mooks when you're a demigod in 4th edition. And that can scale up.

And classes blur their roles all throughout 4E. A fighter can also be very much a striker, even if it doesn't have the actual role designation of "striker". Maybe a high level martial transcends roles and can perform other roles as well. Can we not consider this because it isn't this way now and isn't intended to be this way? In what way are we able to answer the question in the OP?

[VampiricLongbow]

Anything Captain America can do, so too can high level Martials.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The thread title is asking what people expect out of high level martials.

These comments about team-work etc are missing the point. Low level monsters don't require a party of adventurers. No, absolutely not it shouldn't take "teamwork" to beat a bunch of level 3 mooks when you're a demigod in 4th edition. And that can scale up.

And classes blur their roles all throughout 4E. A fighter can also be very much a striker, even if it doesn't have the actual role designation of "striker". Maybe a high level martial transcends roles and can perform other roles as well. Can we not consider this because it isn't this way now and isn't intended to be this way? In what way are we able to answer the question in the OP?

Note I said significant foe/fight. A bunch of level 3 mooks when you're epic (20+) in 4e is not using the system as designed! It's not something the system allows for. At all. It expects every enemy on the field to be +-4 (or so) levels of the party level--anything lower and you're just not supposed to do those fights mechanically at all.

And there's a big difference between classes having secondary roles (which is very much a thing), and classes blurring the roles. The latter they don't. I've actually been going through 4e's PHB (and some of the ancillary books) in the last couple days. The split is...enormous. Rogues (a striker) don't get defender abilities. They get light control, because that's their secondary role. But only single-target. By design. They have a couple area damage powers, but they're not super great. They get ~0 leader-type abilities. On the flip side, the paladin (secondary leader) gets ~0 control and their damage sucks compared even to a fighter (secondary striker). Re-doing that requires rewriting the entire system from the ground up. If you're not ok with that, then don't play 4e, because it's a central design decision. Not a flaw. A choice they made, and a reasonable one for the type of game they were going for.

[Dr.Samurai]

Note I said significant foe/fight. A bunch of level 3 mooks when you're epic (20+) in 4e is not using the system as designed! It's not something the system allows for. At all. It expects every enemy on the field to be +-4 (or so) levels of the party level--anything lower and you're just not supposed to do those fights mechanically at all.
I love how someone else mentions 100 guards and now I get roped into defending fighting 100 guards lol.

That's fine that 4E isn't intended for you to fight a bunch of low level mooks. The point still stands that your at-will is still an action that only targets a single enemy. At high levels you still don't have extra actions, your at-wills still only hit 1 person. Once you exhaust your encounter powers, you're swinging for one hit against one enemy. They can be a bunch of level-4 enemies or whatever it is that is level appropriate enough for you to get passed the levels and see what I'm saying about the scope of the martial's ability.

To me, it doesn't feel epic that you barely ever break free of the I swing my sword at just you, one time, now you attack me back, now I swing my sword against you again for one time, etc etc. The things that I mentioned don't strictly apply to fighting armies, so we don't have to go that route just because it was brought up. Pretend I'm fighting two balors, or three mariliths, or 4 death slaad or whatever.

And there's a big difference between classes having secondary roles (which is very much a thing), and classes blurring the roles. The latter they don't.
I don't think the distinction is as great as you think it is. Fighters can deal excellent damage in 4e. Don't call it a striker then, that's fine.

But I am highly skeptical that the sky will fall down if high level martials delved into other roles as a feature of high level gameplay. But there's not much I can do to counter general poo-pooing except saying "I disagree" so I'll leave it at that.

[Just to Browse]

That's fine that 4E isn't intended for you to fight a bunch of low level mooks. The point still stands that your at-will is still an action that only targets a single enemy. At high levels you still don't have extra actions, your at-wills still only hit 1 person. Once you exhaust your encounter powers, you're swinging for one hit against one enemy. They can be a bunch of level-4 enemies or whatever it is that is level appropriate enough for you to get passed the levels and see what I'm saying about the scope of the martial's ability.

A good example of this: in the Kingdom of the Ghouls adventure, there is a fight with over a dozen enemies at once:

12 minion skirmishers, 1 controller leader, 2 level 24 soldiers

This is why the occasional AoE that do come up tend to get valued quite highly. Cleave is a top-tier Fighter power.

[Ignimortis]

More abstractly, D&D is centralized around the party being the underdog in all the important fights. Whether that's because they're vastly outnumbered or because the enemies individually are much tougher than they are, they're never designed to one-shot significant, on-level enemies. They're supposed to win because of teamwork, pluck, etc. Not just take them out as a cinematic stepping stone. Minion-class enemies, sure. But even a horde of minion-class enemies should still be a significant challenge!
This has only ever worked in PF2 and maybe 4e, both of which achieved that by taking all the numbers in the game and nailing them to a rail track, then forcing players to pick them up while they're running away from a train of escalating enemy stats by CR.

3.5 outright allows you to one-shot or two-shot a lot of level-appropriate foes (a PHB Rogue that gets off a good full round sneak attack routine can take off 50-70% HP of a CR = level enemy quite easily, and it gets easier with splats). 5e's fight design guidelines start at "boring" masked as "medium", continue to "could get not boring if the enemies are lucky" at "hard", and go to "now it could be interesting" by the time the fight budget has come over the "deadly" mark, as long as your party is level 5 or higher (the fights before that point are too swingy to map onto CR well). I've been in games with multiple "deadly x5" and "deadly x7" fights, and only something of that caliber has felt like "underdog" fights.

[Wildstag]

I would like to point out that in 4e non-martials aren't doing this very much either, and most of the actually interesting magic a martial can pick up at the cost of a feat and some gold. (emphasis Wildstag's) In 4e an annoying amount of the "summon meteors" stuff works out functioning very much like "a volley of arrows" with a different damage type. Martials aren't blowing away affects, or dominating, or putting up impassible walls (although a character that can "draw a line in the sand," and damage anyone who crosses it for the next turn might be neat), but they're doing most of the other mechanical effects. They just get flavor text saying they're doing it with a weapon swing instead of with natural, magical, holy, or psionic forces.

If there's a martial controller class I don't recall it of the top of my head, but I think most of the mechanical effects that requires a martial character to multiclass into other sources of power falls into that space.

Fwiw, any martial could have that degree of fey heritage represented by themes made available through Heroes of the Feywild. Tuathan could easily represent that heritage for any of the Arthurian knights. Regarding Arthurian myth, it is really hard to justify translating to D&D if only because each successive generation of authors introduces an "OC DO NOT STEAL" that is inherently more powerful and amazing than those that came before. They're the kinds of characters that are played by those guys at tables, and last I heard, those kinds of characters are universally disliked at the table.

But also, from what I recall, the inspirations that led to D&D weren't those mythological characters. Though the AD&D DMG cites that books of mythology inspired the author to read science fiction and fantasy literature, the "Inspirational Reading" lists no books on mythology. And sure, there are some leads within that list that are very high fantasy, but not the majority. Multiple entries on that list cite other entries on the list as inspiration (Moorcock was influenced by Poul Anderson, for example).

Ultimately though, I think my greatest issue with this line of discussion and reasoning is this: what actually interesting magic can a pure martial do in 3.5, 2e, or AD&D 1e without the cost of a feat or some gold? What you're making isn't a complaint with 4e, it's a complaint with D&D as a whole disguised as a complaint about 4e.

So the real question should be: What does a 4e high-level martial do that a martial of similar level can't do in previous editions that they can't pick up at the cost of a feat and some gold? The simple answer, I guess, is attack multiple times in one round, but those attacks have diminishing returns.

[OracleofWuffing]

To me, it doesn't feel epic that you barely ever break free of the I swing my sword at just you, one time, now you attack me back, now I swing my sword against you again for one time, etc etc. The things that I mentioned don't strictly apply to fighting armies, so we don't have to go that route just because it was brought up. Pretend I'm fighting two balors, or three mariliths, or 4 death slaad or whatever.
Is that problem specific to Martials? Just about every class that runs out of Encounter and Daily powers is stuck with the At-Will back-and-forth. If you're anyone that fights at close quarters, that means being stuck to your target until either of you dies or eats the opportunity attack retreating. Unfortunately, 4e combat is particularly weak when attrition gets involved.

Taking a page from Tome of Battle (heh) those classes were able to replenish their maneuvers mid-combat. I can almost guarantee WotC didn't want players to reliably recover all their encounter powers as a means of reducing bookkeeping and maintaining balance, but I'm spitballing here. I'm picturing a scenario where if your encounter powers are all expended at the start of your turn, you could roll a d6 and on a 6 get an encounter power back decided at random- then play around where maybe some classes have a d4 or d8, or maybe it's a saving throw, maybe you have to spend a healing surge, or take a defense penalty for a round... Maybe we get some classes "crusader style" that aren't guaranteed all their encounter powers at once but get a steady random flow, maybe there are a few classes that don't recover encounter powers just for the folks that find the idea too fiddly...

Although I'm aware the easier and more frequently suggestion "fix" is to reduce enemy HP, which is just less fun... :smallfrown:

[Kurald Galain]

5e's fight design guidelines start at "boring" masked as "medium", continue to "could get not boring if the enemies are lucky" at "hard", and go to "now it could be interesting" by the time the fight budget has come over the "deadly" mark, as long as your party is level 5 or higher
Can confirm. Our 5E GM routinely throws enemies ten levels higher at us, and so far that hasn't ever make us feel like "underdog". It just makes us feel that attrition makes for boring gameplay.


Is that problem specific to Martials? Just about every class that runs out of Encounter and Daily powers is stuck with the At-Will back-and-forth.
My experience is that, except at very low level, when the characters run out of encounter powers the players want the GM to just declare defeat and stop combat. Again, because attrition isn't interesting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This has only ever worked in PF2 and maybe 4e, both of which achieved that by taking all the numbers in the game and nailing them to a rail track, then forcing players to pick them up while they're running away from a train of escalating enemy stats by CR.

3.5 outright allows you to one-shot or two-shot a lot of level-appropriate foes (a PHB Rogue that gets off a good full round sneak attack routine can take off 50-70% HP of a CR = level enemy quite easily, and it gets easier with splats). 5e's fight design guidelines start at "boring" masked as "medium", continue to "could get not boring if the enemies are lucky" at "hard", and go to "now it could be interesting" by the time the fight budget has come over the "deadly" mark, as long as your party is level 5 or higher (the fights before that point are too swingy to map onto CR well). I've been in games with multiple "deadly x5" and "deadly x7" fights, and only something of that caliber has felt like "underdog" fights.

Yes, well, this is the 4e forum. So we're talking about 4e here, not 3e or 5e. I acknowledge that those have very different models of the game.

As to 5e particularly--

The labels are designed for baseline parties. Which are well below the standards most games use for optimization (not even high optimization), by design. That said, I've had plenty of interesting Medium-ish fights, and tons and tons of boring Deadly+++ fights, at least calibrated by the book. Difficulty is very poorly correlated with interest. Any big solo? Guaranteed to be stupidly boring. The best fights I've had were interesting not because of difficulty (which comes almost entirely in the book model from pure numbers) but because of the other parts surrounding it--the compositional effects. The combinations and synergies of monsters that aren't particularly interesting on their own. Terrain and active battlefields. Other objectives beyond just "you and him fight". The pathos involved with who, exactly, you're fighting. All the things that make it a TTRPG, not just a beat-em-up.

[LibraryOgre]

Always Hit with their Weapon

You know, I could see that as a Daily Utility... "Choose to inflict a critical hit on a target within melee range."



Fly
By this I don't mean flapping their arms or doing whatever yellow sun voodoo Superman uses to levitate himself. I'm talking about taking (say) a sword, throwing it, catching the sword while it's being thrown, and propelling yourself that way, as far as you can throw the weapon (which would perforce also be really far).
....
Just a couple of Rogue ones, and Rogues aren't Fighters, now are they?

Personally, I'd roll my eyes at "throw sword, hold on to sword to fly" powers, but, yeah, some kind of flying leap would be great. And while rogues aren't fighters, they are martials.



Shoot a Sword-Beam


Boomerang Blade! (https://youtu.be/SxYc2DY1tdo?si=RDypSVBhNLQZLePL)



Cut a Non-Tangible, Like, Say, Somebody's Emotions


I love "cut fear" as an idea... not just their own utility power of removing their fear, but I could also see them cutting the courage out of someone... inflicting a penalty to their Will defense.

[dgnslyr]

Been noodling a few examples of epic-tier powers from other classes, tweaked to function as martial exploits. Here is one for each role. Each power taken from a different power source (primal, psionic, arcane, and shadow). Kudos to you if you can recognize the originals:
Impact Arc (Hunter Attack 23)
You let an arrow loose into the sky, which arcs to the ground with a thundering explosion.
Daily - Martial, Weapon
Standard Action, Area burst 1 within weapon range
Target: Each creature in the burst
Attack: Dexterity vs. Fortitude
Hit: 2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and you knock the target prone.
Effect: You may take your Minor Action when you use this exploit. If you do, the burst creates a zone of difficult terrain that lasts until the end of the encounter.


Steel Presence (Fighter Attack 23)
You strike in broad arcs. In your wake, your presence lingers, and your foes feel their eyes drawn inexorably towards you.
Daily - Martial, Weapon
Standard Action, Area close burst 2
Target: Each enemy you can see in the burst
Attack: Constitution vs. AC
Hit: 2[W] + Constitution modifier damage. The mark from your Combat Challenge applies to until the end of the encounter, until you use another daily power.


Poison Thorn Assault (Rogue Attack 23)
You lash forward with your envenomed weaponry, causing your foe's body to seize up.
Daily - Martial, Poison, Weapon
Standard Action, Melee or Ranged weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target is immobilized and takes a -2 penalty to AC and Reflex defense until the end of your next turn.


Vitality of Conquest (Warlord Attack 23)
You land an unerring blow against your foe, and feast upon their broken will to fuel your future conquests.
Daily - Martial
Standard Action, Melee 1
Target: One bloodied enemy
Effect: The target takes 15 + your Strength modifier bludgeoning damage. If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, you and one ally within 10 squares of you can each spend a healing surge.

Super quick and works for probably 80~90% of the non-martial powers.



Also from an ease-of-development perspective, one of those involves editing some (not even all) flavor text, and the other involves reworking basically every epic-tier power and changing how high-level combats work. Either way, I think this discussion is out of the scope of the OP.

Most of these are... really, really bad, to be honest. Like, worse than Paragon-tier encounter powers, if not heroic ones. And these are supposed to be daily powers? Level 23 powers are usually Encounter powers, for reference.

Impact Arc is hard to evaluate, because Rangers typically don't get a ton of area bursts, but the few they do get are pretty excellent. Also, I'm assuming you mean this is a Ranger and not a Hunter power, since Hunter is a subclass that doesn't learn normal AEDU powers. For a good like-to-like comparison, though, Rangers get Suppressing Shots, which has the same attack for the same damage in the same area, but applies Immobilize on hit instead of Prone (an upgrade!), and even lets you extra off-turn shots at any enemy that enters the beaten zone, which goes in line with ranger's identity of throwing tons of steel downrange and their role as a striker. I think it would be fine if the minor action bonus just applied for free, too, especially since minor actions tend to be pretty contested for a ranger. Still, this is almost a good encounter power for mid-paragon!

Steel Presence does more damage than Come and Get It, but the extra 10 or so damage isn't worth as much as the extra 2 or so accuracy from CaGI being against Will instead of AC. The perma-mark is nice, but pretty marginal when it's not that hard to have enough utility powers to keep nearby enemies marked for, say, three turns running, especially by epic. And why is it a CON attack if it's a fighter power? I'm assuming that's just a typo, but if it isn't then it's unusable, since STR/CON is an extremely awkward stat pair, and fighter doesn't have enough broken buttons to make up for it. Still, this power might be okay as a middle-child between Come and Get It at level 7, and Warrior's Urging at level 23.

Poison Thorn Assault has a few advantages over Dazing Strike - it targets a NAD, and it gives a bonus that stacks with CA. Immobilize vs. Daze is a wash, but I'd still give Daze the edge, and I'd rather have CA than pseudo-CA, since a lot of features specifically care about CA. Overall, it's a real contender with Dazing Strike! Which, I should mention, is a level 1 rogue power.

Vitality of Conquest would be maybe a E13 if you took away the condition, and even that's being generous - dealing a flat damage without an attack roll takes away most of your damage features, and damage is important for everyone. This would be maybe an "okay" E13 for warlord, but the warlord's power list is so stacked that an encounter power being "okay" will never see use. Tactical Warpriest, for example, is a Paragon Path with a E11 power that's a Close Burst 1 attack that lets any and all bloodied allies (plus yourself) spend a surge, which is both a much easier condition with a much better effect if met.

So yes, it's very easy to reflavor any power as a martial power, as long as the power is terrible in the first place, because the Martial label is inherently limiting with how D&D defines "martial." If 80-90% of non-martial powers can be reflavored as martial powers, then there are 10-20% remaining that can't. My question for you is, what, if any, martial power can't be reflavored as divine, or arcane, or primal? My point is that martial characters are always expected to do "less" in the fiction compared to others, if Martial powers can always be reflavored as, say, Arcane, but not all Arcane powers can be reflavored as Martial.

[Kurald Galain]

If 80-90% of non-martial powers can be reflavored as martial powers, then there are 10-20% remaining that can't. My question for you is, what, if any, martial power can't be reflavored as divine, or arcane, or primal? My point is that martial characters are always expected to do "less" in the fiction compared to others, if Martial powers can always be reflavored as, say, Arcane, but not all Arcane powers can be reflavored as Martial.
That's a good point.

I've been saying for some time that 4E should have made more differentiation between power sources, e.g. by giving certain conditions or effects to some power sources but not others (e.g. only martial and primal get bleed damage; only arcane and martial get immobilize, things like that).

And on the topic of this thread, it looks like (e.g.) arcane can get every ability and condition, whereas martial (as it stands) can get everything except for walls, summons, teleportation, sustain effects, and probably some other things I could mention. That's a rather big imbalance.

I note that all effective paragon- or epic-tier martials that I've seen deal with this via hybrid or multiclass powers. That's a viable in-system solution, but I note that arcane and divine characters almost never do this (except for flavor reasons).

[Just to Browse]

Most of these are... really, really bad, to be honest. Like, worse than Paragon-tier encounter powers, if not heroic ones. And these are supposed to be daily powers? Level 23 powers are usually Encounter powers, for reference.

Bad copypasta on my part, these are all meant to be encounter.

IIRC all of the original powers are poorly-rated powers among optimizers. For example, vitality of conquest is based on the Shadow power death's touch which is straight-up meme tier. But I wanted to copy them as closely as possible to show how easy the reflavoring process is.

Totally forgot about Hunters using a different power track. Damn you, essentials!


So yes, it's very easy to reflavor any power as a martial power, as long as the power is terrible in the first place, because the Martial label is inherently limiting with how D&D defines "martial."

I don't think that's correct. We're looking at a handful of flavor options here that, as far as I can tell, went totally unquestioned:
Creating explosions and altering the terrain
Handwavey flavor justifications that ignore weapon attack ranges
Attacks that automatically hit
Life drain
There's nothing about explosions or life draining that's inherently weak. Vitality of conquest can deal 15 base damage or 50 base damage or 2,000 base damage, but it will still be an example of a shadow power that has been reflavored into a martial exploit. I'd argue that the strength of a power and the ease with which it can be reflavored are totally unrelated, like might of the ogre from the battlemind is a hell of a lot better than double vision, but the former is basically a martial exploit already.


My question for you is, what, if any, martial power can't be reflavored as divine, or arcane, or primal? My point is that martial characters are always expected to do "less" in the fiction compared to others, if Martial powers can always be reflavored as, say, Arcane, but not all Arcane powers can be reflavored as Martial.

Unfortunately I got nothing here. As easy as it is to reflavor things into martial powers, it's even easier to reflavor the other way. The only way to guarantee that e.g. Martial & Arcane don't subset one another is to arbitrarily divide the pie of possible outputs, and then mandate that every arcane power stays within those predefined bounds.

That's a massive amount of work and you'd probably have to make some tough calls. For example, you might decide not to write an arcane leader class or divine controller class, because there might not be enough leader-y outputs in your arcane sphere or controller-y outputs in your divine sphere. The various classes can probably get shuffled somewhere else (or deleted. invokers shouldn't exist. don't @ me), but someone will have to make those calls. And I imagine that many reasonable 4e fans would disagree about what those divisions should look like.

[Thirdtwin]

You know, I could see that as a Daily Utility... "Choose to inflict a critical hit on a target within melee range."



Personally, I'd roll my eyes at "throw sword, hold on to sword to fly" powers, but, yeah, some kind of flying leap would be great. And while rogues aren't fighters, they are martials.



Boomerang Blade! (https://youtu.be/SxYc2DY1tdo?si=RDypSVBhNLQZLePL)



I love "cut fear" as an idea... not just their own utility power of removing their fear, but I could also see them cutting the courage out of someone... inflicting a penalty to their Will defense.

Yeah, the weapon throwing is iffy. I was largely throwing stuff at the wall to see if it stuck, especially because there was a bit of precedent in the Thor example. I found it questionable myself but that doesn't mean other people would. What's weird to me is that in other conversations I've had about this sort of thing online, people thought fighters taking huge leaps was itself outlandish. I've always taken (for example) the cartoon Samurai Jack as a perfectly cromulent fighter example and he has a whole episode about learning how to "jump good." Jumping also takes a lot of muscle strength so it seems to make sense that a class with exceptional strength (tm)* would also have good jumping capability, even above the normal physical limitations. I mean, just look up how high professional weightlifters can jump, it's pretty mind-boggling.

I've been having trouble getting youtube to work recently so I can't see the video yet. Throwing a sword like a boomerang is a cool idea in general though. The Bloodstorm Blade PrC from Tome of Battle in the prior edition had that as its schtick and people loved it.

There's a lot of potential in cutting emotions specifically. It's weird, yeah, but it's also cool. I just like the idea a lot. There's some sort of... ideal framework I'm trying to grasp at that's in part about martials surpassing the limitations of mere physicality especially in the upper tiers, and what ways that can be done without necessarily metamorphosing the fighter into something unrecognizable. It's hard! There are some utility and interaction-type effects that I could see something called a "Hero" class doing, that might not work coming out of a "Fighter," because they aren't the same thing.

Oh, here's an idea. You know how people get mind controlled in things sometimes, and then their friends bonk them on the head a certain way and they aren't mind controlled anymore? (The example I'm thinking of immediately is from the one Avengers movie where Loki hypnotized Hawkeye with the stick but then Black Widow hit him upside the head and he was better.) Maybe something like that-condition removal based on, well, hitting somebody. Yeah, we know IRL that physical trauma and concussions and stuff are bad for your head and magical amnesia and mind control stuff doesn't work that way, but in a fantasy realm sometimes the rules are different.

*yeah Exceptional Strength isn't in 4e specifically but it's part of the fighter class's history so I don't mind acknowledging it here.

[dgnslyr]

Yeah, the weapon throwing is iffy. I was largely throwing stuff at the wall to see if it stuck, especially because there was a bit of precedent in the Thor example. I found it questionable myself but that doesn't mean other people would. What's weird to me is that in other conversations I've had about this sort of thing online, people thought fighters taking huge leaps was itself outlandish. I've always taken (for example) the cartoon Samurai Jack as a perfectly cromulent fighter example and he has a whole episode about learning how to "jump good." Jumping also takes a lot of muscle strength so it seems to make sense that a class with exceptional strength (tm)* would also have good jumping capability, even above the normal physical limitations. I mean, just look up how high professional weightlifters can jump, it's pretty mind-boggling.

I've been having trouble getting youtube to work recently so I can't see the video yet. Throwing a sword like a boomerang is a cool idea in general though. The Bloodstorm Blade PrC from Tome of Battle in the prior edition had that as its schtick and people loved it.



Funnily, using a boomerang sword is probably the preferred way to play ranger in 4e, since magic throwing weapons return to hand automatically by default, and light and heavy blades tend to have better support than bows or crossbows, on top of better inherent stats. I guess the 4e writers loved Bloodstorm Blade, too, because they gave that ability to just about every single character past level 1 as a default option.

[sandmote]

What you're making isn't a complaint with 4e, it's a complaint with D&D as a whole disguised as a complaint about 4e. I can't tell if this is talking about the bolded section of the quote or the preceding statements, so I'm going to list responses to both:

Response I: The Bolded Section.
I was specifically pointing out that the parity is better in 4e relative to the description Thirdtwin gave. That's why it was written directly after a quote from Thirdtwin and contradicts Thirdtwin's complaint.

In 3.5e and 5e, Magical characters do get to summon meteors, time travel, and turn enemies into cake. And these effects of summoning meteors, time traveling, and turning enemies into cake are things that martials in those editions have no real response for. Meanwhile in 4e, the AEDU powers of martials are combat abilities generally* on par with those of Arcane, Divine, Primal, and Psionic characters. That's not something with a reasonable comparison to D&D as a whole, much less a complaint I'm making about D&D as a whole.

*I do agree with the point that there are significant gaps.

Response II: D&D wasn't based on Beowolf et al.
That portion was not intended as a complaint exclusive to 4e. But even compared to the initial abilities of martials, D&D failed to expand to scale toward more impressive martial abilities as the expected level maximum increased, while casters did keep getting new, much stronger toys. I'd also like to reiterate the pervious quote I was responding to:


Personally, I think the examples being given are either too modern (heck, several of them are younger than 4e!) or too divine in origin (Gods or Demigods). And Beowulf slays a dragon, but also dies in the process, and I assume that part of the fantasy isn't what Kurald pictures for a high-level martial.
If the problem is that people are drawing their ideas of what a "martial" character can do from material that's too new for you, we do have the option of going back to sources much older than even the materials the game was based on.

That also includes an example you brought up: Beowolf. There's a whole lot of stuff he could do that the stuff martials get to access fails to compare to in any edition.


Regarding Arthurian myth, it is really hard to justify translating to D&D if only because each successive generation of authors introduces an "OC DO NOT STEAL" that is inherently more powerful and amazing than those that came before. They're the kinds of characters that are played by those guys at tables, and last I heard, those kinds of characters are universally disliked at the table. I would agree with it being hard if we only had other characters based on older Arthurian myth to compare these newer characters too. But as we have D&D Spellcasters to compare them with, I don't agree it is difficult. Please, what actions could the "OC DO NOT STEAL" characters perform that D&D spellcasters can't generally outclass? And I would like to clarify I'm asking this question for D&D in general, given my previous point stating I consider 4e more even handed in how it handles this.


Ultimately though, I think my greatest issue with this line of discussion and reasoning is this: what actually interesting magic can a pure martial do in 3.5, 2e, or AD&D 1e without the cost of a feat or some gold? If you can provide an example of such I will gladly retract my paragraph in that earlier comment on this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25905828&postcount=34) arguing that 4e martials have much easier access to abilities on par with casters than the martials of other editions. Now, I don't like that the main way martials can compete with explicitly magical characters is that both can access a bunch of similar utility effects with a particular feat, but the non-martial way they compete doesn't change the fact it is easier for them than in other editions. 5e even kept the feat in (although the entire mechanic is significantly pared down).

[Haggo]

Yeah. Basically, being more "epic" requires reworking the entire game at those levels. Which in 4e particularly, means either supporting two separate games (the mechanical system is tightly woven in) or having a weird disjoint mess.

You can actually see this in how the 4e-likes have completely different scale in combat and outside. Lancer has the tactical mecha level and the more narrativist pilot level. Icon is perhaps the closest that tried to wed the scale of the combat with the 'epic-ness' but still it uses a more narrativist type with even more harder delineation of power--a tier 1 problem of a heavy boulder isn't even considered at tier 3.

In fact as we can see from those game, there's been a general departure from 'power sources' with at best they're tied to thematics of certain factions. Roles become a more important point of how to design classes, weirdly I've also seen that multiclassing is a much easier thing to do in those.

[Thane of Fife]

That's a good point.

I've been saying for some time that 4E should have made more differentiation between power sources, e.g. by giving certain conditions or effects to some power sources but not others (e.g. only martial and primal get bleed damage; only arcane and martial get immobilize, things like that).

I don't see any reason why you would want to do that. I mean, it's important to make different classes feel different, but that really has nothing to do with assigning mechanics to power source. You can just make the classes different.

And not using power source to make that differentiation helps to avoid shooting yourself in the foot when you want to make a Con Artist martial class but discover that you've said mind control powers are arcane only.

[Haggo]

I don't see any reason why you would want to do that. I mean, it's important to make different classes feel different, but that really has nothing to do with assigning mechanics to power source. You can just make the classes different.

And not using power source to make that differentiation helps to avoid shooting yourself in the foot when you want to make a Con Artist martial class but discover that you've said mind control powers are arcane only.

Basically this yeah, instead of trying to find what differentiates an Arcane Leader with a Martial Leader just make it so a Warlord is different from a 'Skald'.

[Kurald Galain]

You can just make the classes different.
Sure. And the most straightforward way to do that, is to start with the class's role and power source.

Currently, the arcane/divine/primal power sources are defined as being able to do anything and everything, and the martial power source is defined with clear and strict limits of what it cannot do. Clearly this distinction isn't helpful.
That means that either (1) the martial power source should also do everything (but in that case, why even have power sources?) or (2) the other power sources should get a clearer definition of what they can and cannot do.

[Just to Browse]

And not using power source to make that differentiation helps to avoid shooting yourself in the foot when you want to make a Con Artist martial class but discover that you've said mind control powers are arcane only.

Agreed, I don't think power source distinctions should matter unless you're going to incorporate them into something larger, like how MtG handles colors. I would broadly prefer if the martial / primal / etc tags were reworked to serve some other function, or removed entirely instead of operating as pseudo-flavor text.

[Kurald Galain]

Agreed, I don't think power source distinctions should matter unless you're going to incorporate them into something larger, like how MtG handles colors.

Yes, that's precisely what I suggest. Handle flavor text the way MtG handles colors.

[Thane of Fife]

Sure. And the most straightforward way to do that, is to start with the class's role and power source.

I really don't think it is. The point of a class is to capture a character concept. There is not much point in arbitrarily limiting the concepts you can make by attaching weight to where there powers come from. That's just hanging an albatross around your neck.


Currently, the arcane/divine/primal power sources are defined as being able to do anything and everything, and the martial power source is defined with clear and strict limits of what it cannot do.

Are they actually defined that way, or are those just the limits of the classes that actually exist?

[Kurald Galain]

I really don't think it is. The point of a class is to capture a character concept.
That may be true in some class-based games but it's definitely not true in 4E, where e.g. cleric and paladin and avenger all capture the exact same literary archeype, albeit with different mechanics; and where at the same time classes like fighter capture many different literary archetypes but with the same mechanics.

I mean, you have a solid goal here, but you'd have to rewrite most of 4E before "class" lines up in a meaningful way with "character concept".


Are they actually defined that way, or are those just the limits of the classes that actually exist?
The point of this whole thread here is that yes, the martial power source has limitations that the other sources don't, and that no, it shouldn't have to be this way.

[LibraryOgre]

Are they actually defined that way, or are those just the limits of the classes that actually exist?


The point of this whole thread here is that yes, the martial power source has limitations that the other sources don't, and that no, it shouldn't have to be this way.

I agree with Kurald, here. If I say that this power allows a Bard, Cleric, or Druid to teleport, the response will be "Yeah, sure, ok." How do I let a fighter teleport? Or a Warlord? Heck, I remember folks having a conceptual problem with Warlords as healers, because the idea of "shouting at someone to heal them" was derided.

Do you want the fighter to fly? It has to be an incredible leap. Ranged attack? It's unreasonable for them to throw their sword and have it come back. Martial characters are always limited by the "Guy at the Gym".

[Just to Browse]

I agree with Kurald, here. If I say that this power allows a Bard, Cleric, or Druid to teleport, the response will be "Yeah, sure, ok." How do I let a fighter teleport? Or a Warlord? Heck, I remember folks having a conceptual problem with Warlords as healers, because the idea of "shouting at someone to heal them" was derided.

Do you want the fighter to fly? It has to be an incredible leap. Ranged attack? It's unreasonable for them to throw their sword and have it come back. Martial characters are always limited by the "Guy at the Gym".

If "no one derives my idea for a martial power" is the bar by which all martial powers must be defined, then of course those limits are going to exist. The solution is not to listen to those people. Just write a teleportation fight power where the fighter walks through space, or write a ranged attack that boomerangs. Kaboom problem is gone.

[Beoric]

If "no one derives my idea for a martial power" is the bar by which all martial powers must be defined, then of course those limits are going to exist. The solution is not to listen to those people. Just write a teleportation fight power where the fighter walks through space, or write a ranged attack that boomerangs. Kaboom problem is gone.

Well, sure, DMs can always remove rule elements from their campaigns. But more the most part this goes against the grain of 4e culture, where the general expectation seems to be that players get to pick whatever the hell they want that is legal under the rules.

So something like this needs to be accompanied by an admonition to DMs and players that the DM is free to make these changes. In case it seems implausible, for instance, in a low magic, faux-Viking campaign that a fighter should be able to cut a hole in time-space and step through.

I know that these statements are lightly peppered through WotC materials, usually in sidebars, but they are generally in DM materials and don't negate what I understand to be the character creation rules in LFR, or the fact that the magic items in 4e have been placed in the Players Handbook. If you want it to be easy for DMs to remove game elements, you don't put them in players materials and tell the players to go nuts.

[Just to Browse]

Well, sure, DMs can always remove rule elements from their campaigns. But more the most part this goes against the grain of 4e culture, where the general expectation seems to be that players get to pick whatever the hell they want that is legal under the rules.

That's gonna be tough. I don't think you can easily support the folks who want 4e classes to work in a 1-30 low-magic viking campaign and the folks who want awesome high-level fighter badasses jumping on dragons and boomeranging their swords, without writing two different wholly different fighter classes. Maybe you reserve the slip-through-space stuff for epic tier and let the low-magic viking campaigns happen from lv1-20. Or maybe we accept that low-magic viking campaigns are going to require a lot of hackery in 4e.

[LibraryOgre]

Heroic Tier should be Guy at the Olympics.
Paragon Tier should be Action Movie Star
Epic Tier should be Beowulf. I should be able to swim for several days while fighting off sea monsters, while fully armored, then almost solo a dragon.

[Beoric]

That's gonna be tough. I don't think you can easily support the folks who want 4e classes to work in a 1-30 low-magic viking campaign and the folks who want awesome high-level fighter badasses jumping on dragons and boomeranging their swords, without writing two different wholly different fighter classes. Maybe you reserve the slip-through-space stuff for epic tier and let the low-magic viking campaigns happen from lv1-20. Or maybe we accept that low-magic viking campaigns are going to require a lot of hackery in 4e.

**cough** Dark Sun.

EDIT:

Heroic Tier should be Guy at the Olympics.
Paragon Tier should be Action Movie Star
Epic Tier should be Beowulf. I should be able to swim for several days while fighting off sea monsters, while fully armored, then almost solo a dragon.

A good example of epic tier in a low magic Viking campaign. He can swim for at least many hours, maybe for days if he contrives to have a swim speed, and try to solo an epic tier elite dragon, without having access to things like teleportation. Child of the Sea works for the swim speed, as well as making him aquatic for fighting those pesky sea monsters.

[LibraryOgre]

**cough** Dark Sun.

Dark Sun is an edge case, IMO, because everyone there is at least nominally psionic.

[Just to Browse]

Dark Sun is an edge case, IMO, because everyone there is at least nominally psionic.

Aye. I would not call Dark Sun low-magic.

Beowulf exists in a universe with magic swords, trolls, and dragons. Long-distance swimming can be pretty easily extended from running, which is a level 6 martial practice that only needs a 30 to last 24 hours, putting beowulf pretty solidly in paragon of a world where mid & high fantasy powers are available.

[Beoric]

Aye. I would not call Dark Sun low-magic.

Beowulf exists in a universe with magic swords, trolls, and dragons. Long-distance swimming can be pretty easily extended from running, which is a level 6 martial practice that only needs a 30 to last 24 hours, putting beowulf pretty solidly in paragon of a world where mid & high fantasy powers are available.

Dark Sun includes rules for a low magic campaign if you want to run one. Although as you point out Beowulf has a magic sword.

But my point was that it is perfectly possible to have an epic martial power that allows teleportation, if you empower DMs to remove said power if it would be incongruent with their campaign. I disagree that it is not possible to include both powers that defy the laws of physics, and laws that have a more solid grounding in reality, at the same level, and to simply choose which one you include in your campaign. The game is actually pretty flexible, and Dark Sun is both an example of that, and a contributor to that flexibility.

[Just to Browse]

I personally consider line-item vetoing powers to achieve a low magic campaign far too much work to ask of a DM, and I don't remember any advice to that end in the 4e Dark Sun book. But if that's acceptable to you, then we're on the same page. I'm certainly not arguing that high-level characters are required to teleport or whatever (ex: the Warlord power I wrote upthread which is just an auto-hit attack + healing surge use).

[Kurald Galain]

**cough** Dark Sun.

Dark Sun indeed requires a lot of hackery in 4E. Otherwise, there's is a huge mood clash between Dark Sun's struggling to survive in a harsh world, and 4E's baseline where all characters are always in the best shape and every combat is a fair and level-appropriate.

[Haggo]

Heroic Tier should be Guy at the Olympics.
Paragon Tier should be Action Movie Star
Epic Tier should be Beowulf. I should be able to swim for several days while fighting off sea monsters, while fully armored, then almost solo a dragon.

This is my disagreement, Heroic should be Action Movie, Paragon should be Beowulf, and Epic is me firing of Vajras from my Sun-Chariot.

I simply cannot accept that at level 1 a sword-guy is not in an action film when he's taking hits from bows and axes practically day by day is just a peak Olympian.

[Beoric]

Dark Sun indeed requires a lot of hackery in 4E. Otherwise, there's is a huge mood clash between Dark Sun's struggling to survive in a harsh world, and 4E's baseline where all characters are always in the best shape and every combat is a fair and level-appropriate.

This is primarily a matter of increasing the XP budget for combat encounters, and making liberal use of environmental effects, especially relating to heat and thirst. I don't think there are any rules regarding how much water is required in a day, so a little googling for RL information, and enforcing already existing encumbrance rules (water is heavy), and you are pretty much there. Also, make use of the rules for damaging equipment. Did that defiler's fireball damage the waterskin that you didn't stow in your backpack? That's a shame.

I also give every monster a "disease" mechanic to simulate injuries. The only departure from actual rules is I tie this to failed death saves, rather than to merely being hit, and the condition generally can't worsen unless the character has done something that might exacerbate it.

But my houserule really isn't necessary. You can pretty much do it using the existing ruleset.

[Ignimortis]

Yes, well, this is the 4e forum. So we're talking about 4e here, not 3e or 5e. I acknowledge that those have very different models of the game.


My point was that "you're a perpetual underdog" had only ever worked when it was numerically enforced by the raw rules of the game. Otherwise it tends to be...not that. There are some fights where you're underdogs, but some others are very clearly favourable for you.

And honestly, that's fine. Being an underdog in every fight takes the excitement out of it very quickly, because it stops being "aha, we're facing a real challenge" and becomes "oh great, yet another fight where we need to try very hard just to survive".


This is my disagreement, Heroic should be Action Movie, Paragon should be Beowulf, and Epic is me firing of Vajras from my Sun-Chariot.

I simply cannot accept that at level 1 a sword-guy is not in an action film when he's taking hits from bows and axes practically day by day is just a peak Olympian.

Gotta agree. Nothing Beowulf does is actually all that "epic" in D&D parlance. He's maybe a low-tens character. Certainly not anywhere up to par to what a level 20 character gets up to in 3e.

[dgnslyr]

Gotta agree. Nothing Beowulf does is actually all that "epic" in D&D parlance. He's maybe a low-tens character. Certainly not anywhere up to par to what a level 20 character gets up to in 3e.

Another thing about fiction that's different from D&D specifically is that literature will treat "has magic items" as a feature of the character, but D&D expects that magic items can be found and bought and sold, and tracks them separately from a PC's "inherent" abilities. If the Avengers movie was an RPG, then maybe Captain America put his character points into Captaining and Soldiering, while Tony Stark put his into Iron and Manning, but D&D would ask why the commoner is flying to battle in his expensive custom armor, when it would be doing a lot more good on the fighter (and even more good in the cleric's hands, even). This is a uniquely D&D problem, too, because there are games where equipment and character abilities are bought with the same currency, and games like Dungeon World where "having a powerful custom weapon" literally is a class feature for the Fighter class. I can imagine a game where "a wizard" and "an ordinary guy that broke into a wizard's toolshed" can be built with the same class that represents their similar magical capabilities in practice, for example, but it also means playing a game without brass coins or magic scimitars, which is arguably an even bigger sacred cow for D&D to give up.

[Thirdtwin]

This is my disagreement, Heroic should be Action Movie, Paragon should be Beowulf, and Epic is me firing of Vajras from my Sun-Chariot.

I simply cannot accept that at level 1 a sword-guy is not in an action film when he's taking hits from bows and axes practically day by day is just a peak Olympian.

While I do agree with this point, I also have to wonder if maybe Beowulf is getting sold a little short here. For one thing you'd have to contend with the fact that dragons in D&D have had a fair amount of "feature creep" compared to dragons of myth and folklore. Beowulf's dragon had fire breath and a poison bite, mainly. D&D dragons have all sorts of crap going on for them. 4e at least doesn't make them mini-wizards on top of their immense physical advantages, but they're still usually calibrated as Solo encounters, i.e. one dragon is enough to take on a whole level-equivalent party. If you took one of those dragons, and then sent one fighter with a dearth of magic items (his magic sword even breaks in the initial sortie) after it, and the fighter managed to kill the dragon despite those limitations (and only really then fails to survive because his setting doesn't allow for revives)... I dunno that might be pretty epic, even if not necessarily demigods and divinities level. I don’t expect anybody to literally crunch the numbers on that, of course.

[Haggo]

While I do agree with this point, I also have to wonder if maybe Beowulf is getting sold a little short here. For one thing you'd have to contend with the fact that dragons in D&D have had a fair amount of "feature creep" compared to dragons of myth and folklore. Beowulf's dragon had fire breath and a poison bite, mainly. D&D dragons have all sorts of crap going on for them. 4e at least doesn't make them mini-wizards on top of their immense physical advantages, but they're still usually calibrated as Solo encounters, i.e. one dragon is enough to take on a whole level-equivalent party. If you took one of those dragons, and then sent one fighter with a dearth of magic items (his magic sword even breaks in the initial sortie) after it, and the fighter managed to kill the dragon despite those limitations (and only really then fails to survive because his setting doesn't allow for revives)... I dunno that might be pretty epic, even if not necessarily demigods and divinities level. I don’t expect anybody to literally crunch the numbers on that, of course.

It's just the translation between solo epic and team based action game IMO, so I can imagine like...a dragon is a late tier 1 Solo, a strong Skirmisher/brute/striker at early tier 2 and just the another enemy at late tier 2.

[Satinavian]

The Charles Atlas superpower (power just by training hard enough) is absolutely a valid power source in a fantastic world. At least IMO.
I don't really agree.

Yes that is something that happens in many fantasy settings and is even quite common in pulp and shonen stories. But it is completely absent from many other stories and subgenres. Even many with really powerful magic based characters including magic knights etc.

So both the "i want this in my fantasy game" and the "i don't want this in my fantasy game" make a lot of sense. It is just people trying to recreate different kinds of fantasy.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't really agree.

Yes that is something that happens in many fantasy settings and is even quite common in pulp and shonen stories. But it is completely absent from many other stories and subgenres. Even many with really powerful magic based characters including magic knights etc.

So both the "i want this in my fantasy game" and the "i don't want this in my fantasy game" make a lot of sense. It is just people trying to recreate different kinds of fantasy.

Sure. I could say the same about most things discussed here, for casters and non-casters alike. Like almost everything else, it's context specific. When I say "valid", I just means "isn't internally inconsistent" and "has fictional backing". A game system can choose to include it (as 4e sort of tried to do) or not (like 3e). And even settings within a system can choose to include it or not depending on their particular aesthetics. Neither is "good" or "bad" inherently, it's just a design choice. But there's nothing fundamentally or intrinsically incoherent about the Charles Atlas superpower. Unlike (IMO) the "I don't have any superpowers and am a regular person but can do all the things that superpowered people do and fight/act on par with them because I am just that good" concept[1].

[1] Batman as a non-powered person is, to me, incoherent. At least in the incarnations where he has an equal or better role with heavy hitters like Superman, etc. Effectively, the whole setting and narrative has to bend around him to make that "work"...badly. Or you have to give him effective superpowers. And Iron Man's the same way, in a lot of respects. "I'm a genius and work out" really only gets you so far.

[LibraryOgre]

Heroic Tier: Batman '66
Paragon Tier: Batman: TAS
Epic Tier: Batman as his fanboys see him

:biggrin:

[icefractal]

So both the "i want this in my fantasy game" and the "i don't want this in my fantasy game" make a lot of sense. It is just people trying to recreate different kinds of fantasy.That's true, but it's also hard to support the "no I seriously am just a normal dude, level 20, totally normal dude" premise in a team game that's historically not had player-facing narrative control.

Like, if we take "players want to be roughly equally important to what happens in the game" as a given - not the case with all groups, but true more often than not IME - and you have some characters who conceptually wield great powers while others ... don't, then you only have two choices, AFAICT:

1) By narrative contrivance, the regular dude is usually the right person in the right place, more so than the rest of the party. Which works fine, but it's adding a level of narrative control some people find 4th-wall-breaking.

2) Turns out being a regular dude (and let me make clear - martial does not equal 'regular dude' inherently) is 100% as mechanically effective as being the near-avatar of a god, or speaking the words of creation, or whatever. Which, well - kind of makes all the other power sources less impressive? Like, ok, you can "channel the cosmic power of the sun and moon themselves" into a beam which does ... exactly as much as "normal guy (who is not some kind of mythic warrior) throwing a knife". Woo?

So for me personally, I definitely prefer "sufficient excellence in skills (martial or otherwise) can reach superhuman levels, and eventually capabilities far beyond the skill's normal use"

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Sure. I could say the same about most things discussed here, for casters and non-casters alike. Like almost everything else, it's context specific. When I say "valid", I just means "isn't internally inconsistent" and "has fictional backing". A game system can choose to include it (as 4e sort of tried to do) or not (like 3e). And even settings within a system can choose to include it or not depending on their particular aesthetics. Neither is "good" or "bad" inherently, it's just a design choice. But there's nothing fundamentally or intrinsically incoherent about the Charles Atlas superpower. Unlike (IMO) the "I don't have any superpowers and am a regular person but can do all the things that superpowered people do and fight/act on par with them because I am just that good" concept[1].

I especially like the caster callout here, because there is a ton of fiction where casters don't work like in D&D: they're frail weirdos who know dread secrets and are capable of great things, but only really engage in what we would call ritual casting.

I think 4E was really good at outlining a facet of D&D that came to the surface in 3.5, which was "fantasy through the superhero lens". I think, with stuff like Marvel becoming mainstream, that's a pretty solid model for casters and martials alike.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I especially like the caster callout here, because there is a ton of fiction where casters don't work like in D&D: they're frail weirdos who know dread secrets and are capable of great things, but only really engage in what we would call ritual casting.

I think 4E was really good at outlining a facet of D&D that came to the surface in 3.5, which was "fantasy through the superhero lens". I think, with stuff like Marvel becoming mainstream, that's a pretty solid model for casters and martials alike.

There is very little fiction that isn't directly a D&D knockoff where casters act like they do in D&D.

You get settings where everyone who matters is a spell caster or has some similar ability. You get settings where "spell caster" isn't a thing at all: while people may have magic talents, they're more of the very limited-range power set of a superhero. You get ones where casters are all rituals with very limited other abilities. You get ones where the only powerful casters are also evil demonologists (or similar nasty villains).

But only a few where you get something D&D like. And many of those are blatantly D&D or MMO inspired.

[Haggo]

There is very little fiction that isn't directly a D&D knockoff where casters act like they do in D&D.

You get settings where everyone who matters is a spell caster or has some similar ability. You get settings where "spell caster" isn't a thing at all: while people may have magic talents, they're more of the very limited-range power set of a superhero. You get ones where casters are all rituals with very limited other abilities. You get ones where the only powerful casters are also evil demonologists (or similar nasty villains).

But only a few where you get something D&D like. And many of those are blatantly D&D or MMO inspired.

Even MMOs don't work with how DnD does it, Only dnd and it's ilk has casters work like un-refillable silver bullet ammunition

[PhoenixPhyre]

Even MMOs don't work with how DnD does it, Only dnd and it's ilk has casters work like un-refillable silver bullet ammunition

Heck, even Dying Earth's magic system (the origin of the Vancian term, since it was modeled kinda on that) doesn't work like D&D does. It didn't have spell levels with fixed numbers of slots--you basically had a "capacity" and could pack in N spells whose combined capacity was equal to or lower than your total. And could re-memorize spells at any time as long as you had capacity free. And that capacity was stupidly low--one caster is notable for being able to pack a whole like 6 normal spells or 4 "extra powerful" spells at a time. And trying to pack in too many actively harms the caster. Plus, anyone could, in principle, use magic. Basically everyone had the ability to be a wizard, just some decided to devote their whole lives to it. Plus, there was a fixed number of 100 spells that were known, and no one knew how to make more.

Yeah. D&D's magic system is basically entirely sui generis. And the hands-down worst part of D&D, both mechanically and world-building-wise. IMO, it's not fit for purpose, whether in the "pure" vancian mode of 3e and before or the "pseudo-vancian" mode of 5e.

[SaurOps]

Heck, even Dying Earth's magic system (the origin of the Vancian term, since it was modeled kinda on that) doesn't work like D&D does. It didn't have spell levels with fixed numbers of slots--you basically had a "capacity" and could pack in N spells whose combined capacity was equal to or lower than your total. And could re-memorize spells at any time as long as you had capacity free. And that capacity was stupidly low--one caster is notable for being able to pack a whole like 6 normal spells or 4 "extra powerful" spells at a time. And trying to pack in too many actively harms the caster. Plus, anyone could, in principle, use magic. Basically everyone had the ability to be a wizard, just some decided to devote their whole lives to it. Plus, there was a fixed number of 100 spells that were known, and no one knew how to make more.

Yeah. D&D's magic system is basically entirely sui generis. And the hands-down worst part of D&D, both mechanically and world-building-wise. IMO, it's not fit for purpose, whether in the "pure" vancian mode of 3e and before or the "pseudo-vancian" mode of 5e.

It was made to make people who were down in dungeons sweat about how many spells they had left, without letting them renew on the fly. Given that we haven't required gp to get xp for a looooong time, it's pretty weird that the fanbase has clung to resource restriction as a play tool and desirable pat of design for as long as it has.

[Satinavian]

That's true, but it's also hard to support the "no I seriously am just a normal dude, level 20, totally normal dude" premise in a team game that's historically not had player-facing narrative control.

Like, if we take "players want to be roughly equally important to what happens in the game" as a given - not the case with all groups, but true more often than not IME - and you have some characters who conceptually wield great powers while others ... don't, then you only have two choices, AFAICT:

1) By narrative contrivance, the regular dude is usually the right person in the right place, more so than the rest of the party. Which works fine, but it's adding a level of narrative control some people find 4th-wall-breaking.

2) Turns out being a regular dude (and let me make clear - martial does not equal 'regular dude' inherently) is 100% as mechanically effective as being the near-avatar of a god, or speaking the words of creation, or whatever. Which, well - kind of makes all the other power sources less impressive? Like, ok, you can "channel the cosmic power of the sun and moon themselves" into a beam which does ... exactly as much as "normal guy (who is not some kind of mythic warrior) throwing a knife". Woo?

So for me personally, I definitely prefer "sufficient excellence in skills (martial or otherwise) can reach superhuman levels, and eventually capabilities far beyond the skill's normal use"
There are some more options :

3) The mundanes have mundane power that scales better. Usually those fall into leadership or resources. Being able to move armies or decide the policies of countries can easily be as important as higher tier magic. But that only works for some concepts. Specifically it doesn't work for martials who want to contribute with personal combat power.

4) make up the difference with gear which is not mundane

5) PCs just are not mundane. The knights of the setting are all gishes.

6) The settings supernatural powers have severe weaknesses. They might still be super powerful, but there are some things they fundamentally can't accomplish and where mundane options need to be employed.


And all of that only if you are insisting on PCs have to have equal importance to the game world in the first place. Which many games ditch.

Now i am not saying that those are better choices. As always it is just a matter of preference.