Do people really enjoy close battles?

[RandomPeasant]

I guess my point is, I think it's better not to try to preserve 'how adventures are structured' and not just let that change, but design around the idea that it should change and really center that in the game - or at least that there's an big opportunity for systems which do that, not that every system has to be like that.

I don't entirely disagree, but I think that changes like that should be additive. When you reach the level where an army is an appropriate thing for a character to have, that should introduce new structures for adventures to have, not obsolete old ones entirely. You can have traditional "go clear the dungeon" adventures at any power level, and indeed stories like Cradle are about doing just that. There's no reason the game also including things more like A Practical Guide to Evil, where the personal adventuring is supplemented by leading armies and nations, needs to replace that.

At its core, D&D at every level is about going on quests and slaying monsters and standard heroic fantasy stuff, and imo there is no power level where a martial character cannot participate in that genre, and once you do get into the level where mundane characters need not apply, it would stop resembling D&D as written in any books.

Then I would suggest that you have not read widely enough. What, exactly, is a purely mundane character supposed to do to contribute to the climatic fight scenes of Oathbringer or The Codex Alera or Ghostwater? Certainly you could define D&D to only go up as far as mundanity does, but that would exclude a great many things I quite enjoy, for what I consider to be very little tangible gain. It doesn't really matter if Conan gets to write "20" on his character sheet, he still does the same stuff.

At high level, the power level of various characters and options have drastically diverged, and it takes a lot of work to bring any sort of balance to the game. There are numerous high level spells that simply break basic aspects of the game and provide infinite loops by their very nature. Shape-change alone is so OP that it can basically grant the caster any other ability in the game as often as they like with none of the costs.

Again, I just don't find your argument all that persuasive when you rely on shapechange to prove it. Even if we grant that the game falls apart when people get 9th level spells, there's still a lot of levels between where Conan is a relevant participant in adventures at 17th level. Even by 10th level, martial characters have started to reach about where they're no longer really equal participants in adventures, and have become quite reliant on spellcasters to handle challenges for them. A Barbarian is a relevant piece on a 10th level battlemap, but he doesn't bring much worth mentioning to the table when the combat music isn't playing.

D&D thinks that Conan is a high level barbarian. But its not really about Conan. I could say the same thing about Kratos, or Beowulf, or Batman, or Aragorn, or Achilles, or Captain America, or King Arthur, or Zorro, or James Bond, or Cyrano De Bergerac, or Sigmar Heldenhammer, or Roland, or Guts, or Drizzt, any other high level martial character.

Does it? Where? Of the examples you give, very few are what I would call even mid-level martial characters (though I will admit to a lack of familiarity with some). I mean, really, James Bond is your idea of a high level martial character? At 20th level, your party could have an adventure where they overthrow the ruler of one of the layers of the Abyss. What is a guy for whom "invisible car" was considered excessively fantastical supposed to do there, exactly?

Further, saying that people who like such characters should be content just playing a low level character is wrong, because a big part of those characters is the power fantasy and the heroic fantasy; that these characters are big players who really matter to the world, can cause and solve great problems, can steer the course of history, and are amongst the best in their specific spheres of influence.

Being a "big player who really matters to the world" is inherently dependent on the world. Conan is a big player in the Hyborian Age, because the Hyborian Age is, roughly speaking, an E6 game. There are plenty of fantasy stories you could drop Conan into where he would be a supporting character, or even entirely irrelevant. Conan doesn't fall behind because D&D fails him somehow, he falls behind because when push comes to shove, he doesn't do anything that you couldn't do as a 6th level character.

Ok, but how is she a good representation of 20th level D&D martial when she does things that a 20th level D&D martial just can't do? I don't understand where you are going with this.

It's a representation of what a martial who can keep up with the kinds of things high level D&D spellcasters can do. Ranger is someone who, when the adventure is "go punch Demogorgon in the nuts" (as it could plausibly be for 20th level characters), has a clear way to contribute to that adventure. It seems to me that you're setting up an argument that is essentially circular, where you define certain characters as "high level martials", declare anything that creates circumstances where those characters aren't relevant to be broken, and then concluding that if you remove the broken stuff your "high level martials" can compete. Ranger is an attempt to break you out of that circle by showing a high level martial character who doesn't need anything banned to contribute to an adventure.

[Talakeal]

Then I would suggest that you have not read widely enough. What, exactly, is a purely mundane character supposed to do to contribute to the climatic fight scenes of Oathbringer or The Codex Alera or Ghostwater? Certainly you could define D&D to only go up as far as mundanity does, but that would exclude a great many things I quite enjoy, for what I consider to be very little tangible gain. It doesn't really matter if Conan gets to write "20" on his character sheet, he still does the same stuff.

I am not saying that there is no level of fantasy where mundane characters need not apply*. I am saying that D&D rarely sells itself as that sort of fantasy, as even the Epic Books are just "more of the same but with bigger numbers!".


*Although I will say that if you account for magic items and are allowing for mundane characters to have skills beyond "I swing a sword" that extends quite far beyond the sort of setting that most people are comfortable with.

Again, I just don't find your argument all that persuasive when you rely on shapechange to prove it. Even if we grant that the game falls apart when people get 9th level spells, there's still a lot of levels between where Conan is a relevant participant in adventures at 17th level. Even by 10th level, martial characters have started to reach about where they're no longer really equal participants in adventures, and have become quite reliant on spellcasters to handle challenges for them. A Barbarian is a relevant piece on a 10th level battlemap, but he doesn't bring much worth mentioning to the table when the combat music isn't playing.

Shape-change is the simplest and most obviously broken spell as it allows you basically unlimited resources right out of the tin. There are other very broken spells, but they take a little bit of work and it is by far the most obvious. I have also talked to (and played with) people who claim that their enjoyment of the game is built around abusing shape-change abuse and all of their arguments about what D&D should be hinge on it.


Ok, so let me propose a hypothetical for you:

I go through and remove or rebalanced every "broken" spell in the game. Obviously where the line is drawn varies, but let's say it includes something along the lines of fixing anything that let's you replicate any ability out of the MM, "no save just lose" spells, or things that give you effectively unlimited money, XP, spell slots, or bonuses to any score.

Then at the same time create some sort of gestalt mundane super class who has d12 HD, good BaB, a bonus feat every level, all skills at max rank, all good saves, full at will access to every non blatantly supernatural maneuver from ToB, and a smattering of other EX abilities like Uncanny Dodge, Weapon Mastery, Slippery Mind, Improved Evasion, and skill mastery.

Are you saying that the latter character would still have no place in the type of encounters you would find if you followed the example of what a level 20 encounter would look like going by the guidelines in the DMG and the MM and published modules?

Does it? Where? Of the examples you give, very few are what I would call even mid-level martial characters (though I will admit to a lack of familiarity with some). I mean, really, James Bond is your idea of a high level martial character? At 20th level, your party could have an adventure where they overthrow the ruler of one of the layers of the Abyss. What is a guy for whom "invisible car" was considered excessively fantastical supposed to do there, exactly?

Being a "big player who really matters to the world" is inherently dependent on the world. Conan is a big player in the Hyborian Age, because the Hyborian Age is, roughly speaking, an E6 game. There are plenty of fantasy stories you could drop Conan into where he would be a supporting character, or even entirely irrelevant. Conan doesn't fall behind because D&D fails him somehow, he falls behind because when push comes to shove, he doesn't do anything that you couldn't do as a 6th level character.

I am absolutely not saying those are examples of what a level 20 character should be like. I am saying they are examples of martial characters who are amongst the best of the best in their respective settings, and the experience of whom would NOT be replicated by just ploppling them down as a low-mid level character in an otherwise standard D&D campaign.

Not that you are ever going to get the opportunity to play a campaign where the PCs are capped at mid level to begin with mind you, as the same guys who would overshadow them at max level are not going to be happy with such a game in any scenario that is likely to actually play out.



Although for the record, Gary Gygax statted out Conan as a level 24 fighter / level 12 thief, and the official stats for Drizzt put him at level 16, and while I don't agree with it, that does show that the D&D designers certainly think these characters are what high level martials should look like.

It's a representation of what a martial who can keep up with the kinds of things high level D&D spellcasters can do. Ranger is someone who, when the adventure is "go punch Demogorgon in the nuts" (as it could plausibly be for 20th level characters), has a clear way to contribute to that adventure. It seems to me that you're setting up an argument that is essentially circular, where you define certain characters as "high level martials", declare anything that creates circumstances where those characters aren't relevant to be broken, and then concluding that if you remove the broken stuff your "high level martials" can compete. Ranger is an attempt to break you out of that circle by showing a high level martial character who doesn't need anything banned to contribute to an adventure.

Ok, so I don't get where you are coming from.

You are saying that D&D's lack of class balance at high levels is a feature not a bug, but then you present an example of a level 20 martial who is absolutely nothing like what D&D presents to you as a a high level martial character.

I am really having a hard time getting a read on where you are coming from.

The books give martial progression from 1-20 (and beyond in the ELH) but at no point do they give them over the top powers that replicate what you are describing, or even put in a note acknowledging the disparity between classes despite otherwise quite extensive guidelines for challenge rating and calibrating encounter difficulty. To me this, along with the fact that class balance got much much better (but still not perfect) later on in 3.5, 4E, PF, and 5E implies to my that this was not the designer's intent and something they feel is a flaw in the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Are you saying that the latter character would still have no place in the type of encounters you would find if you followed the example of what a level 20 encounter would look like going by the guidelines in the DMG and the MM and published modules?

The books give martial progression from 1-20 (and beyond in the ELH) but at no point do they give them over the top powers that replicate what you are describing, or even put in a note acknowledging the disparity between classes despite otherwise quite extensive guidelines for challenge rating and calibrating encounter difficulty. To me this, along with the fact that class balance got much much better (but still not perfect) later on in 3.5, 4E, PF, and 5E implies to my that this was not the designer's intent and something they feel is a flaw in the game.

I think that the bold is the essence of the disparity in viewpoint here. For RandomPeasant and many in the 3e community, an "appropriate level 20 encounter" has really nothing to do with the DMG/MM. It's all custom monsters and optimization arms-races. And for them, that works. But in that world, a martial doesn't without the kind of over-the-top powers mentioned. Call this "encounters as played".

You, on the other hand, are using the system as published as your baseline. Where most of the tricks that the higher-op people use just don't apply. Those were designed so that a party of a SnB fighter, a rogue, a cleric healbot, and a blaster wizard could muddle through. Call this "encounters as designed".

The two just don't meet up--a party that's totally capable by EaD standards is hopelessly underpowered by EaP standards. And one at the EaP standard blows away EaD-standard encounters without any struggle. So you can both be right...just for different standards.

For the record, I got tons of pushback for claiming that the only objective standard (in a 5e context, where the two are closer but still not identical) was EaD, and that maybe it's not that the low end needs to be radically altered to fit the high end, but that the high end may need to be trimmed back. Optimization by buffing only, when based on relative power, turns into a spiral without end--there will always be a "strongest" and a "weakest" build, and you'll never get them right on (because that's not really possible in a multi-variant problem like this). Instead, the proper thing to do is identify the range of acceptable difference and the desired balance point and then modify those that fall outside that range until they're in the range. And then stop.

[RandomPeasant]

I am not saying that there is no level of fantasy where mundane characters need not apply*. I am saying that D&D rarely sells itself as that sort of fantasy, as even the Epic Books are just "more of the same but with bigger numbers!".

Take a look at the Balor. Now take a look at the Dretch. Do they really look like "the same thing, but with bigger numbers" to you? They certainly don't look that way to me. What's more, even if the scaling is just "numbers get bigger", that obsoletes mundanes too if the term has any meaning. If you get +100 STR, all you've gained are numbers, but if you call that "mundane", you're using the term very differently than I would. Again, think about the genre as a whole. Kaladin is as skilled a swordsman (well, spearman) as anyone, and he has Windrunner powers on top of that. If "mundane sword guy" is supposed to get you to 20th level, how does Kaladin fit in the game?

Not that you are ever going to get the opportunity to play a campaign where the PCs are capped at mid level to begin with mind you, as the same guys who would overshadow them at max level are not going to be happy with such a game in any scenario that is likely to actually play out.

Why are you playing with those guys at all? If they want a world where someone with Conan's abilities is kinda irrelevant, and you want a world where someone with Conan's abilities is the most powerful warrior in the world, how do you possibly see the system and the setting working in a way that makes both of you happy? You want things that are, as far as I can tell, literally incompatible.

You are saying that D&D's lack of class balance at high levels is a feature not a bug, but then you present an example of a level 20 martial who is absolutely nothing like what D&D presents to you as a a high level martial character.

I can see why you're confused, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the class imbalance isn't game-breaking. The game would be better if classes were balanced, but it's perfectly playable as-is.

I think that the bold is the essence of the disparity in viewpoint here. For RandomPeasant and many in the 3e community, an "appropriate level 20 encounter" has really nothing to do with the DMG/MM.

Did you know that I, a person posting in this thread, will tell you my opinions if you ask them? You don't have to guess what I think and assume I fall into a category that is Doing It Wrong. And, no, what I think is an appropriate level 20 encounter has everything to do with the DMG/MM. For example, I think that CR 20 Baphomet, who rules one of the layers of the Abyss is an appropriate challenge for 20th level characters, because that's what the game says he is. In fact, if you follow the rules strictly, fighting him isn't even a big deal at 20th level. You're supposed to be able to beat up a Demon Lord four times in a day without breaking a sweat. But tell me again how I'm making unjustified assumptions when I say that D&D scales past the point where mundanes need apply.

Optimization by buffing only, when based on relative power, turns into a spiral without end--there will always be a "strongest" and a "weakest" build,

And optimization by nerfing only turns into the exact same thing, except it makes people way more upset when you take away their toys than when you give them new ones. There are nerfs it makes sense to apply to casters. But you know what? There are also buffs it makes sense to apply to casters, because there are things magic-users do in the genre that D&D characters just can't. Most notably, there are very few spells that are relevant on the scale of a battlefield in D&D when that sort of thing is fairly common in the fantasy genre as a whole.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Did you know that I, a person posting in this thread, will tell you my opinions if you ask them? You don't have to guess what I think and assume I fall into a category that is Doing It Wrong. And, no, what I think is an appropriate level 20 encounter has everything to do with the DMG/MM. For example, I think that CR 20 Baphomet, who rules one of the layers of the Abyss is an appropriate challenge for 20th level characters, because that's what the game says he is. In fact, if you follow the rules strictly, fighting him isn't even a big deal at 20th level. You're supposed to be able to beat up a Demon Lord four times in a day without breaking a sweat. But tell me again how I'm making unjustified assumptions when I say that D&D scales past the point where mundanes need apply.

And optimization by nerfing only turns into the exact same thing, except it makes people way more upset when you take away their toys than when you give them new ones. There are nerfs it makes sense to apply to casters. But you know what? There are also buffs it makes sense to apply to casters, because there are things magic-users do in the genre that D&D characters just can't. Most notably, there are very few spells that are relevant on the scale of a battlefield in D&D when that sort of thing is fairly common in the fantasy genre as a whole.

I apologize for making assumptions.

But that second paragraph misses the entire point. Of course you shouldn't nerf only. You decide what's acceptable (which likely won't be centered around either the top of the range or the bottom of the range) and then you cut the top and raise the bottom until everything is in the range.

And the "genre" of fantasy (writ large) is utterly irrelevant. D&D is not trying to emulate the entirety of fantasy. Or even any of it. D&D emulates D&D. That's all. You cannot, in fairness, assume that any fantasy individual is appropriate for D&D. Only D&D defines what's acceptable and appropriate. And there's lots of things that fall outside of that. Including (at the weak end), most of Malazan. As well as most superheroes. And "regular joe, the baker".

[RandomPeasant]

And the "genre" of fantasy (writ large) is utterly irrelevant. D&D is not trying to emulate the entirety of fantasy. Or even any of it. D&D emulates D&D. That's all. You cannot, in fairness, assume that any fantasy individual is appropriate for D&D. Only D&D defines what's acceptable and appropriate. And there's lots of things that fall outside of that. Including (at the weak end), most of Malazan. As well as most superheroes. And "regular joe, the baker".

And D&D can define that however it wants. Notably, Malazan was the author's D&D campaign before it was a series of books, so the notion that what's going on there is inappropriate for the game is just historically ignorant. D&D has always been influenced by the rest of the fantasy genre. It picks and chooses what things influence it, and how those influences are expressed, but the idea that D&D stands alone has never been accurate (nor should it be).

[Cluedrew]

that obsoletes mundanes too if the term has any meaning.

{Best Tanarii voice.} "Mundane is a meaningless phrase."

It actually does but here is the thing: it means enough different things to different people that trying to argue anything from its definition is rather pointless. I use the term "martial" instead because that has less problematic connotations to me, but also it flat out does not mean what it means in other contexts in this context. On one hand I find that makes for a cleaner break to be useful, on the other I was shocked to learn not everyone realised that is what is going on.

So yeah, use whatever least worse word you like and get ready to defend your opinions on what exactly a non-caster should be allowed to do. Maybe I can break out the fantastic abilities thing again. I think PhoenixPhyre was there for that but it might be new to everyone else here.

[Telok]

I almost wonder if D&D has gotten sort of "Ship of Theseus*" in that its bits have kept getting replaced with smiliar but not the same (instead of just getting updated) over these last 3 editions. So that while it looks approximately same-ish, none of the bits quite fit together any more.

I mean, if D&D isn't capable of doing the various facets of common current fantasy then what's it doing? Just murder hobos genociding dungeons full of different sizes and colors of goblins while searching for "gold points"?

//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

[Calthropstu]

I prefer open battles to close battles to be honest.

[RandomPeasant]

It actually does but here is the thing: it means enough different things to different people that trying to argue anything from its definition is rather pointless. I use the term "martial" instead because that has less problematic connotations to me, but also it flat out does not mean what it means in other contexts in this context.

But those terms aren't the same. The problem is with the semantics of "mundane", and "martial" doesn't have the same problem. You can write martial characters that work for whatever sort of adventures you want people to have. Thor is martial. Kaladin is martial. Taniel Two-Shot is martial. Yerin is martial. The issue is that "mundane" is, by definition, a constraint on character power. In fact, that's the only thing it is. The entirety of what you are saying about a character when you call them "mundane" is that there is a class of cool abilities they do not get.

And you can see the impacts of this in the discourse. The designers gave the "nerf Wizards" crowd what they wanted in 5e. Wizards are much worse. And yet we have the exact same debates about how Wizards are overpowered raging in 5e's fanbase that we did in 3e's. Trying to balance the game down to the mundane Fighter is a bottomless pit. You can take away every single thing that the Wizard does that's interesting, and you still won't fix the problem. The only way out is for the Fighter to graduate from mundanity at some point in his career. And once you do that, the entire problem goes away. If you accept that the Fighter is allowed to have nice things, you don't have to take away any of the Wizard's nice things.

I almost wonder if D&D has gotten sort of "Ship of Theseus*" in that its bits have kept getting replaced with smiliar but not the same (instead of just getting updated) over these last 3 editions. So that while it looks approximately same-ish, none of the bits quite fit together any more.

The designers of D&D don't seem to understand what people want from D&D, or be very skilled at game design. At the end of 3e's life, people wanted incremental improvements that fixed the obvious issues and cut back on content bloat. They gave us a radical redesign that changed the fundamentals of the game. Between bad design and worse testing, that went over like a lead balloon. The lesson they seem to have taken from that is "people hate it when you do new and exciting things", and 5e is just "what if we took the part of 3e that works perfectly and stretched it over 20 levels". Good design involves iterating on your product and making incremental improvements, not swinging wildly between extremes with no coherent plan.

I mean, if D&D isn't capable of doing the various facets of common current fantasy then what's it doing? Just murder hobos genociding dungeons full of different sizes and colors of goblins while searching for "gold points"?

More than that, if the game isn't ever supposed to change at all, you're playing Progress Quest. The point of gaining levels is to gain new abilities that change how you can solve problems and what problems you can solve. D&D does not have to be a fully general fantasy emulator, but the idea that the most we can aspire to is to get to Conan is a distressingly low assessment of the potential of D&D.

[Pex]

More than that, if the game isn't ever supposed to change at all, you're playing Progress Quest. The point of gaining levels is to gain new abilities that change how you can solve problems and what problems you can solve. D&D does not have to be a fully general fantasy emulator, but the idea that the most we can aspire to is to get to Conan is a distressingly low assessment of the potential of D&D.

As I've said a few times over threads, high level D&D isn't a problem. What is the problem is some DMs can't or won't adapt to as the levels progress particular obstacles are no longer obstacles. Hyperbole, they always want the chasm to be a problem. They always want the party to find a bridge, go back and find another way, or take the journey of the narrow winding path down, cross the valley, then climb the narrow winding path up on the other side. The party making their own bridge, fly across, or even worse teleport avoiding the journey entirely is anathema to them. Those DMs are welcome to have their campaign finale happen at whatever level they like such that level + 1 ruins the game for them, but those of us who like level + 1 and + 2 and plus whatever should not be deprived of them.

There can exist high level abilities or a combination of abilities that make the game unplayable. Those need to be fixed individually, not get rid of high level entirely. There is point in accepting the high level abilities but resenting particular classes not having equivalent power of abilities. I prefer the solution of give those classes equivalent power, not take away from those who already have it.

[Cluedrew]

But those terms aren't the same. [...] The issue is that "mundane" is, by definition

Well yes they aren't actually the same, but they are both used to refer to the same ill-defined group of not-casters (which in turn has fuzzy edges and some significant disagreement about what that group includes), but there is a reason I systematically use the world martial. Point is, you can't make an argument from the definition of these words because there isn't an agreement about what they mean. We have had stretches of previous caster/martial disparity threads dedicated to trying to work it out, people even dug up new words. They really had to plum the depths of the dictionary to find them and I have since forgotten those.

[KorvinStarmast]

D&D has always been influenced by the rest of the fantasy genre.

That alleged genre is all over the map, though, since the seminal influences were swords and sorcery, and a hodge podge legendarium (Greek Mythology, Tolkien's legendarium) horror (lovecraft) and Sci Fi (though maybe speculative fiction) and a little bit of other influences. As the game got more popular, more authors writing stuff like The Dragon and the George got published. And then the recursion began. (A bunch of movies in the late 70's and early 80's catered to the same kind of genre to include Star Wars). By the end of the AD&D 1 era the genre "fantasy" had grown in a lot of directions. (I read an eclectic mix of stuff related to it in the 80's) to include the lit/game fusion of dragonlance and various FR novels (Song of the Saurial anyone? Azure Bonds?) Fun books, to be sure. Fantasy, as of this morning, as a genre is broad enough to fit a lot of different styles and power levels and story kinds.

The entirety of what you are saying about a character when you call them "mundane" is that there is a class of cool abilities they do not get.

I am not very 4e smart, but didn't 4e try to mitigate that with how the powers were phased and budgeted?

And you can see the impacts of this in the discourse. The designers gave the "nerf Wizards" crowd what they wanted in 5e. Wizards are much worse. And yet we have the exact same debates about how Wizards are overpowered raging in 5e's fanbase that we did in 3e's. Trying to balance the game down to the mundane Fighter is a bottomless pit.

Unless we remember that the swords in swords and sorcery were, in a lot of cases, magic swords. And only Fighters/Mundanes could use them.

The designers of D&D don't seem to understand what people want from D&D, or be very skilled at game design.

I am not sure they know what they want themselves, at this point.

The point of gaining levels is to gain new abilities that change how you can solve problems and what problems you can solve.

Indeed. Conan fulfilled one of many niches in the swords and sorcery genre.

As I read through this thread, I think we've got a fine case of "derail" here.

[RandomPeasant]

Those DMs are welcome to have their campaign finale happen at whatever level they like such that level + 1 ruins the game for them, but those of us who like level + 1 and + 2 and plus whatever should not be deprived of them.

That's the thing to me. There's nothing wrong with liking low-level stories. I like plenty of low-level stories. But I don't understand liking them so much that you demand anything higher level get removed from the game. If you want to play a game where Conan is the baddest dude ever to walk the land, you can do that. You just can't do that in a game that includes badder dudes than Conan, but again, how is it supposed to be possible to square that circle?

There can exist high level abilities or a combination of abilities that make the game unplayable. Those need to be fixed individually, not get rid of high level entirely. There is point in accepting the high level abilities but resenting particular classes not having equivalent power of abilities. I prefer the solution of give those classes equivalent power, not take away from those who already have it.

Absolutely. And as I said earlier, there are even things you should add to high level play. There are plenty of things that I've seen in stories that I would consider to be central to D&D's target genre that D&D characters can't do. Obviously, exactly how you define what high level play should look like is an open question, but I can't see a world where "more like Conan" is a good answer to that question.

That alleged genre is all over the map

D&D is too though. It's kind of wild to me to see people saying that D&D needs to be this small, constrained thing. Because D&D is absolutely not that. You know that Baphomet guy I mentioned earlier? He's the Demon Prince of Minotaurs, because D&D has enough stuff in it to have an established one of those. There's separate ones for "oozes" and "fungi", because obviously we can't have just one embodiment of evil that's in charge of things that look like stuff you find in a pile of rotten food. D&D is a game where you can tell someone about your adventure where you fought a tribe of evil rays and have them ask you "yeah, but which kind?".

Unless we remember that the swords in swords and sorcery were, in a lot of cases, magic swords. And only Fighters/Mundanes could use them.

That solution gets proposed a lot, but I'm not sure how good it is. For one thing, plenty of people have magic swords while also being wizards. Gandalf has the Foe-Hammer. Harry Potter has the Sword of Gryffindor. Anomander Rake has Dragnipur. Saying that you're role-protecting all those guys out of the game so that the Fighter class doesn't have to give out anything special isn't something I'm really happy about. And I don't think that would really make people happy, because I think "guy who is supernaturally good at fighting" is a much more natural evolution of "guy who is very good at fighting" than "guy who has a bunch of magical gear". If you look at the Avengers, who looks more like someone you'd expect to be a 20th level Barbarian: Iron Man or the Hulk?

I am not very 4e smart, but didn't 4e try to mitigate that with how the powers were phased and budgeted?

4e had a perfect solution for the Fighter: the game came in tiers, and when you graduated to a high enough tier, you were automatically upgraded to have supernatural powers. You didn't have to ask "what does a Fighter get that makes him useful against Orcus", because no one fought Orcus as a Fighter. You fought him as a Hero of Ragnarok or a Demigod or something else that came with a mandate to have the sorts of powers you need to beat up on the Demon Prince of the Undead. Now, there were issues with 4e's implementation of it, but that solution is by far the best approach to handling mundanes that has appeared in any D&D product I'm aware of.

[Satinavian]

The thing D&D has and most other crunchy fantasy RPGs don't is a ridiculous wide power range for characters, books after books of increasingly weird monsters, a focus on tactical combat and tons of cool abilities to play around. Some of the things where D&D is particularly weak are its skill system and the consideration of all the effects of monsters and abilities for worldbuilding.

Even if wanted to do Sword and Sorcery with a Conan clone, i would never choose D&D for it. I might even extend this to the whole D&D low level experience and things like D6. If you don't want the high level stuff and instead do traditional grounded gritty fantasy, there are tons of alternatives doing it way better.

[Talakeal]

I think that the bold is the essence of the disparity in viewpoint here. For RandomPeasant and many in the 3e community, an "appropriate level 20 encounter" has really nothing to do with the DMG/MM. It's all custom monsters and optimization arms-races. And for them, that works. But in that world, a martial doesn't without the kind of over-the-top powers mentioned. Call this "encounters as played".

You, on the other hand, are using the system as published as your baseline. Where most of the tricks that the higher-op people use just don't apply. Those were designed so that a party of a SnB fighter, a rogue, a cleric healbot, and a blaster wizard could muddle through. Call this "encounters as designed".

The two just don't meet up--a party that's totally capable by EaD standards is hopelessly underpowered by EaP standards. And one at the EaP standard blows away EaD-standard encounters without any struggle. So you can both be right...just for different standards.

For the record, I got tons of pushback for claiming that the only objective standard (in a 5e context, where the two are closer but still not identical) was EaD, and that maybe it's not that the low end needs to be radically altered to fit the high end, but that the high end may need to be trimmed back. Optimization by buffing only, when based on relative power, turns into a spiral without end--there will always be a "strongest" and a "weakest" build, and you'll never get them right on (because that's not really possible in a multi-variant problem like this). Instead, the proper thing to do is identify the range of acceptable difference and the desired balance point and then modify those that fall outside that range until they're in the range. And then stop.

And this is fine.

What I object to are people who insist that poor class balance at high levels is an intentional choice on the part of the designers when all evidence points to the contrary AND the idea that it is impossible to have a rule set where a D&D style martial and a D&D style caster both contribute roughly equally when overcoming a D&D style problem at power levels equivalent to 20th level D&D.

Basically, every time this topic comes up, I feel like people are gas-lighting me (or just saying myself and my players are complete idiots) for playing the above "impossible" games, and that I feel like I am being accused of having "bad-wrong-fun" for enjoying martial characters as their very existence ruins the caster supremacist power fantasy.

Why are you playing with those guys at all? If they want a world where someone with Conan's abilities is kinda irrelevant, and you want a world where someone with Conan's abilities is the most powerful warrior in the world, how do you possibly see the system and the setting working in a way that makes both of you happy? You want things that are, as far as I can tell, literally incompatible.

By having balanced classes so that everyone can play what they want to play and not worrying about other people's characters.

Take a look at the Balor. Now take a look at the Dretch. Do they really look like "the same thing, but with bigger numbers" to you? They certainly don't look that way to me. What's more, even if the scaling is just "numbers get bigger", that obsoletes mundanes too if the term has any meaning. If you get +100 STR, all you've gained are numbers, but if you call that "mundane", you're using the term very differently than I would. Again, think about the genre as a whole. Kaladin is as skilled a swordsman (well, spearman) as anyone, and he has Windrunner powers on top of that. If "mundane sword guy" is supposed to get you to 20th level, how does Kaladin fit in the game?

I have a lot to say here, so bear with me.

First, I was specifically talking about the Epic Level Hanbook, where the vast majority of options are identical to lower level things just with bigger numbers; class features, feats, magic items, and most monsters and spells are just directly scaled up things from lower level play.

I totally agree that, as a generalization, monsters get more complex as level gets higher; but this is hardly a rule. I am sure there are a few CR20 beat sticks out there, as well as a few low level gimmick monsters or those with a ton of SLAs. I am AFB right now, but I would guess that a mirror mephit is a more complex monster than a mountain giant.

But the thing I was more talking about is that a balor and a dretch are both fundamentally living creatures who, though they have a few magical powers and come from the Abyss, still interact with the world and are interacted with in much the same way as a living creature. When I think of a high level threat that mundane characters can't defeat, I imagine something like a sentient hive minded virus, a mimetic monster that exists in the minds of anyone who learns of its existence, a sapient cloud of dark matter, the four dimensional psuedo-pod of an eight dimensional scavenger, an animate mountain range, a dragon that swallows planets whole, something that exists outside of linear time and doesn't engage you at any point where you are capable of fighting back or even know of its existence, etc. But just big tough monster with a handful of supernatural powers doesn't fit the bill as I can easily imagine a similar big tough martial guy with a handful of magical items being skilled and determined enough to overcome it.

Numbers in D&D are super abstract, especially HP. If I can accept them in the first place, I don't have a problem scaling them.

I am not familiar with Kaladin, but it seems like you are just butting up against the concept of character level here rather than any sort of class balance issue. Yeah, a guy who is a level 20 fighter and also a level 20 wizard is better than a level 20 fighter, but so is a level 20 druid / level 20 wizard better than a level 20 wizard, and a level 20 druid / wizard / cleric is better still.

I can see why you're confused, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the class imbalance isn't game-breaking. The game would be better if classes were balanced, but it's perfectly playable as-is.

Eh. I don't really think high level 3.5 was playable.

I mean, it could be fixed pretty easily, but there are just too many pointless restrictions that made characters useless outside of a very narrow field and too many broken spells or abilities that just made large portions of the game irrelevant. As I alluded to above, I only ran a single high level campaign of D&D 3.5 by RAW, and once shape-change came into play, everything else in the game became irrelevant and the whole session revolved around digging through obscure monster books and arguing about how to interpret certain racial abilities.

But yeah,if we agree that class balance is desirable but lacking in high level D&D, that's was really the crux of the whole issue and everything else is just implementation.

Did you know that I, a person posting in this thread, will tell you my opinions if you ask them? You don't have to guess what I think and assume I fall into a category that is Doing It Wrong. And, no, what I think is an appropriate level 20 encounter has everything to do with the DMG/MM. For example, I think that CR 20 Baphomet, who rules one of the layers of the Abyss is an appropriate challenge for 20th level characters, because that's what the game says he is. In fact, if you follow the rules strictly, fighting him isn't even a big deal at 20th level. You're supposed to be able to beat up a Demon Lord four times in a day without breaking a sweat. But tell me again how I'm making unjustified assumptions when I say that D&D scales past the point where mundanes need apply.

I don't recall there being Baphomet stats in 3.5, and level 20 seems like an odd place to put him (the Fiendish Codex stats were far lower, the BoVD stats far higher, I would personally put him in the mid 20s so he is significantly stronger than a Balor and a "boss monster" level challenge for a group of four) but I doubt he is actually out of reach of mundanes. Could you give me a link to his stats or let me know what book he is in? Because I am pretty sure I can come up with a mundane group that can defeat him, and though I am a bit rusty on my 3.5 it sounds like a fun challenge.

Or is this a 4E / 5E thing? Talking D&D on the playground has gotten a lot harder since 2008.

And optimization by nerfing only turns into the exact same thing, except it makes people way more upset when you take away their toys than when you give them new ones. There are nerfs it makes sense to apply to casters. But you know what? There are also buffs it makes sense to apply to casters, because there are things magic-users do in the genre that D&D characters just can't. Most notably, there are very few spells that are relevant on the scale of a battlefield in D&D when that sort of thing is fairly common in the fantasy genre as a whole.

Agreed. Every class needs buffs, some a lot more than others.

But the problem is that some spells in 3.5 are just broken by any metric. Ice Assassin, Shivering Touch, Shape Change, Walls + Fabricate, Consumptive Field, Thought Bottle, Planar Binding, Force Cage, SLA wish, etc. just completely invalidate whole swathes of the game and are still unfair and in need of a rework even if you removed all of the martial classes from the game simply because they invalidate so many other spells, as well as monsters and subsystems.

But those terms aren't the same. The problem is with the semantics of "mundane", and "martial" doesn't have the same problem. You can write martial characters that work for whatever sort of adventures you want people to have. Thor is martial. Kaladin is martial. Taniel Two-Shot is martial. Yerin is martial. The issue is that "mundane" is, by definition, a constraint on character power. In fact, that's the only thing it is. The entirety of what you are saying about a character when you call them "mundane" is that there is a class of cool abilities they do not get.

And you can see the impacts of this in the discourse. The designers gave the "nerf Wizards" crowd what they wanted in 5e. Wizards are much worse. And yet we have the exact same debates about how Wizards are overpowered raging in 5e's fanbase that we did in 3e's. Trying to balance the game down to the mundane Fighter is a bottomless pit. You can take away every single thing that the Wizard does that's interesting, and you still won't fix the problem. The only way out is for the Fighter to graduate from mundanity at some point in his career. And once you do that, the entire problem goes away. If you accept that the Fighter is allowed to have nice things, you don't have to take away any of the Wizard's nice things.

Do people complain that much about the 5E wizard? I am not terribly familiar with 5E, but aside from a few simulacrum exploits I don't see threads about them breaking the game wide open like I did in 3.X.

Likewise, they improved upon the fighter, although they still lack any sort of ability to do stuff beyond making full attacks, and the saving throw system math in 5E is all kinds of messed up.

But yeah, the fighter is a pretty bad class in D&D, and using it as a metric of what a martial character can be always turns into a sort of a straw-man.

I mean, in 3E the Warblade was almost universally considered a superior class to the War Mage despite the former being a pure mundane martial and the latter being a pure supernatural caster. And I can easily imagine a mundane character who is far stronger than a warblade, and a full caster who is far weaker than the war mage.

The designers of D&D don't seem to understand what people want from D&D, or be very skilled at game design. At the end of 3e's life, people wanted incremental improvements that fixed the obvious issues and cut back on content bloat. They gave us a radical redesign that changed the fundamentals of the game. Between bad design and worse testing, that went over like a lead balloon. The lesson they seem to have taken from that is "people hate it when you do new and exciting things", and 5e is just "what if we took the part of 3e that works perfectly and stretched it over 20 levels". Good design involves iterating on your product and making incremental improvements, not swinging wildly between extremes with no coherent plan.

Glad we agree here.

I personally would have liked to see them iterate on 2E or 3E, as those are both solid systems that could have been tinkered with to make them great. While not perfect, the content coming out late in 3E (and in Star Wars Saga Edition) was pretty good, and I would have loved to see where a "3.75" edition had gone instead of veering off into 4E.

But, 4E was very well designed, and 5E does have very broad mass appeal, so even if I don't personally like those systems, its hard to argue objectively that they didn't know what they were doing.

[RandomPeasant]

By having balanced classes so that everyone can play what they want to play and not worrying about other people's characters.

But the things that are imbalanced aren't the classes. They're the concepts. The reason a character that is built to be "like Conan" in 3.5 can't keep up in 20th level adventures isn't that D&D has somehow failed to represent Conan properly. It is that Conan cannot keep up with those adventures. Step away from D&D mechanics entirely. What does Conan do in the final battle of Oathbringer? How does he compete in the Uncrowned King tournament? What role does he play in the war with Keter? Because at seems to me that the answers to those questions are a mix of "nothing" and "dies horribly". And I don't think removing the ability to support things like those from D&D entirely just to protect the ability to write "20th level" on your character sheet when you play a character that is "like Conan" is a worthwhile trade.

I totally agree that, as a generalization, monsters get more complex as level gets higher; but this is hardly a rule. I am sure there are a few CR20 beat sticks out there, as well as a few low level gimmick monsters or those with a ton of SLAs. I am AFB right now, but I would guess that a mirror mephit is a more complex monster than a mountain giant.

Characters have to be able to deal with all the monsters, not just some of them. It's true that there continue to be monsters that are big dumb piles of stats, but there are also monsters that gain new abilities that you have to be able to deal with. At 20th level, a monster could be able to fly, or be immune to normal weapons, or be on another plane, or resurrect when killed, or any number of other things where simply "being very strong" is insufficient to get you anywhere.

I am not familiar with Kaladin, but it seems like you are just butting up against the concept of character level here rather than any sort of class balance issue. Yeah, a guy who is a level 20 fighter and also a level 20 wizard is better than a level 20 fighter, but so is a level 20 druid / level 20 wizard better than a level 20 wizard, and a level 20 druid / wizard / cleric is better still.

Why does a character with the powers of both "flight" and "uses spear well" need to be fortieth level? Kaladin doesn't have 20th level magic, he has maybe 10th level magic. He just has that magic while also being a highly skilled mundane warrior, because being a highly skilled mundane warrior is not a big deal.

Because I am pretty sure I can come up with a mundane group that can defeat him, and though I am a bit rusty on my 3.5 it sounds like a fun challenge.

Being able to kill a Demon Lord puts you well outside "mundane". Especially because getting to him at all requires you to have planar travel.

But the problem is that some spells in 3.5 are just broken by any metric. Ice Assassin, Shivering Touch, Shape Change, Walls + Fabricate, Consumptive Field, Thought Bottle, Planar Binding, Force Cage, SLA wish, etc. just completely invalidate whole swathes of the game and are still unfair and in need of a rework even if you removed all of the martial classes from the game simply because they invalidate so many other spells, as well as monsters and subsystems.

That's a pretty weird list, to be honest. shivering touch is only broken because of a quirk of how the rules for ability damage function, the spell itself is a debuff that's honestly pretty crappy if it no longer one-shots dragons. wall of iron, wall of stone, and fabricate aren't broken at all, the economy rules are broken and those spells are exactly the sorts of things high level characters should be doing. Similarly, Thought Bottle is broken because spending XP as a cost is dumb, not because there's anything inherently mechanically bad about it. planar binding is a weird spell that is only really broken when you are doing specifically "summon a bunch of monsters to fight with the party", there's a whole swath of stuff where it works pretty much how you'd want it to like "I want a demon to guard my base when I'm not home". forcecage is a totally innocuous offensive spell that simply happens to give it to Fighters good and hard. SLA wish is an odd case, because it wasn't broken in 3.0 (due to a cap on what items you could make), so it appears that the designers may have intended for the things it does to be possible.

I mean, in 3E the Warblade was almost universally considered a superior class to the War Mage despite the former being a pure mundane martial and the latter being a pure supernatural caster. And I can easily imagine a mundane character who is far stronger than a warblade, and a full caster who is far weaker than the war mage.

But the Warblade isn't purely mundane. The Warblade gets a wide swath of abilities that, collectively, but it far beyond what it's possible for normal people to achieve. Not to mention that you can just take feats that let you teleport or fly if that's what you want to do.

[Telok]

Do people complain that much about the 5E wizard? I am not terribly familiar with 5E, but aside from a few simulacrum exploits I don't see threads about them breaking the game wide open like I did in 3.X.

There's less problem magic by absolute number mostly because there are fewer spells available. The ratio of ok/problem spells is probably about the same. Some of the same spells are still problems but it's stll mostly the action economy, big bonuses, no-saves, and free casting that causes issues. Main problem is still that non-casters still mostly just get skills and "i hit with stick".

Apparently it fixes if you use the optional feats, curate the magic items, get super restrictive with PC spell casting, and interpret the non-caster skill uses as getting to have some supernatural effects.

[Quertus]

So I'm… not sure what the bulk of the last couple of pages has to do with close battles. Anyone still have the context, and care to clue me in?

Maybe. But a lot of players might enjoy the idea of beating up those bandits, or being able to contribute to the plot if they can't cast teleport.

Oh man. I loved thinking about how my high/epic level characters would roflstomp bandits in the "what if you've already killed the bandits, and their leader surrenders" thread. Passing by all those character-defining, not even remotely close fights is one of the downsides of getting (and using) teleport.

Rules also create loophole diving and cheating. (See any professional sport, in particular soccer and football(American).

What rules most often create are bounds and boundaries. But they are also useful for an attempt at a common understanding. (Though for a board game, or a game like chess, they very much define the game - RPG's broke that mold which is one of the reasons for their appeal).

Put another way, if rules build trust, whey are there so many court cases?

I'm pretty sure I'm not following you.

Rules are useful as a method for creating a common understanding? Rules *are* the game? Those I can understand.

What, exactly, did RPGs break, that is their appeal? I suspect that's the big thing I should try to understand.

Second, playing a "low level game" requires the GM do some heavy house-ruling to create a low level world. Like, if I want to play a martial character who actually matters, who can topple kingdoms and slay krakens and arch-devils, and who isn't rendered impotent by a mid-level wizard, that isn't an experience any level of D&D can provide without heavy DM investment, but it is absolutely something that the game thinks should be viable.

I don't think that it's the Wizard making the Fighter impotent - I'd say that it's the Fighter's own extant impotence simply being made evident next to the Wizard's potence.

It's not that the wizard is kryptonite - the Fighter was never Superman to begin with.

For, at least, certain suboptimal builds of Fighter, and certain optimized builds of Wizards.

But yeah, I don't have a problem with Conan needing cunning or luck to beat the high end stuff, what I don't like is the idea that the guy who wants to play Conan is told to "play a low level game" but still exists in the same world as level 20 NPCs who make him totally irrelevant; Conan isn't irrelevant, he is the mightiest warrior ever who is destined the tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth beneath his sandaled feet.

Conan may be the most powerful Fighter in *his* universe, but he is, conceptually, quite pathetic and anemic compared to what a high-level D&D Fighter *should* be. Just like the greatest modern swordsman is conceptually pathetic and anemic next to Superman.

So, yes, if your idea is, "I want to play an Olympic gold medalist, and punch out God", your idea is incoherent at best.

If you want to play Conan, you want to play low level, whether you admit it or not. If you want to play Superman, you're getting warmer.

Basically, capping Drizzt at level six doesn't actually help issues, it just turns the "Elminster problem" up to 11.

I'm not following.

But D&D is the one who refuses to give half the classes meaningful special abilities. Other games don't have that problem.

I hope 6e gives *everyone* their choice of useful abilities, and some otherwise underpowered muggle class more. Abilities like, "can resurrect others with CPR", "can sniff out lies", "has an army", "is king", etc.

You know, what feats should have been.

This isn’t about e6 though.

Its a response to people saying that people who expect class balance at level 20 are unreasonable and should just content themselves playing low level games.

No, it's the concept of "Conan" that is unreasonable for high-level play.

No, seriously: tell me how you want Conan to assist with the plague, overthrowing a plane of Hell, an underwater extraplanar portal with invisible & incorporeal guardians, orbital bombardment, or defeating a god whose body *is* the volcano that the natives throw their sacrifices into. What abilities does Conan conceptually have, that should get written on his character sheet, that will allow him to participate meaningfully in those scenarios?

Conan - as I understand the character - is simply not conceptually appropriate for high-level play.

Does it? Where? Of the examples you give, very few are what I would call even mid-level martial characters (though I will admit to a lack of familiarity with some). I mean, really, James Bond is your idea of a high level martial character? At 20th level, your party could have an adventure where they overthrow the ruler of one of the layers of the Abyss. What is a guy for whom "invisible car" was considered excessively fantastical supposed to do there, exactly?

Bond? James Bond? Now, this I can answer: he can seduce Graz'zt's pair of max-HD Marilith bodyguards, and "handle" them off-camera, leaving the rest of the party to face Graz'zt alone.

I'd say that's in character, and contributing.

[Talakeal]

Why does a character with the powers of both "flight" and "uses spear well" need to be fortieth level? Kaladin doesn't have 20th level magic, he has maybe 10th level magic. He just has that magic while also being a highly skilled mundane warrior, because being a highly skilled mundane warrior is not a big deal.

Sorry, I thought you said he could fight as well as anyone, which implied to me he was a 20th level multi-class.

But yeah, I agree, D&D should be able to handle a character who is a multi-class warrior caster without them being significantly weaker than a pure caster.

Being able to kill a Demon Lord puts you well outside "mundane".

You do realize this is pretty much the textbook definition of a circular argument, right?

But the things that are imbalanced aren't the classes. They're the concepts. The reason a character that is built to be "like Conan" in 3.5 can't keep up in 20th level adventures isn't that D&D has somehow failed to represent Conan properly. It is that Conan cannot keep up with those adventures. Step away from D&D mechanics entirely. What does Conan do in the final battle of Oathbringer? How does he compete in the Uncrowned King tournament? What role does he play in the war with Keter? Because at seems to me that the answers to those questions are a mix of "nothing" and "dies horribly". And I don't think removing the ability to support things like those from D&D entirely just to protect the ability to write "20th level" on your character sheet when you play a character that is "like Conan" is a worthwhile trade.

I am not familiar with Oathbringer. Can you use an actual example from a D&D module?

I mean, I am sure you can come up with a contrived situation where any given class can't contribute, but that doesn't rally say anything about class imbalance from a conceptual or implementation perspective.

More than that, if the game isn't ever supposed to change at all, you're playing Progress Quest. The point of gaining levels is to gain new abilities that change how you can solve problems and what problems you can solve. D&D does not have to be a fully general fantasy emulator, but the idea that the most we can aspire to is to get to Conan is a distressingly low assessment of the potential of D&D.

That's one opinion, and its probably the majority opinion, but it is hardly universal. I much prefer systems where characters don't change too much over the course of progression, and hate the idea of waiting the whole campaign before I can use the really cool abilities that make the character concept work only two use them for a level or two before the game ends (if we ever get to that level at all!).

I much prefer growing as a player and learning to master the abilities I have.

Characters have to be able to deal with all the monsters, not just some of them. It's true that there continue to be monsters that are big dumb piles of stats, but there are also monsters that gain new abilities that you have to be able to deal with. At 20th level, a monster could be able to fly, or be immune to normal weapons, or be on another plane, or resurrect when killed, or any number of other things where simply "being very strong" is insufficient to get you anywhere.

Again, can you give me an actual example from D&D?

I mean, I can easily make up such a monster (and I can also come up with one that is tailored to be immune to mages if I want), but D&D tends to be built around problems you can solve by punching them in the face. The closest thing I can think of is probably the tarrasque which requires a wish spell to kill, although even so that monster's carapace means that it is best to go in as a balanced party rather than a team of mages unless you are going for summoner cheese.

Especially because getting to him at all requires you to have planar travel.

The "game changing" spells that people point to in these threads always seem to boil down to convenience.

Portals exist. Scrolls of plane shift exist. NPC casters exist.

Getting to another plane does not require having someone in the party who can cast plane shift.

The idea that a martial character has to be some sort of 2E forsaker who refuses to associate with the supernatural in any way is more or less a straw-man. Just like saying that one can keep the broken spells in the game if they are willing to give martials super-powers is demonstrably not true because martials already have super powers in the forms of magic items (and buffs).

That's a pretty weird list, to be honest. shivering touch is only broken because of a quirk of how the rules for ability damage function, the spell itself is a debuff that's honestly pretty crappy if it no longer one-shots dragons. wall of iron, wall of stone, and fabricate aren't broken at all, the economy rules are broken and those spells are exactly the sorts of things high level characters should be doing. Similarly, Thought Bottle is broken because spending XP as a cost is dumb, not because there's anything inherently mechanically bad about it. planar binding is a weird spell that is only really broken when you are doing specifically "summon a bunch of monsters to fight with the party", there's a whole swath of stuff where it works pretty much how you'd want it to like "I want a demon to guard my base when I'm not home". forcecage is a totally innocuous offensive spell that simply happens to give it to Fighters good and hard. SLA wish is an odd case, because it wasn't broken in 3.0 (due to a cap on what items you could make), so it appears that the designers may have intended for the things it does to be possible.

Those are all specific spells that I recall having to house rule. And, like I have been saying this whole thread, I fully agree that it is the implementation that is the problem rather than the concept.

Force-cage is not just an anti-fighter spell, its an anti-anything that cannot teleport or disintegrate spell. In my Dragonlance campaign there was a gestalt cleric / paladin in the group who was basically useless for the latter half of the campaign despite being a T1 caster + because every time he fought an Auruk draconian they would stick him in a force cage and make him sit out the fight because there was simply nothing he had that could counter it; no save, no spell resistance, blocks ethereal travel, immune to dispel magic, and immune to all damage makes for a pretty unfair trap.

IIRC his solution was to just spend a boatload of money on rods of cancellation, although in hindsight there are probably better workarounds.

But the Warblade isn't purely mundane. The Warblade gets a wide swath of abilities that, collectively, but it far beyond what it's possible for normal people to achieve. Not to mention that you can just take feats that let you teleport or fly if that's what you want to do.

There is absolutely nothing a baseline war-blade can do that I would blink an eye at if I saw Conan (or whatever other "mundane" action hero you like) pull it off in a movie.

But yeah, sure, they can pick up feats (or magic items, or permanent spells, or racial abilities) that give them access to SU abilities. It doesn't mean that they are no longer a member of a martial class or that high level class balance isn't a huge issue in D&D.

I don't think that it's the Wizard making the Fighter impotent - I'd say that it's the Fighter's own extant impotence simply being made evident next to the Wizard's potence.

It's not that the wizard is kryptonite - the Fighter was never Superman to begin with.

For, at least, certain sub-optimal builds of Fighter, and certain optimized builds of Wizards.

Agreed. My whole point was that D&D class balance is bad at high levels, but pretty good at mid levels.

Conan may be the most powerful Fighter in *his* universe, but he is, conceptually, quite pathetic and anemic compared to what a high-level D&D Fighter *should* be. Just like the greatest modern swordsman is conceptually pathetic and anemic next to Superman.

Agreed.

Which is why the whole "if you want to play Conan just level cap martials at six and be done with it" isn't actually a solution to anyone's problem.

If you want to play Conan, you want to play low level, whether you admit it or not. If you want to play Superman, you're getting warmer.

The whole "you want to play Conan" is a bit of a straw-man to begin with, the argument is that people want the game to support class balance at all levels of play, which means reigning in casters and buffing martials.

Besides, Madmartigan is much cooler than Conan

So, yes, if your idea is, "I want to play an Olympic gold medalist, and punch out God", your idea is incoherent at best.

What if my idea is "I want to play Saint George and slay dragons" or "I want to play Beowful and kill sea monsters" or "I want to play Guts and kill demon lords" or "I want to play Red Sonja and slay liches" just like the characters do in the source material? Is that still incoherent? Because capping characters at low level sure makes that pretty tough.

On the other hand, Random Peasant's story about Ranger who is a level 20 martial who hunts gods is also something that works in the source material but would never actually fly in D&D as written.

No, seriously: tell me how you want Conan to assist with the plague, overthrowing a plane of Hell, an underwater with invisible & incorporeal guardians, orbital bombardment, or defeating a god whose body *is* the volcano that the natives throw their sacrifices into. What abilities does Conan conceptually have, that should get written on his character sheet, that will allow him to participate meaningfully in those scenarios?

Most wizards can't meaningfully contribute to those scenarios other. But D&D is a team game and PCs are resourceful, and I can absolutely find a spot for a mundane character in any of those tasks.

Bond? James Bond? Now, this I can answer: he can seduce Graz'zt's pair of max-HD Marilith bodyguards, and "handle" them off-camera, leaving the rest of the party to face Graz'zt alone.

I'd say that's in character, and contributing.

I know that's meant as a joke, but that is really true.

Charisma and Intelligence based skills should be useful in D&D, and in a well constructed high level game I would probably prefer having a good diplomat or clever sage to either a muscle bound barbarian or a power tripping arch-mage (although there is no good reason why the same character can't be both).

[KorvinStarmast]

Rules are useful as a method for creating a common understanding?

yes.

Rules *are* the game?

No, they are not, in an RPG. "The rules define the game" is pre RPG thinking. (Though it works for a computer game).
That is the paradigm that was shattered by the RPG.
That was the key change when RPG's stumbled onto the gaming market with the release of D&D.
(And there was a lot of messing about with "what have we got here?" for about five years before that in a small niche of a small niche of gaming). FWIW, I suggest you take a look at Rob Kuntz's book about "the genius of Dave Arneson" to get the complete framework for that point. I'll not try to replicate that here.
In an RPG, the rules can only take you so far: the players and DM take you the rest of the way.

What, exactly, did RPGs break, that is their appeal? I suspect that's the big thing I should try to understand.

Yeah, you should. "The rules are the game" is the paradigm that was departed from. (Golf has a real bad case of the rules define the game, to include toxic rules that is has taken the USGA and the R&A decades to unscrew)

It is quite disappointing to see that principle being moved away from among in some RPG circles, and the adamant insistence that the rules are the game.
For a computer game, that is true for technical reasons. For a TTRPG is isn't.

Bond? James Bond? Now, this I can answer: he can seduce Graz'zt's pair of max-HD Marilith bodyguards, and "handle" them off-camera, leaving the rest of the party to face Graz'zt alone.

Yes. Charisma of 20. (But he cheats, since he has oysters for breakfast every day).

[RandomPeasant]

Some of the same spells are still problems but it's stll mostly the action economy, big bonuses, no-saves, and free casting that causes issues. Main problem is still that non-casters still mostly just get skills and "i hit with stick".

Bounded Accuracy also kind of inherently breaks any spell that gives you minions, to an even larger degree than they were already broken in 3.5.

Sorry, I thought you said he could fight as well as anyone, which implied to me he was a 20th level multi-class.

As well as any mundane warrior. Which would make him something like a 6th level character. When you layer his super-speed, super-healing, and the other combat benefits he gets from being a Windrunner, he's probably up to something like 12th level.

I am not familiar with Oathbringer. Can you use an actual example from a D&D module?

Are you not familiar with any fantasy story where Conan would not be a valuable contributor? I don't get what's so hard about this for you. Surely you can acknowledge that there is some context in which it is not appropriate to have Conan as a main character.

hate the idea of waiting the whole campaign before I can use the really cool abilities that make the character concept work only two use them for a level or two before the game ends (if we ever get to that level at all!).

Then wouldn't you prefer a system where levels have a clear meaning and you can stay at the one where your character has the abilities you want for the whole campaign? If what you want to do is play Conan, and you want to have the abilities that make you Conan, and you don't want to gain new abilities that make you not Conan, don't you want a system where you can start at the level Conan works as and play at that level?

Again, can you give me an actual example from D&D?

Sure. The big bad is a Demon Lord. He is on an other plane. He is stronger, tougher, and faster than any mortal man could be. What, exactly, is a mundane warrior supposed to do there?

Getting to another plane does not require having someone in the party who can cast plane shift.

If your party finds Gorg the Dragon-Slayer and he slays a dragon for you, would you describe that as the same thing as your party slaying that dragon?

In my Dragonlance campaign there was a gestalt cleric / paladin in the group who was basically useless for the latter half of the campaign despite being a T1 caster + because every time he fought an Auruk draconian they would stick him in a force cage and make him sit out the fight because there was simply nothing he had that could counter it; no save, no spell resistance, blocks ethereal travel, immune to dispel magic, and immune to all damage makes for a pretty unfair trap.

The guy cast as a Cleric and a Paladin stuck together (two classes that can re-pick from their entire list every day), repeatedly encountered enemies that used forcecage to immobilize him, and couldn't find a teleportation spell to prepare? That seems like user error more than anything. knight's move alone should do the job a decent percentage of the time.

There is absolutely nothing a baseline war-blade can do that I would blink an eye at if I saw Conan (or whatever other "mundane" action hero you like) pull it off in a movie.

earthstrike quake lets you cause (small) earthquakes. lightning throw lets you throw a sword through a half-dozen people. time stands still may not be mechanically impressive, but the fluff is pretty explicit about you moving faster than is possible. The various mountain hammers allow you to break things that are magically impossible to break. Even without the stupid interpretations of iron heart surge, it still lets you end magic in a way that is clearly not mundane. And that's to say nothing of the more subjective things where I don't really think you would buy something like "Conan kills a giant dragon in a single blow" as "mundane".

Which is why the whole "if you want to play Conan just level cap martials at six and be done with it" isn't actually a solution to anyone's problem.

You still have not explained how that follows. Conan lives in a world that does not have Atropals or Elder Brains or Great Wyrm Red Dragons or any of the other things that live at the high end of D&D. Why is it a problem at all if translating him to D&D results in a character that can't deal with those things? He doesn't deal with those things!

What if my idea is "I want to play Saint George and slay dragons" or "I want to play Beowful and kill sea monsters" or "I want to play Guts and kill demon lords" or "I want to play Red Sonja and slay liches" just like the characters do in the source material?

Saint George can kill a Juvenile red dragon. Beowful can kill whatever that aquatic version of a Troll is called (and that's a pretty exact fit for Grendel). I haven't read Berzerk, but as far as I'm aware, the things in there don't have the kinds of capabilities their D&D equivalents do. Red Sonja can kill a lich just fine if you remove the level minimum to be a lich, or accept that what she's killing is more like a Corpse Creature Wizard than a full-on Lich.

On the other hand, Random Peasant's story about Ranger who is a level 20 martial who hunts gods is also something that works in the source material but would never actually fly in D&D as written.

Why? Adventures where you kill gods have existed in D&D since before I was born. What's wrong with an adventure where the enemy is the queen of a faerie court, or a pair of ascended drow with a near-endless reserve of shadow magic, or a giant god-spider? I understand if those are adventures you can have, Conan is sad, but why is it more important that people who like Conan not be sad than that people who like A Practical Guide to Evil not be sad? In fact, it's worse than that, because your argument is literally that Conan getting to write "20" on his character sheet is more important than Ranger being in the game at all.

No, they are not, in an RPG. "The rules define the game" is pre RPG thinking. (Though it works for a computer game).

Depends what you mean by "game". If you mean it in a sense that means something like "product", the rules are the game. D&D comes with the rules for D&D, not other stuff. If you mean it in a sense that means something more like "experience", there's more going on at a table than just the rules.

[Talakeal]

Are you not familiar with any fantasy story where Conan would not be a valuable contributor? I don't get what's so hard about this for you. Surely you can acknowledge that there is some context in which it is not appropriate to have Conan as a main character.

Sure. I can also think of plenty of stories where it wouldn't be appropriate to have any given protagonist as a main character.

But we are specifically talking about D&D here.

D&D is not Conan. D&D is also not Wheel of Time. D&D is a game where a party of four characters including some mix of clerics, rogues, wizards, and warriors band together to defeat challenges from levels 1 to 20.

Then wouldn't you prefer a system where levels have a clear meaning and you can stay at the one where your character has the abilities you want for the whole campaign? If what you want to do is play Conan, and you want to have the abilities that make you Conan, and you don't want to gain new abilities that make you not Conan, don't you want a system where you can start at the level Conan works as and play at that level?

If I wanted to play Conan, which I explicitly do not, I would prefer that, assuming the game was built around it. I wouldn't play level capped Conan plopped down into the Forgotten Realms as it wouldn't be appropriate to the character anymore than wanting to play a computer hacker in a western, or Elminster in a modern spy thriller where magic doesn't exist, or a star-fighter pilot in a victorian romance.

Sure. The big bad is a Demon Lord. He is on an other plane. He is stronger, tougher, and faster than any mortal man could be. What, exactly, is a mundane warrior supposed to do there?

Stab him with a magic sword? The same way that a RL hunter can take down an elephant with a bow, or a lion or a crocodile with a knife, or a whale with a harpoon despite the fact that those animals are bigger, stronger, and or tougher than any human.

There isn't a single genre of speculative fiction where I can't think of a multitude of examples of a normal human defeating something that is explicitly super human in combat, I don't know why your brain breaks at the idea of D&D characters doing the same.

If your party finds Gorg the Dragon-Slayer and he slays a dragon for you, would you describe that as the same thing as your party slaying that dragon?

Are you really saying that arranging for transport is the same thing as killing the monster? Really?

Like, do you watch a western and say "Well, you know, the gunslinger was nice and all, but it was the train engineer who really saved the day by getting him to the frontier in the first place!"

And if so, then I would say that finding material components for spells, an activity a mundane can do, is more important than being a wizard, so there is one place I guess that proves mundane characters have their place?

The guy cast as a Cleric and a Paladin stuck together (two classes that can re-pick from their entire list every day), repeatedly encountered enemies that used forcecage to immobilize him, and couldn't find a teleportation spell to prepare? That seems like user error more than anything. knight's move alone should do the job a decent percentage of the time.

This was in 2004, that spell didn't exist yet. And even if it did, that spell requires that an enemy and an ally are standing close to the cage.

Without the travel or destruction domains, I am not aware of anything published before 2005 divine caster can do to get out of a force-cage, although I am not going to admit complete knowledge of every splat book ever written.

I wouldn't say force cage is game breaking, but it is an annoying spell in that it explicitly no sells all of the normal defenses against similar magic.

earthstrike quake lets you cause (small) earthquakes. lightning throw lets you throw a sword through a half-dozen people. time stands still may not be mechanically impressive, but the fluff is pretty explicit about you moving faster than is possible. The various mountain hammers allow you to break things that are magically impossible to break. Even without the stupid interpretations of iron heart surge, it still lets you end magic in a way that is clearly not mundane. And that's to say nothing of the more subjective things where I don't really think you would buy something like "Conan kills a giant dragon in a single blow" as "mundane".

Oh, do war-blade's have earthquake powers? Yeah, I do kind of hate that people think that is somehow a mundane ability, although I see people claim all the time that it should count.

But, imo, ending magic is the very definition of mundane as in a purely mundane world magic does not exist. Whatever weaknesses you give magic are part of the magic, and real life folklore are full of all sorts of mundane ways to overcome it; salt, cold iron, gestures, prayer, etc.

As for killing a dragon in a single blow, I don't see why not. Prince Phillip and Bard the Bowman both manage it, and people kill Whale's and elephants in RL. Hitting a living creature in a vital spot is not something which I would put into the realm of magic; even something Godzilla sized could probably be killed by a large sword if hit with enough force in precisely the right place. But again, HP totals in D&D are so abstract that how many hits it takes to kill a monster is pretty whatever.

You still have not explained how that follows. Conan lives in a world that does not have Atropals or Elder Brains or Great Wyrm Red Dragons or any of the other things that live at the high end of D&D. Why is it a problem at all if translating him to D&D results in a character that can't deal with those things? He doesn't deal with those things!

Saint George can kill a Juvenile red dragon. Beowful can kill whatever that aquatic version of a Troll is called (and that's a pretty exact fit for Grendel). I haven't read Berzerk, but as far as I'm aware, the things in there don't have the kinds of capabilities their D&D equivalents do. Red Sonja can kill a lich just fine if you remove the level minimum to be a lich, or accept that what she's killing is more like a Corpse Creature Wizard than a full-on Lich.

Why? Adventures where you kill gods have existed in D&D since before I was born. What's wrong with an adventure where the enemy is the queen of a faerie court, or a pair of ascended drow with a near-endless reserve of shadow magic, or a giant god-spider? I understand if those are adventures you can have, Conan is sad, but why is it more important that people who like Conan not be sad than that people who like A Practical Guide to Evil not be sad? In fact, it's worse than that, because your argument is literally that Conan getting to write "20" on his character sheet is more important than Ranger being in the game at all.

Depends what you mean by "game". If you mean it in a sense that means something like "product", the rules are the game. D&D comes with the rules for D&D, not other stuff. If you mean it in a sense that means something more like "experience", there's more going on at a table than just the rules.

Again, I am having trouble reading what you are actually saying. It feels like you are saying that level 20 martials in the game as is are simultaneously too weak and too strong, and constantly going back and forth. AFAICT you have very specific definitions of what constitutes martial and mundane which I am not even aware of, let alone actually being the position I hold.

Lichs, Krakens, and most demons and dragons are creatures which can be defeated by level 20 martial characters in D&D as written. Gods are not, barring a ridiculous difference in optimization levels or maybe if you are playing 1E and only go after the really weak ones.

[RandomPeasant]

I wouldn't play level capped Conan plopped down into the Forgotten Realms

Then what is your complaint about level caps? If you don't think the proposal is "cap Conan, change nothing else" what exactly is the issue with "some characters belong in a setting that is more limited than the default one for D&D, and if you want to play those characters you should limit how high of a level the game reaches"? How is that a worse solution than cutting everything above the level of Conan and company out of the game?

There isn't a single genre of speculative fiction where I can't think of a multitude of examples of a normal human defeating something that is explicitly super human in combat, I don't know why your brain breaks at the idea of D&D characters doing the same.

That's a false equivalence. Consider Star Wars. Luke defeats some monsters that are superhuman, like the Wampa or the Rancor. But there are other monsters in the setting that he can't beat (and, of course, Luke is himself superhuman). As noted, where exactly the boundary of what is "mundane" is fuzzy and subjective. But there are monsters in D&D -- real, published monsters that sub-Epic parties are supposed to be able to fight -- that are outside any reasonable version of what can be done by someone who meets that definition.

Are you really saying that arranging for transport is the same thing as killing the monster? Really?

I'm saying that having someone else solve a problem for you is different from solving that problem. I really don't understand the mindset that can't see the difference between "someone casts teleport for you" and "you can cast teleport". Those things are different for the exact same reasons and in the exact same way that "find the man who can slay the Ash Phoenix" and "slay the Ash Phoenix" are different adventures.

I wouldn't say force cage is game breaking, but it is an annoying spell in that it explicitly no sells all of the normal defenses against similar magic.

Well, yeah. It's a 7th level spell. It's supposed to be very powerful. sleep and color spray can end an entire encounter at 1st level. forcecage locks down one enemy. Even if you don't have a way to get out yourself, the rest of the party is outside the forcecage, and to the degree it locks out your various offensive strategies, it also protects you from your opponents. I will grant that having to sit around while the rest of the party fights the encounter without you is boring, but I would hardly say that it's inherently game-breaking.

But, imo, ending magic is the very definition of mundane as in a purely mundane world magic does not exist. Whatever weaknesses you give magic are part of the magic, and real life folklore are full of all sorts of mundane ways to overcome it; salt, cold iron, gestures, prayer, etc.

If you end a magical effect by sprinkling the right reagents on it, saying the right words, or making the right gestures, what you are doing is magic. But that's irrelevant, because that's not how iron heart surge works. You don't break a dominate person by throwing salt at it, you break it by being personally hard core enough to overpower the magic. That's magic, or at least "not mundane" if you want "magic" to be a more restricted term.

Again, I am having trouble reading what you are actually saying.

I would say the same thing to you. You are freely equivocating between "martial" (a category that includes such characters as the MCU's Thor, Knights Radiant, and Taniel Two-Shot) and "mundane" (a category that caps out somewhere below Captain America). That's the crux of the issue. When someone sits down at the table with a 20th level "sword guy", is that character allowed to be Caladan Brood, or does he have to be something that respects Conan's claim to "greatest warrior in the world"?

Lichs, Krakens, and most demons and dragons are creatures which can be defeated by level 20 martial characters in D&D as written. Gods are not, barring a ridiculous difference in optimization levels or maybe if you are playing 1E and only go after the really weak ones.

20th level martial characters, yes. But those characters aren't mundane. A 20th level sword-wielder in D&D (particularly one that can stand up to expected opposition) is much, much closer to Ranger or Anomander Rake than they are to Conan or Aragorn. And, yes, later editions have slipped into a mindset that has moved the gods away from things you can meaningfully fight, much to the determent of the game. But the proliferation of elder evils and demon lords and whatnot shows a clear demand for precisely that sort of enemy. People want to be able to fight the God of Undeath, the fact that the game forces them to settle for the Demon Prince of Undeath is a mistake on the part of the designers. But neither version of that fight is something you can do anything about as a character who is meaningfully "mundane".

[Squire Doodad]

And, yes, later editions have slipped into a mindset that has moved the gods away from things you can meaningfully fight, much to the determent of the game. But the proliferation of elder evils and demon lords and whatnot shows a clear demand for precisely that sort of enemy. People want to be able to fight the God of Undeath, the fact that the game forces them to settle for the Demon Prince of Undeath is a mistake on the part of the designers. But neither version of that fight is something you can do anything about as a character who is meaningfully "mundane".

Personally I suspect it's the matter of killing a god typically being akin to stabbing your setting in the leg. It varies, and while for some settings slaying a god will be fairly minor, for others it results in a total breakdown of the world. Like if a normal DM were to write a campaign about killing the God of Undeath it will usually be immediately followed by a campaign to stop the newfound surge of powerful undead aiming to claim its throne. But, a lot of people don't want a 2-part campaign, and in general it's the sort of thing that tends to shape remaining campaigns in the setting. This means there's a huge degree in variance in who can run such a campaign depending on their cosmology, so settling on demigods and major demons/angels and the like makes it far easier to write campaigns that don't need to take into account someone's personal universe.

Also, you can always write another competing Demon Prince from another part of that layer. It's a lot harder to work with having 5 different actual deities of the same aspect, each meant to be the absolute embodiment of their aspect. Significantly more limitations there.

[GloatingSwine]

It doesn't really matter if Conan gets to write "20" on his character sheet, he still does the same stuff.

I think you're focusing too much on the character and not on the mechanical expression of class fantasy and how those interact with each other.

There is a character in D&D whose class fantasy is roughly Conan shaped. The mightily thewed warrior. It has a level progression from 1-20 and is treated as of exactly equal mechanical value to a wizard of equal level by all published resources. They have taken the same investment in XP to get to that level, and they are expected to have the same resources beyond their class features (expressed in wealth by level).

They are, obvously, not of equal mechanical value because it's way too easy to make up more and more spells and incidentally add new features to existing spells (like shapechange which gets new options every time a new monster gets published) and nowhere near as easy to bolt new features onto the mightily thewed warrior. That means that what generally get called "mundane" or "martial" characters are ones who pretty much have to stay in their lane, but casters can pick a lane at will and do basically well enough in it.

That means that over time it is more and more likely that the Wizard can remove their own weaknesses and emulate the strengths of other classes. And the published content and play guides don't regularly account for this. Like there's no suggestion in the DMG that if your party has a Rogue and a Wizard you should always include twice as many locked doors in the day as the wizard has Knock spells memorised.

[RandomPeasant]

But, a lot of people don't want a 2-part campaign, and in general it's the sort of thing that tends to shape remaining campaigns in the setting.

If you want to reset to the status quo after each campaign, you can just do that. Set the second campaign after a new god of death has arisen, or have one of the old campaign PCs take up the mantle (like in Wrath of the Lich King), or pretend the old campaign never happened, or change to a different setting. It is much, much easier to ignore the consequences of the PCs actions than to invent from whole cloth a framework in which the PC's actions can have consequences. I am deeply unsympathetic to the notion that the default configuration of the game should be one where the PC's actions do not have a lasting effect on the setting, because getting to have a lasting effect on the setting is what separates TTRPGs from games like World of Warcraft, or simply reading a book.

There is a character in D&D whose class fantasy is roughly Conan shaped.

I disagree. The Barbarian's class fantasy includes Conan, to be sure. But it also includes characters like the MCU's Thor (who, regardless of the rest of the setting, is very much in a fantasy story in his own movies), or A Practical Guide to Evil's Berserker, or any number of other characters who have "rage powers" as a primary combat shtick or are conceptually barbarians, but scale to a much higher power level than Conan does. Just as the Wizard's class fantasy includes both relatively weak Wizards (like the on-screen capabilities shown by Gandalf) and much stronger Wizards (like Quick Ben), so too does the Barbarian's.

Now, I agree that the Barbarian class is pretty bad at emulating anything significantly stronger than Conan right now, but that's a problem with the Barbarian class. It doesn't mean that Barbarians are only ever meant to be Conan and we should knock everything else down until Conan is good enough. It means we should give Barbarians the tools they need to be Logen Ninefingers or Karsa Orlong.

[GloatingSwine]

Now, I agree that the Barbarian class is pretty bad at emulating anything significantly stronger than Conan right now, but that's a problem with the Barbarian class.

Right, but that's what I think Takaleal has been trying to argue all along.

That the martial/mundane classes are not good enough because they cannot, by themselves with only their own class features and expected WBL, be used to apply their class fantasy to high level games in the way casters can.

Inventing new classes that do it better like Warblade don't fix the problem because they don't apply the original class fantasy.

And the suggestion "play E6/lower levels" is not a fix either because all it does is acknowledge the problem is a problem and lock anyone who wants the barbarian class fantasy out from interacting with high level activities and content.

[Talakeal]

Right, but that's what I think Takaleal has been trying to argue all along.

That the martial/mundane classes are not good enough because they cannot, by themselves with only their own class features and expected WBL, be used to apply their class fantasy to high level games in the way casters can.

Inventing new classes that do it better like Warblade don't fix the problem because they don't apply the original class fantasy.

And the suggestion "play E6/lower levels" is not a fix either because all it does is acknowledge the problem is a problem and lock anyone who wants the barbarian class fantasy out from interacting with high level activities and content.

Exactly this.

[Telok]

Perhaps to try something: Take a level 6 adventure and a party of level 5 barbarians. Give the barbarians all 20 levels of class features. The real features like improved rage stuff and special barbarian attacks, not the hit points and generic everyone gets stuff. Does the adventure break? Maybe just add a few more goblins? Then do it with a party of casters, all wizards or all clerics. Does the adventure break when they have the high level spells?

Then do it again the other way. Take a 18th level adventure (that a party of barbarians can do) and a party of level 20 barbarians. Drop the barbarian class features down to 5th level but leave the hp & attack & feats. Can they do the adventure? Reduce the number of enemies maybe? Do that with a party of casters again. Can they do it with only 1st to 3rd spells?

Not having books & official adventures handy I can't say. And of course it changes by game & edition.