Do people really enjoy close battles?

[RandomPeasant]

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.

But the class fantasy Takaleal is arguing for does not belong in high level games. The problem with the Barbarian isn't that it can't apply the fantasy of Conan to a 20th level game. There's a fundamental mismatch between that fantasy and that environment. Nothing you can do will apply the fantasy of Conan to an environment where you travel freely between the planes, fight elder brains and demon lords, and deal with magics that can reshape the world itself. As I've tried to explain to him at length, the difference between those things is entirely on the level of the fiction. If you would like to take a go at explaining how Conan fits into Malazan or Cradle or A Practical Guide to Evil, go ahead.

The problem with the Barbarian is twofold. First, that it does not produce Conan at the levels where it is appropriate to do so. Second, that it does not produce anything level appropriate at high levels. Talakeal seems to want to fix the first problem by demanding that high level be turned into an environment for which Conan is appropriate, rather than simply fixing Conan at the levels where it is already okay to play him.

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

But isn't that exactly what classes like the Beguiler or the Dread Necromancer did to good effect? If the fantasy of the Barbarian really is something that belongs at high level, if the issues really are just mechanical problems with the implementation of the concept, and not conceptual problems with the idea of Conan as a 20th level character, then taking another run at things should be perfectly capable of solving those problems. Just as the Beguiler and the Dread Necromancer delivered on things that were -- completely outside of any power level differences -- a better conceptual fit for "mind mage" and "necromancer" than the specialist Wizards that previously filled those niches.

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.

No it doesn't. It locks anyone with the Conan character fantasy out of participating in those environments. And that's okay, because Conan does not participate in those environments. It's like arguing that not getting planar binding until 11th level locks people with the fantasy of being Diabolist out of adventures like "clear out the nest of giant rats in the local sewers" or "defeat the tribe of kobolds that's been emboldened by a wyrmling red dragon". Who cares if it locks her out of those adventures? They aren't the adventures she goes on!

[GloatingSwine]

The problem with the Barbarian is twofold. First, that it does not produce Conan at the levels where it is appropriate to do so. Second, that it does not produce anything level appropriate at high levels. Talakeal seems to want to fix the first problem by demanding that high level be turned into an environment for which Conan is appropriate, rather than simply fixing Conan at the levels where it is already okay to play him.

No, I think Takaleal's saying that's the only way to fix it unless you're willing to let the Barbarian be Hulk at level 20.

And I don't mean MCU Hulk.

I mean the Worldbreaker.

[RandomPeasant]

No, I think Takaleal's saying that's the only way to fix it unless you're willing to let the Barbarian be Hulk at level 20.

And why shouldn't we be willing to do that? The opposition the game describes at 20th level is certainly on par with what Hulk fights. I mean, really, if I told you there was a movie where a demon lord had opened a portal to hell and the world was being overrun by demons, and I asked you to guess whether the protagonist of that movie was the Hulk or King Arthur, which one would you guess?

Or look at Conan. Instead of saying Conan has to be 20th level, ask yourself this: what's the lowest level you could build Conan at? To avoid any issues with the flaws of the Barbarian class, let's suppose that whatever level you pick, you can give Conan any abilities any mundane character at that level can have. He can track as well as a Ranger. He can sneak as well as a Rogue. He can rage like a Barbarian. He has the feats of a Fighter and the maneuvers of a Warblade. I think you could do it by 7th level. And when you look at that character, can you honestly say he's on par with even a 10th level, non-TO Wizard? I can't. And I'm not willing to cut out literally half of what spellcasters can do just to avoid giving martials cool abilities as well.

[BRC]

And why shouldn't we be willing to do that? The opposition the game describes at 20th level is certainly on par with what Hulk fights. I mean, really, if I told you there was a movie where a demon lord had opened a portal to hell and the world was being overrun by demons, and I asked you to guess whether the protagonist of that movie was the Hulk or King Arthur, which one would you guess?

Or look at Conan. Instead of saying Conan has to be 20th level, ask yourself this: what's the lowest level you could build Conan at? To avoid any issues with the flaws of the Barbarian class, let's suppose that whatever level you pick, you can give Conan any abilities any mundane character at that level can have. He can track as well as a Ranger. He can sneak as well as a Rogue. He can rage like a Barbarian. He has the feats of a Fighter and the maneuvers of a Warblade. I think you could do it by 7th level. And when you look at that character, can you honestly say he's on par with even a 10th level, non-TO Wizard? I can't. And I'm not willing to cut out literally half of what spellcasters can do just to avoid giving martials cool abilities as well.

I think part of the issue here is that part of the innate premise of D&D is the idea that you start low level, and gradually level up, meanwhile people's character concepts/class fantasies often end up sitting at a particular power level, which can't really be stretched across the entire spectrum. Spellcasters are a big exception, because Magic opens up the creative floodgates as it were, and if part of your central character concept is "I can do magic", it's easy to imagine them everywhere from throwing firebolts at Kobolds to creating private demiplanes from whence to coordinate the interdimensional armies they summon, and each step can be gradual as "They get better at Magic".


As the game continues, it runs out of ways to model being good at fighting having the same impact as spellcasting. If you want to have a character with similar power levels, you need to dramatically rework what the character is beyond just increasing their health and damage.

The Hulk is not a natural extension of Conan, but a Barbarian who goes from levels 5-20 is expected to embody both, with a gradual change at every point.

Let's use Batman as an example of a character that exists at a lot of power levels.


Batman fights muggers in the street and solves crimes, he's good with his fists, a skilled detective, and he has some fancy toys: A car, a supercomputer, a grappling hook.

Batman fights Bane, who is unleashing a virus bomb. He's so good that he can fistfight a man who was an expert combatant BEFORE he got superstrength. He's so smart he can synthesize a cure for the virus. He has so many fancy toys that he can deploy a swarm of Bat Drones to deliver the cure across the city.

Batman fights Darkseid, who is invading earth with an army of Parademons. He's so skilled that he can hold his own against an army of alien soldiers. He's so smart that he can work out the plan of a millenia old evil spacegod with access to unknowably powerful technology. He's got so many fancy toys that he can configure his personal satellite network to beam energy that disrupts Darkseid's portals.


Top-Level Batman may theoretically be "A skilled martial artist and detective who has some fancy toys", but in order to operate at that level, his skills and abilities need to go well beyond punching and dusting for fingerprints.

If you show up to a game saying "Okay, my character concept is a Pulp Detective, he's good at solving crimes, good with his fists, and he has some fancy toys that help him solve crimes", only to be told "That's great, but, FYI, as the campaign goes on, in order to contribute, "Being a good detective" will need to turn into "Able to cure a bioweapon".

[GloatingSwine]

And why shouldn't we be willing to do that? The opposition the game describes at 20th level is certainly on par with what Hulk fights. I mean, really, if I told you there was a movie where a demon lord had opened a portal to hell and the world was being overrun by demons, and I asked you to guess whether the protagonist of that movie was the Hulk or King Arthur, which one would you guess?

Trouble is, you basically can't.

The systemic limitations that bind martial characters don't allow it. You simply can't get that powerful within the mechanics of 5e. Like at level 20 Barbarians get +4 Strength and Con. For Hulk they would need to get basically +infinity. (His peak strength works out over ten trillion, in a system that goes up to 30).

Or look at Conan. Instead of saying Conan has to be 20th level, ask yourself this: what's the lowest level you could build Conan at? To avoid any issues with the flaws of the Barbarian class, let's suppose that whatever level you pick, you can give Conan any abilities any mundane character at that level can have. He can track as well as a Ranger. He can sneak as well as a Rogue. He can rage like a Barbarian. He has the feats of a Fighter and the maneuvers of a Warblade. I think you could do it by 7th level. And when you look at that character, can you honestly say he's on par with even a 10th level, non-TO Wizard? I can't. And I'm not willing to cut out literally half of what spellcasters can do just to avoid giving martials cool abilities as well.

Nobody's really saying Conan as presented in the stories "has to be 20th level", the peak end class fantasy of a single class. What people are saying is that if you're going to have these martial characters at all they need a reasonable projection up to the same level of capability as the magic characters whilst staying at least recognisable.

Like if you're Conan at level 7, you need to still be recognisable as something Conan could have turned into if he levelled up to 20 when you get there. You still need to be a mightily thewed warrior, a thief, an acrobat, and a raging berserker. And you need to do that hard enough that you belong in a high level adventure.

[Talakeal]

No, I think Takaleal's saying that's the only way to fix it unless you're willing to let the Barbarian be Hulk at level 20.

And I don't mean MCU Hulk.

I mean the Worldbreaker.

The problem is that high level magic is, by RAW, broken.

There is no level of martial character who can keep up with aD&D caster who is allowed all the infinite loops that 3.5 magic allows. It doesn’t matter if they are Hulk or Goku, they can’t keep up.

On the other hand, I think most incarnations of the Hulk are more than strong enough for level 20 RAI play where you fix or been the cheap spell combos.

Personally I think MCU Thor or DCU Wonder Woman are final models for a level 20 martial, and I think that 810k worth of magic items are more than enough to get a “mundane” guy to their level.

And why shouldn't we be willing to do that? The opposition the game describes at 20th level is certainly on par with what Hulk fights. I mean, really, if I told you there was a movie where a demon lord had opened a portal to hell and the world was being overrun by demons, and I asked you to guess whether the protagonist of that movie was the Hulk or King Arthur, which one would you guess?

Or look at Conan. Instead of saying Conan has to be 20th level, ask yourself this: what's the lowest level you could build Conan at? To avoid any issues with the flaws of the Barbarian class, let's suppose that whatever level you pick, you can give Conan any abilities any mundane character at that level can have. He can track as well as a Ranger. He can sneak as well as a Rogue. He can rage like a Barbarian. He has the feats of a Fighter and the maneuvers of a Warblade. I think you could do it by 7th level. And when you look at that character, can you honestly say he's on par with even a 10th level, non-TO Wizard? I can't. And I'm not willing to cut out literally half of what spellcasters can do just to avoid giving martials cool abilities as well.

Didn’t I already say that we could do this easily by comparing a war-mage to a war blade?

[RandomPeasant]

As the game continues, it runs out of ways to model being good at fighting having the same impact as spellcasting. If you want to have a character with similar power levels, you need to dramatically rework what the character is beyond just increasing their health and damage.

I don't know that I quite agree with that. There are plenty of characters that scale fighting (though, again, not mundane fighting) very far. Just as the Wizard can recognizably have the same shtick of "do magic" at 1st level (when the party fights rats) and at 20th level (when the party fights demon lords), the Monk can recognizably have the same shtick of "do kung fu" at both of those points (though the game has rarely executed this well). The issue tends to be more that skills don't scale as well as spells do. At low levels, the choice between Open Lock and knock is a meaningful resource tradeoff. At high levels, no printed martial -- let alone mundane -- has anything that compares with even shadow walk.

The Hulk is not a natural extension of Conan, but a Barbarian who goes from levels 5-20 is expected to embody both, with a gradual change at every point.

But Thor probably is a reasonable approximation of what Conan looks like if you scale him up to high level D&D. A plausible progression of recognizable power levels might be something like Conan -> Logen Ninefingers (who is basically Conan with some very minor elemental magic) -> Thor. Hulk is more a 20th level version of a Bear Warrior type, with the rage coming with an explicit transformation.

You simply can't get that powerful within the mechanics of 5e. Like at level 20 Barbarians get +4 Strength and Con. For Hulk they would need to get basically +infinity. (His peak strength works out over ten trillion, in a system that goes up to 30).

Well then I would say that is a flaw with the mechanics of 5e. It's certainly possible in the framework of 3e, and something of this sort is effectively required in 4e. And I think you're being somewhat pessimistic even within the 5e framework. You don't need to make Hulk's STR infinity and then write mechanics for how having infinite STR allows you to do Hulk stuff. You can just give Hulk mechanics that do Hulk stuff directly, in the same way casters get spells that do things instead of having everything fall into place from having a high enough INT or CHA. So Hulk doesn't have 10,000,000,000,000 STR, he has "Implausible Lift" (which allows him to pick up any object he can grab) and "Thunderclap" (which allows him to clap his hands together hard enough to project a wave of force) and so on and so forth for all the abilities Hulk needs.

Which goes back to what I said earlier about the failure of trying to bring casters down to the mundane's level. 5e tried hard to do that. They took away a bunch of toys. And it wasn't enough. Because the problem was never the casters. It was the idea that you needed to allow someone who was "recognizably Conan" to compete in adventures that are unrecognizably different from the ones Conan has.

What people are saying is that if you're going to have these martial characters at all they need a reasonable projection up to the same level of capability as the magic characters whilst staying at least recognisable.

Define "recognizable". Kaladin scales from "normal dude" to at least the early teens in what I would consider to be a martial powerset, and he's recognizably the same character throughout his story. I think if you pick a concept that you can only imagine scaling up to 7th level or 12th level or 4th level or 16th level, the system is not obligated to warp so that that becomes the maximum level. Whatever power range you pick, not every possible concept is going to recognizably scale from the beginning of it to the end. Some will stop too soon. Others will start too late. Some will want to go past the cap, or start below the beginning.

There is no level of martial character who can keep up with aD&D caster who is allowed all the infinite loops that 3.5 magic allows. It doesnÂ’t matter if they are Hulk or Goku, they canÂ’t keep up.

There is no level of spellcaster that can keep up with infinite loops either. That's sort of the nature of what "infinite" means. You're performing a bit of slight of hand here where you conflate the hard-infinite loops like "I can cast planar binding to summon something that can itself cast planar binding multiple times on my behalf" with things that are merely "very powerful". If you close the infinite loops, but leave spellcasters with their demon armies and rains of fire and forcecages and whatnot, there are plenty of martial characters that can keep up with that. They're just, again, not mundane.

Personally I think MCU Thor or DCU Wonder Woman are final models for a level 20 martial, and I think that 810k worth of magic items are more than enough to get a “mundane” guy to their level.

That character isn't "mundane". That character is Iron Man. He has a power source, that power source is just "magic items" rather than "god of thunder" or "eater of souls". And, frankly, that character is probably not what the overwhelming majority of people who write "Fighter" or "Barbarian" on their character sheet at 1st level want to end up being. If you show the guy who just rolled up a 1st level Barbarian the lineup of the Avengers and ask him which one of them he wants to be when the party is fighting off a world-conquering army from another dimension, he's going to point to Thor or Hulk, not Iron Man.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well then I would say that is a flaw with the mechanics of 5e. It's certainly possible in 3e, and something of this sort is effectively required in 4e. And I think you're being somewhat pessimistic even within the 5e framework. You don't need to make Hulk's STR infinity and then write mechanics for how having infinite STR allows you to do Hulk stuff. You can just give Hulk mechanics that do Hulk stuff directly, in the same way casters get spells that do things instead of having everything fall into place from having a high enough INT or CHA. So Hulk doesn't have 10,000,000,000,000 STR, he has "Implausible Lift" (which allows him to pick up any object he can grab) and "Thunderclap" (which allows him to clap his hands together hard enough to project a wave of force) and so on and so forth for all the abilities Hulk needs.

For me, it's a feature. Why is "goes to gonzo superheros with undefined[1] powers" a requirement? Where is it stated as a requirement? Why is mimicking the Hulk (or any other fictional creation[2]) a requirement? Heck, in 3e, doing such things requires significant cheese and is very clearly not intended. I mean you can certainly write games where that's the intent. Exalted is one. But that's not the promise D&D (especially not 5e) made. So claiming it as a flaw of the mechanics (that it doesn't do something it never intended or promised to do) is rather...odd.

[1] superheroes have whatever strength of powers they need to for the scene at hand. Each writer has a different idea of what they should be. And there's certainly no attempt at anything like hard continuity or consistent world-building, at least until you get to specific runs by single sets of people (like the MCU). So "the Hulk" is an undefined range, not something you can balance against.

[2] comparing to fictional characters from non-TTRPG media is always fundamentally flawed, because the requirements for a pre-written fiction (where the entire world is built around these protagonists and it's all post-hoc filling in the blanks[3]) and for team-based, no-protagonist[4] TTRPGs like D&D are completely alien to one another. You can't do protagonist-level characters in a team-based game. Full stop. Just doesn't work. Not only that, the vaguely team-based pre-written fiction (such as the MCU) play all sorts of games so that you can "balance" out the team...without actually doing creating anything like the kind of balance you'd need for a game. They pass around the incompetent ball and create special-purpose counters to particular characters, as well as just handwaving out whole chunks of their power sets as needed. And those really powerful characters? Don't have a patch on a PO 3e tier-1 caster. Not even one abusing loops and NI stuff. Because 3e magic as played is fundamentally borked from the get go and cannot be made to make any kind of sense without tearing it out by the roots. Mainly because people have invested lots of time and effort into motivated readings to avoid the actual restrictions.

Instead, the only meaningful way of doing things is for the system to define what the "appropriate range of power" is ab initio and build toward that. Sure, if you want to emulate a form of fiction, go ahead. But build the system for that purpose. Don't try to take a system that never tried to emulate a certain work and try to force it to shoehorn in anything and everything. D&D (especially) is not a generic fantasy simulator. It has its bounds and its limits and breakage caused by going outside of those is not the system's fault, no more than breaking your fancy sports car because you took it into a lake is the sports car's fault--it's not a boat, not designed to be a boat, and using it as a boat is not supported behavior (and the consequences are on your head).

[3] Yes, even Sanderson's characters are all post-hoc. He claims to have hard rules...but they're always conveniently such as to let him write the stories he wants to and have the characters do what they need. Because that's the luxury of pre-writing and then going back and editing the in-universe past to smooth out the discrepancies.

[BRC]

I don't know that I quite agree with that. There are plenty of characters that scale fighting (though, again, not mundane fighting) very far. Just as the Wizard can recognizably have the same shtick of "do magic" at 1st level (when the party fights rats) and at 20th level (when the party fights demon lords), the Monk can recognizably have the same shtick of "do kung fu" at both of those points (though the game has rarely executed this well). The issue tends to be more that skills don't scale as well as spells do. At low levels, the choice between Open Lock and knock is a meaningful resource tradeoff. At high levels, no printed martial -- let alone mundane -- has anything that compares with even shadow walk.

So, you bring up the crux of the issue, which is "Mundane", and the idea of class fantasy.

Abilities in D&D tend to fall into two categories, pretty reliably based on whether they're Mundane or Supernatural in nature.

Mundane abilities work by modifying or expanding on a basic action available to everybody. A Fighter gets "Extra attack", which modifies the Attack action. They get easier access to feats like "Great weapon master", and more stat increases so their basic attacks are stronger.

Barbarians get a damage bonus, and resistance to damage when raging, the effect of which is to modify how well they do stuff (Attack with weapons, take damage) that are covered by the core rules that apply to everybody.


Supernatural abilities, by contrast, tend to be framed as explicit effects. A Wizard can cast Fireball, a Fighter can't even attempt anything approaching Fireball unless their character sheet says so. There is no generic "Make an explosion" action that anybody can try, and the Wizard is just much better at.

The issue with this is that it becomes increasingly awkward, as characters level up, to model increasingly powerful abilities as "The same thing anybody can do, but better", but there are a lot of people for whom the mechanical fantasy they want to play out, that of a fighter or barbarian, is pretty closely tied to this way of modeling Mundane vs Supernatural abilities (This is what poisoned a lot of the response to 4e).


For example, Wizards are good at killing a big swarm of enemies, they can use Fireballs. Fighters, less so. 3.5 had Cleave and Great Cleave, but that was cumbersome compared to the brutal simplicity of the Fireball.


Now, you COULD give the Fighter an explicit ability that is narratively modeled as perfectly mundane actions done with incredible skill. Some AoE damage move that represents the Fighter using their unparalleled swordsmanship to cut through a swathe of enemies in a single round. In fact, Rangers get exactly this, but Rangers kind of suck so nobody noticed.

And this is a great way to model it! Rather than stretching the basic attack action further and further to get the effect you want, just say "Fighters can do this thing that I want them to be able to do", without trying to model it as some extension of something anybody can do.


But, there are a lot of people out there who are pretty invested in this idea that a Mundane Character's abilities need to be modeled using only modifications to core mechanics, because the game presents the core mechanics as the Mundane world, with any strict exceptions being the Supernatural, and part of the class fantasy of the fighter is that they are a Mundane Character of incredible skill, and so long as your idea of "Mundane" is explicitly tied to "Engages with the game primarily using mechanics everybody has access to", it limits you.


In my mind, the solution would be to be basically playing a Fighter from 1-10, and then after 10th level you start to incorporate Tome of Battle style mechanics, as your character's skills expand beyond what can be reasonably modeled with basic attacks and skill checks. But you can't really square that with a desire to keep Mundane Classes primarily using Basic mechanics. Especially because D&D likes to model things on the Vancian level, which reinforces this idea that "Stuff you can only do X times a day is Magic Stuff".

"You can do cool thing X Times a day" is a great system, but since that reads as Magic to people, it interferes with the idea of how a fighter "Should" play

When they tried to rebuild the whole system without that assumption, they got 4e.

[RandomPeasant]

For me, it's a feature. Why is "goes to gonzo superheros with undefined[1] powers" a requirement?

"undefined powers", as opposed to the well-defined powers of characters like Conan and King Arthur? I just read a version of King Arthur where he's a gangster and the holy grail is a flying saucer, but tell me again how "gets green and angry" is too poorly defined of a powerset to include in the game.

As far as "why", I've explained that: because the alternative is a train of nerfs for casters that never ends. If I want to be able to play Quick Ben or Apprentice or any of the other powerful magic users in fantasy, the only way to do that is for the martials to get something good too. The alternative to Conan eventually growing up to get something that matters on the same level as plane shift is no one every getting anything that matters on that level, and that's not acceptable.

Heck, in 3e, doing such things requires significant cheese and is very clearly not intended.

Only on the martial end of things, and only because they don't get nice things. You might miss specific powers of specific characters, but you can build something about as strong as any given fantasy spellcaster in 3e without cheese (with the exception of a few areas D&D just doesn't cover for no good reason).

But that's not the promise D&D (especially not 5e) made.

Yes, it is. As I've said before and will say again: D&D has included god-slaying since before I was born. If you don't like it, there are games where people cap out at Conan. The vast range of power levels it includes is a core part of D&D. You can deal with that, or you can find a different system.

Yes, even Sanderson's characters are all post-hoc.

Every character is post-hoc. That's the difference between single-author fiction and rules-driven multi-author fiction. Every single thing you could choose as an inspiration for D&D was made up by a process that is not fundamentally different from Sanderson's and, your complaints aside, generally far less rules-driven.

In my mind, the solution would be to be basically playing a Fighter from 1-10, and then after 10th level you start to incorporate Tome of Battle style mechanics, as your character's skills expand beyond what can be reasonably modeled with basic attacks and skill checks. But you can't really square that with a desire to keep Mundane Classes primarily using Basic mechanics.

I don't think it's ever a good idea to have characters whose entire thing is "I make a basic attack". So I would disagree somewhat with how you're suggesting doing things, but in general, yeah. As the game goes on, every character should upgrade to new vistas of power. For casters, that's pretty naturally, as no one really cares to force the issue of whether a fireball and a meteor swarm represent fundamentally different approaches to the world. But for martials, that generally means slapping on a new power source when you go from "Fighter" to "Hell Knight". So bring back 4e's notion of Tiers and just do that. You start out in Heroic Tier, and in Heroic Tier people are in the at least mundane-ish bracket. Martials cap out at around Captain America, and casters do not get abilities that break low level adventures. Then you have Paragon Tier, where the game starts including things that you can't solve as a regular dude, and everyone gets a new power source. Maybe it's just like your old power source (a Druid becoming a Verdant Lord) or maybe it upgrades you away from mundanity (a Barbarian becoming a Death Knight, or a Fighter turning into a Blade-Bound). Eventually, you hit Epic Tier, and people upgrade again, this time to stuff that is totally gonzo so that you can fight enemies like "a walking mountain of ice that spreads winter wherever it goes". And the game is very explicit about supporting starting at specific tiers or not leaving certain tiers if that's not the campaign you want to play.

"You can do cool thing X Times a day" is a great system, but since that reads as Magic to people, it interferes with the idea of how a fighter "Should" play.

I would mostly disagree with that. Daily limits honestly kinda suck, especially because they play poorly with non-daily limits. They are sometimes necessary (e.g. fabricate at-will is way different from fabricate 4/day), but for the most part I think they should be avoided. Daily limits should go on things with strategic uses, or super-moves. Most people's combat powers should have some kind of encounter-level resource management system, though there are a lot of options there.

[BRC]

I don't think it's ever a good idea to have characters whose entire thing is "I make a basic attack". So I would disagree somewhat with how you're suggesting doing things, but in general, yeah. As the game goes on, every character should upgrade to new vistas of power. For casters, that's pretty naturally, as no one really cares to force the issue of whether a fireball and a meteor swarm represent fundamentally different approaches to the world. But for martials, that generally means slapping on a new power source when you go from "Fighter" to "Hell Knight". So bring back 4e's notion of Tiers and just do that. You start out in Heroic Tier, and in Heroic Tier people are in the at least mundane-ish bracket. Martials cap out at around Captain America, and casters do not get abilities that break low level adventures. Then you have Paragon Tier, where the game starts including things that you can't solve as a regular dude, and everyone gets a new power source. Maybe it's just like your old power source (a Druid becoming a Verdant Lord) or maybe it upgrades you away from mundanity (a Barbarian becoming a Death Knight, or a Fighter turning into a Blade-Bound). Eventually, you hit Epic Tier, and people upgrade again, this time to stuff that is totally gonzo so that you can fight enemies like "a walking mountain of ice that spreads winter wherever it goes". And the game is very explicit about supporting starting at specific tiers or not leaving certain tiers if that's not the campaign you want to play.

Without inventing too many new mechanics, I actually think the Monk's Ki system is a solid model for how Martial characters should/could work.

You have your standard abilities, and then a consumable resources. You start out with a handful of abilities that fall within the realm of "Mundane but Better", monks can spend Ki to make extra attacks, dodge blows, or move faster, representing them pushing a bit beyond their standard capabilities.

As you level up, you not only get more Ki, thus you can "Push" more frequently, you also get more powerful explicit abilities which cost more points. What was previously you pushing yourself beyond your limits becomes something you can do casually, and whole new avenues of abilities open up to keep your contributions relevant.

[GloatingSwine]

But, there are a lot of people out there who are pretty invested in this idea that a Mundane Character's abilities need to be modeled using only modifications to core mechanics, because the game presents the core mechanics as the Mundane world, with any strict exceptions being the Supernatural, and part of the class fantasy of the fighter is that they are a Mundane Character of incredible skill, and so long as your idea of "Mundane" is explicitly tied to "Engages with the game primarily using mechanics everybody has access to", it limits you.

On the other hand, people have already pointed to MCU Thor as an indicator of what a level 20 competitive Barbarian type character could be.

So let's take Thor as he is at his most "mundane" in The Dark World.

He's vastly superhumanly strong and durable, way beyond the ability of the stats system of D&D to grant to a martial character, so he needs some kind of inherent ability that basically sets his strength or durability to Yes for whatever he's attempting when he exerts himself. Not "well he gets +4 and that's a bit superhuman because his max is 24 now. Taking him to 0HP needs him to try and stare down the whole sun at point blank range.

And he has a magic hammer that grants him flight, lets him shoot lightning, and will return to his hand through any obstacle, even across planar barriers.

It's not "some cool powers", it's "a god of hammers walks among you". More limited than a wizard, but a wizard can never be nearly as good as he is at anything he can do, no matter what the wizard casts or prepares or crafts or shapeshifts into.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1. "undefined powers", as opposed to the well-defined powers of characters like Conan and King Arthur? I just read a version of King Arthur where he's a gangster and the holy grail is a flying saucer, but tell me again how "gets green and angry" is too poorly defined of a powerset to include in the game.

2. As far as "why", I've explained that: because the alternative is a train of nerfs for casters that never ends. If I want to be able to play Quick Ben or Apprentice or any of the other powerful magic users in fantasy, the only way to do that is for the martials to get something good too. The alternative to Conan eventually growing up to get something that matters on the same level as plane shift is no one every getting anything that matters on that level, and that's not acceptable.

3. Only on the martial end of things, and only because they don't get nice things. You might miss specific powers of specific characters, but you can build something about as strong as any given fantasy spellcaster in 3e without cheese (with the exception of a few areas D&D just doesn't cover for no good reason).

4. Yes, it is. As I've said before and will say again: D&D has included god-slaying since before I was born. If you don't like it, there are games where people cap out at Conan. The vast range of power levels it includes is a core part of D&D. You can deal with that, or you can find a different system.

5. Every character is post-hoc. That's the difference between single-author fiction and rules-driven multi-author fiction. Every single thing you could choose as an inspiration for D&D was made up by a process that is not fundamentally different from Sanderson's and, your complaints aside, generally far less rules-driven.

1. And who said those are valid characters in a D&D game? Certainly not any of the modern game makers. Not even 3e.
2. Maybe playing one of those (non-D&D) "powerful magic users in fantasy" isn't a supported mode in D&D? Or at least shouldn't be? Because the upper bound for "powerful magic users in fantasy" is...non-existent. It's a power arms race--for every example you can come up with, there's a more powerful one. And characters are only meaningful in context of their world. Those worlds are not D&D worlds, nor were they designed to be. They were designed for pre-written fiction, not TTRPGs. As such, trying to emulate them means you can't have a coherent world. By mixing things that are already stretching the bounds of sanity and whose powers are "whatever I want them to be" (where I is the author), there's no bounding principle.

My statement is merely that games are allowed to set their "accepted range" and going outside of that in either direction is not supported. If you want to play a fantasy god wizard...make a game that does that. Don't try to insist that everyone else change their game to accommodate you or claim that anyone else who doesn't want that has "faulty mechanics". D&D 5e (and 4e, and even 3e, outside of cheese and forum!RAW) specifically does not support that style of play. You can do it, but you're stepping outside of the supported range of the system and any breakage is not the system's fault.

I, personally, do not believe in mundane PCs. But I do not believe in "I should be able to reshape reality at a whim" PCs either. So claiming that the only other option other than an endless power spiral into gonzo land is an endless spiral in the other direction is just not true. There's an excluded middle, where the actual game systems in question make their stand. Nothing in 3e, 4e, or 5e promised you that you could play Quick Ben. Or Dr Strange. Or Conan. That was never in the cards. So any fault is one of expectations, not system.

3. No. Quick Ben, for instance, is basically capable of casting any spell at any time at any power. Doing that in 3e requires epic (and not at the level 20+ meaning) levels of cheese. Stinky limburger. And to even get close without super-stinky cheese, you have to dumpster dive through splat books and use questionable rulings (including mostly ignoring things like the setting-specific nature of PrCs and spells), ignoring context and adhering to the "unless the DM says I get what I want, he's a meany" mentality. And still can't mimic a tiny fraction of what he can do. And he's on the mild side of the spectrum. He's a walking plot device (and not a very coherent one either, as much as I like the Malazan books). As are most super-powered wizards--they have whatever powers are convenient for the case at hand, acting as a literal deus ex machina. That's not an acceptable (in my book) TTRPG character.

4. It included it (by design, anyway) in one particular portion of AD&D. With the "we really shouldn't include this, because this is a farce" qualifier written explicitly in the intro. 5e explicitly says "you can't kill real gods". It's not supported. And that's not a mechanical flaw, that's a system design decision. It may not be something you like, but it's not an objective flaw.

5. Every pre-written fiction character. Which was exactly my point--you can't use those as good comparisons to TTRPG characters. They're just entirely inapposite. You're comparing not just apples to oranges, but atom bombs to butterflies. Saying "martial TTRPG characters should be like Thor" is a statement that cannot be satisfied--if this were a compiler, it'd warn that that comparison cannot ever be true. They're different types that do not inherit from each other.

[Talakeal]

There is no level of spellcaster that can keep up with infinite loops either. That's sort of the nature of what "infinite" means. You're performing a bit of slight of hand here where you conflate the hard-infinite loops like "I can cast planar binding to summon something that can itself cast planar binding multiple times on my behalf" with things that are merely "very powerful". If you close the infinite loops, but leave spellcasters with their demon armies and rains of fire and forcecages and whatnot, there are plenty of martial characters that can keep up with that. They're just, again, not mundane.

I totally agree here.

The guy I used to have this argument with all the time (something mage. Anonymous? Red? Unknown? Any? Too many mages on this board) played a planar shepherd and insisted that its ability to emulate any ability in the game through wild shape was the only way to replicate the sort of fiction he enjoyed, and that anyone who couldn't play up to his level was ruining the game for him and that all martial character should be capped at level 10.

You are making very similar arguments, but not quite the same.

That character isn't "mundane". That character is Iron Man. He has a power source, that power source is just "magic items" rather than "god of thunder" or "eater of souls". And, frankly, that character is probably not what the overwhelming majority of people who write "Fighter" or "Barbarian" on their character sheet at 1st level want to end up being. If you show the guy who just rolled up a 1st level Barbarian the lineup of the Avengers and ask him which one of them he wants to be when the party is fighting off a world-conquering army from another dimension, he's going to point to Thor or Hulk, not Iron Man.

It seems like most of our argument boils down to the semantics over what qualifies as "mundane".

IMO Iron Man would qualify as mundane, although I would say that he much better represents the "artificer" class just as Hulk better represents the barbarian class.

For me, "munande" tends to mean something that would be theoretically possible using real world physics. It does not preclude you from interacting with magic / super science. Of course, you have to give a bit of leeway for the nature of the setting; for example rl Iron Man would have tons of concussions irl no matter how good his armor is, just like a high level character's HP in D&D don't map well to any real world level of injury.

For me to core fighter concept is a highly trained fighter who uses skill with (probably magical) arms and armor to accomplish their goals and does not innately cast spells or use similar supernatural abilities, and I do not have trouble allowing such a character to exist in the same space as 20th level casters (barring the infinite loops and such).

You can't do protagonist-level characters in a team-based game. Full stop. Just doesn't work. Not only that, the vaguely team-based pre-written fiction (such as the MCU) play all sorts of games so that you can "balance" out the team...without actually doing creating anything like the kind of balance you'd need for a game. They pass around the incompetent ball and create special-purpose counters to particular characters, as well as just handwaving out whole chunks of their power sets as needed. And those really powerful characters? Don't have a patch on a PO 3e tier-1 caster. Not even one abusing loops and NI stuff. Because 3e magic as played is fundamentally borked from the get go and cannot be made to make any kind of sense without tearing it out by the roots. Mainly because people have invested lots of time and effort into motivated readings to avoid the actual restrictions.

I remember back when 5E came out and I said I was super disappointed with how the saving throw system made it harder to save as you got to higher levels rather than easier, and was told that is to reinforce the team nature of the game. You are meant to frequently fail saves and be incapacitated and need to be bailed out by your friends, and if you don't like it you better keep a paladin and / or bard with you at all times.

Yes, it is. As I've said before and will say again: D&D has included god-slaying since before I was born. If you don't like it, there are games where people cap out at Conan. The vast range of power levels it includes is a core part of D&D. You can deal with that, or you can find a different system.

It really hasn't though. A party of high level PCs can, in some editions, take down demigods or avatars.

In 2E and 5E gods are just plot devices, and in 3E the divine rules are so borked that you can't stand up to them without ludicrous levels of TO, which theoretically the gods should be able to do as well or better than you in turn.

I don't know of a single time in any version of D&D when a solo character was supposed to be able to stand up to a god.

I am not saying I agree with this, but saying that high level characters in d&d are intended to solo gods is a bit disingenuous.

I would mostly disagree with that. Daily limits honestly kinda suck, especially because they play poorly with non-daily limits. They are sometimes necessary (e.g. fabricate at-will is way different from fabricate 4/day), but for the most part I think they should be avoided. Daily limits should go on things with strategic uses, or super-moves. Most people's combat powers should have some kind of encounter-level resource management system, though there are a lot of options there.

Hard agree.

That's one of the reasons I reject any of the proposed "make martials more like casters" fixes, they always have stupid fire and forget mechanics attached.

On the other hand, people have already pointed to MCU Thor as an indicator of what a level 20 competitive Barbarian type character could be.

So let's take Thor as he is at his most "mundane" in The Dark World.

He's vastly superhumanly strong and durable, way beyond the ability of the stats system of D&D to grant to a martial character, so he needs some kind of inherent ability that basically sets his strength or durability to Yes for whatever he's attempting when he exerts himself. Not "well he gets +4 and that's a bit superhuman because his max is 24 now. Taking him to 0HP needs him to try and stare down the whole sun at point blank range.

And he has a magic hammer that grants him flight, lets him shoot lightning, and will return to his hand through any obstacle, even across planar barriers.

It's not "some cool powers", it's "a god of hammers walks among you". More limited than a wizard, but a wizard can never be nearly as good as he is at anything he can do, no matter what the wizard casts or prepares or crafts or shapeshifts into.

One problem I have with even MCU Thor is it is hard to tell where his powers, his hammer's powers, asgardian physiology, and the Odin Force come into play.

In Thor 1 and Ragnarok he is repeatedly taken out by non super powered beings when he is depressed and without his hammer, despite being an awesome physical specimen who can go toe to toe with the Hulk in an arena and not end up smeared across the wall.

Still a pretty good model for a high level fighter imo.

1. And who said those are valid characters in a D&D game? Certainly not any of the modern game makers. Not even 3e.
2. Maybe playing one of those (non-D&D) "powerful magic users in fantasy" isn't a supported mode in D&D? Or at least shouldn't be? Because the upper bound for "powerful magic users in fantasy" is...non-existent. It's a power arms race--for every example you can come up with, there's a more powerful one. And characters are only meaningful in context of their world. Those worlds are not D&D worlds, nor were they designed to be. They were designed for pre-written fiction, not TTRPGs. As such, trying to emulate them means you can't have a coherent world. By mixing things that are already stretching the bounds of sanity and whose powers are "whatever I want them to be" (where I is the author), there's no bounding principle.

My statement is merely that games are allowed to set their "accepted range" and going outside of that in either direction is not supported. If you want to play a fantasy god wizard...make a game that does that. Don't try to insist that everyone else change their game to accommodate you or claim that anyone else who doesn't want that has "faulty mechanics". D&D 5e (and 4e, and even 3e, outside of cheese and forum!RAW) specifically does not support that style of play. You can do it, but you're stepping outside of the supported range of the system and any breakage is not the system's fault.

I, personally, do not believe in mundane PCs. But I do not believe in "I should be able to reshape reality at a whim" PCs either. So claiming that the only other option other than an endless power spiral into gonzo land is an endless spiral in the other direction is just not true. There's an excluded middle, where the actual game systems in question make their stand. Nothing in 3e, 4e, or 5e promised you that you could play Quick Ben. Or Dr Strange. Or Conan. That was never in the cards. So any fault is one of expectations, not system.

Agreed.

Define "recognizable". Kaladin scales from "normal dude" to at least the early teens in what I would consider to be a martial powerset, and he's recognizably the same character throughout his story. I think if you pick a concept that you can only imagine scaling up to 7th level or 12th level or 4th level or 16th level, the system is not obligated to warp so that that becomes the maximum level. Whatever power range you pick, not every possible concept is going to recognizably scale from the beginning of it to the end. Some will stop too soon. Others will start too late. Some will want to go past the cap, or start below the beginning.

Ok, how about a game where:

The concepts are Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Paladin, Ranger, Bard, Druid, Sorcerer, Monk, Warlock, Barbarian, and Warlord.

The level ranges for all of them are: Level 1 (where you have even odds of beating a gnoll while armed with ~100 gold worth of mundane equipment) until level 20 (where you have even odds of beating a Pit Fiend while armed with ~800k gold of magical equipment.)

As far as "why", I've explained that: because the alternative is a train of nerfs for casters that never ends. If I want to be able to play Quick Ben or Apprentice or any of the other powerful magic users in fantasy, the only way to do that is for the martials to get something good too. The alternative to Conan eventually growing up to get something that matters on the same level as plane shift is no one every getting anything that matters on that level, and that's not acceptable.

Ok, so serious question here, why is it not acceptable?

What exactly is the problem here? Why are people who enjoy playing high level martial who can contribute to high level adventures with "mundane" skills having "badwrongfun"?

Because for a lot of people, it seems like they don't actually care about mechanical or narrative consistency, but rather they really resent the idea that "some guy with a pointy stick" is allowed to be on the same level as their "all powerful wizard who re-writes reality by force of will alone"; or that they are stuck casting plane-shift and being the magical taxi while the fighter just gets to put all of their resources into combat and have fun wrecking face?

I am not saying that this is you, but that's normally where this topic end up after ten pages of back and forth on the matter.

[RandomPeasant]

Without inventing too many new mechanics, I actually think the Monk's Ki system is a solid model for how Martial characters should/could work.

I can see that being a viable model for martial characters, but I don't see why there needs to be just one. There isn't just one model for magic users. Incarnates are different from Beguilers. Wizards are different from Binders. Warlocks are different from Paladins. And, fundamentally, it's not the resource management system that is the problem. The issue is that Martials Can't Have Nice Things. If you change that, you can have martials work however you want and be viable.

So let's take Thor as he is at his most "mundane" in The Dark World.

And the crux of the issue is that how mundane he is there is "not at all". Even before the whole "are you a god of hammers" speech, Thor is a god from space. If that's your model for martial characters, the conceptual problems are already gone, and the mechanical ones (which are for more solvable) are all that remain.

Those worlds are not D&D worlds, nor were they designed to be.

I mean, aside from Malazan, which was literally some guy's D&D world. This idea you have that there's some big dividing line between D&D and the rest of the fantasy genre is something you've invented out of whole cloth, and I see no reason to indulge you in it. From the beginning, D&D has taken things from elsewhere in the genre. The Ranger started out as a way to play Aragorn. The idea that it's unreasonable to want to play Ranger or Taniel Two-Shot or Nona Grey is something you've invented.

D&D 5e (and 4e, and even 3e, outside of cheese and forum!RAW) specifically does not support that style of play.

Then why do they have the spells that enable them? Why do they have monsters like "a walking mountain of ice that carries winter wherever it goes" or "the demon lord of all undead"? Why do 4e characters eventually become Demigods and Lords of Hell? D&D has never only been the thing you want it to be. It has always been more than that, and your demands that the things you do not like be stripped away are the selfishness of someone who cannot share things with people who use them in different ways. Notice how no one ever says that D&D can only be the game of fighting gods and conquering planes. It is only ever the reverse.

3. No. Quick Ben, for instance, is basically capable of casting any spell at any time at any power. Doing that in 3e requires epic (and not at the level 20+ meaning) levels of cheese.

Yes, the deep cheese of "being a Sorcerer". Quick Ben has some magic he has access to, and can use that magic as he wishes. That's not some optimized nonsense, that's a class from the PHB. Maybe the specific numbers look more like a Warmage with some Prestige Domains (fitting the way his Warrens give him specifically-themed selections of magic). Maybe you think that's "cheese". I certainly don't, and I don't think you'll convince a lot of people of that.

IMO Iron Man would qualify as mundane, although I would say that he much better represents the "artificer" class just as Hulk better represents the barbarian class.

And the Artificer is not a mundane class. The Artificer, in D&D, makes magic items. That makes him magic. There's an alternate approach where you have a signature item whose powers only you can unlock, but that's also you being magic. And, no, you can't simply use magic items, because anyone can do that. You have to have a comparative advantage in their use, and that means magic of your own.

I am not saying I agree with this, but saying that high level characters in d&d are intended to solo gods is a bit disingenuous.

Well, the nature of advancement is that unless you arbitrarily stop the game, people will eventually be able to solo stuff they used to need a party to beat. Look back at Baphomet again. At 16th level, he's a boss monster that takes the whole party a good deal of prep to beat. At 20th level, he's a normal encounter you're supposed to be able to clear four times in a normal adventuring day. And at 24th level, he's a chump that anyone in the party should be able to cleanly one-shot.

Still a pretty good model for a high level fighter imo.

I can agree with that, but he's not a "mundane" character in any sense. Hulk can punch out the giant armored space whale-serpent-dragons Thanos uses as heavy air support. If you're taking those hits without turning into a fine red mist, you're not what I could reasonably call "mundane".

What exactly is the problem here? Why are people who enjoy playing high level martial who can contribute to high level adventures with "mundane" skills having "badwrongfun"?

The problem is there are characters with power beyond the mundane, and I would like to play those characters. If "regular guy with a sword" is a 20th level character, the various characters who are "regular guy with a sword, plus some magic" must be 21st level characters, and I just don't see how that's reasonable or necessary. 20 levels is a huge amount of space. Can we really not fit the range from "starting adventurer" (who is necessarily more powerful than a regular dude) and Conan (who is just not that impressive) in anything less than all of that?

Seriously, what's your plan for supporting someone like Kaladin? He's a fully competent mundane combatant. He's got as much spear-wielding skill as anyone in his world. He also has some decent-to-good magic. Where does that guy fit in the game if simply being a fully competent mundane combatant is supposed to be a 20th level character?

[PhoenixPhyre]

1) I mean, aside from Malazan, which was literally some guy's D&D world. This idea you have that there's some big dividing line between D&D and the rest of the fantasy genre is something you've invented out of whole cloth, and I see no reason to indulge you in it. From the beginning, D&D has taken things from elsewhere in the genre. The Ranger started out as a way to play Aragorn. The idea that it's unreasonable to want to play Ranger or Taniel Two-Shot or Nona Grey is something you've invented.

2) Then why do they have the spells that enable them? Why do they have monsters like "a walking mountain of ice that carries winter wherever it goes" or "the demon lord of all undead"? Why do 4e characters eventually become Demigods and Lords of Hell? D&D has never only been the thing you want it to be. It has always been more than that, and your demands that the things you do not like be stripped away are the selfishness of someone who cannot share things with people who use them in different ways. Notice how no one ever says that D&D can only be the game of fighting gods and conquering planes. It is only ever the reverse.

3) Yes, the deep cheese of "being a Sorcerer". Quick Ben has some magic he has access to, and can use that magic as he wishes. That's not some optimized nonsense, that's a class from the PHB. Maybe the specific numbers look more like a Warmage with some Prestige Domains (fitting the way his Warrens give him specifically-themed selections of magic). Maybe you think that's "cheese". I certainly don't, and I don't think you'll convince a lot of people of that.

1) It may have started that way, but rapidly changed to be much different. The cosmology is completely different, the magic system is entirely different, the characters are way out of range of anything you can build by the rules, etc. Even the most basic characters (the pre-ascension Bridgeburners, for instance) are...decidedly supernatural and cannot be replicated by any class with any fidelity. So no. Malazan as printed is not a D&D world in any sense. And as a printed work, it cannot be. Not even Forgotten Realms novels match the rules as written. Intentionally so. You can't build Drizzt by the rules and end up in the same place. You can't build Elminster the same way and get the novel!Elminster, at least as a playable character. Pre-written fiction and TTRPGs are completely disjoint. They have to be, because their needs and constraints are completely different.

2) Monsters are not PCs; and even mundane+magic item characters can face those as enemies without issue. That doesn't mean that they should be playable characters. Those fictional wizards? They're NPCs (walking plot devices, in particular). They're not PC-candidates. Not in any sane, as designed D&D game. I only want the game to do what it says it does, which isn't and has never been all about reshaping reality at a whim, especially at the individual level. The PCs are always supposed to be the underdogs, not cosmic forces of their own.

And this matters, because if you say that high level play necessarily involves this paradigm shift, you're requiring the game to do two contradictory things--you're expecting the game to actually be two different games. Which means it will inevitably fail at both. I want a game that doesn't change paradigms half way through, whether that's "all high power all the time" (ie Exalted) or "all 'low' power all the time" (ie D&D as designed). Trying to do both is a guarantee you'll do neither well. You want it to shift from peasants to gods, a transition that just doesn't work as designed. It can't work unless you put a hard, clear, relatively low boundary on the upper end. Because those high-power people just make it a child's game of "I shot you! No, you didn't! I shot you infinity times! I shot you infinity + 1 times!". There's no upper end if your basis point is "whatever the most powerful thing someone has ever written up".

Games need to decide what they're willing to handle, and do that. D&D (at least 4e and 5e) have decided that their gameplay won't change, that even a level 20 character is a mortal who can't take on gods[1] or reshape reality at will. While also saying that mundane mortals have no place as PCs. That's the false dichotomy--that unless a character can scale to be arbitrarily powerful, they're mundane. 5e PCs are not mundane, even the ones that don't cast spells. Every single one of them has fantastic (can't happen on Earth) powers. They're explicitly called out as being supernatural.

5e has explicitly (and implicitly) excluded vast swaths of fantasy fiction from consideration, and is (in my opinion) better for it. 3e had the hubris that via the d20 system you could create anything--like all forms of hubris, it fell apart as soon as it was tested. 3e only worked (for any definition of worked) when played as designed, meaning the same type of gameplay at high levels as at low levels. 4e, while it had Epic Destinies that ended up with your character ascending, did so after play ended. Accepting that destiny meant the game was over for that character. And even then, they were minor ascendants, with minor powers. Not even close to anything from the works you've cited.

3) If that's your idea of "playing Quick Ben", then I have to call into question how a barbarian doesn't meet Thor's standard. They're almost the same distance apart...except the barbarian is miles and miles closer to Thor than any non-cheese sorcerer ever would be to Quick Ben. Quick Ben is shown manipulating Elder Warrens, having concurrent access to 7 warrens (which is well beyond what is thought possible by any being, let alone a mortal) and casting spells that are off the power scale. And having basically perfect foreknowledge of events at a massive scale. He's a walking plot device. He's not a character. And, critically, the plot only happens because he's hobbled by other factors, many of which are fabricated out-of-universe for that purpose (ie they have to handwave some reason why he can't just answer all the problems himself). The times he can actually act? He walks all over gods and is a walking deus ex machina (literally). That's no kind of team-based TTRPG character. And that goes for all the major "powerful wizard" characters. They're not actually characters, they're just plot devices, McGuffins in the shape of people. Their powers ebb and flow, because at their (demonstrated) peak, the plot doesn't happen. And that's poison to any kind of game, because players won't be willing to have their powers constrained that way. Which means no adventures can happen, because he solves anything, no matter how powerful with a wave of his hand. He's arbitrarily powerful, constrained by plot armor only. Basically, Quick Ben is what happens when you throw in a TO character into a non-TO game and then run around trying to account for him. He's a walking demonstration of how awful that kind of power is for anything like a coherent setting. It necessarily warps the entire thing around him. The game/plot reduces to "neutralize Quick Ben or the plot goes away".

[1] no, demon princes and Dukes of Hell are not gods. They're explicitly not on the same power scale at all. They're explicitly designed as "things you can sword to death".

[Cluedrew]

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?

That's actually a pretty clever way to check for crossing a tier of power as opposed to crossing a tier of power. I like it. I don't have time to do it either right now but I do like it.

The guy I used to have this argument with all the time (something mage. Anonymous? Red? Unknown? Any? Too many mages on this board) played a planar shepherd and insisted that its ability to emulate any ability in the game through wild shape was the only way to replicate the sort of fiction he enjoyed, and that anyone who couldn't play up to his level was ruining the game for him and that all martial character should be capped at level 10.

I think I know who you are talking about and if it was who I think it was (they certainly said some similar things to me) they only had a mage avatar and did not have mage in their name. Don't want to point fingers but it doesn't sound like something Anonymouswizard would say.

It seems like most of our argument boils down to the semantics over what qualifies as "mundane".

Yeah pretty much. As I have said before I find martial (having to do with war) to have less problematic connotations than mundane (boring or everyday, a term which applies to very few protagonists even if they are real world humans). Ultimately though I think neither quite hits the mark of describing the not-a-spell caster with physical, social or intellectual abilities that are rooted in the natural (or industrial) world. And if all those descriptions don't feel quite right to you, well yeah, that's kind of the problem.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah pretty much. As I have said before I find martial (having to do with war) to have less problematic connotations than mundane (boring or everyday, a term which applies to very few protagonists even if they are real world humans). Ultimately though I think neither quite hits the mark of describing the not-a-spell caster with physical, social or intellectual abilities that are rooted in the natural (or industrial) world. And if all those descriptions don't feel quite right to you, well yeah, that's kind of the problem.

I agree that neither martial nor mundane really work. Neither does the conflation of "magic" and "spells" that often accompanies these argumentsdiscussions.

I feel that something like "fantastic" works--a fantastic character can do things that would not be possible (or probable) for a real-life person. They've broken the bounds of the real in some way; the exact way depends on the character. Wizards are fantastic (of the spell-casting variety). Barbarians are fantastic (of the non-spell-casting variety). And D&D doesn't really expect you to play a non-fantastic character[1]. So we can leave the "mundane" behind.

In other fiction, even action heroes (in non-explicitly SF or fantasy settings, such as Die Hard or The Fast and Furious) are fantastic--they do things that would get any mundane person killed in the first few minutes of the film. But they survive and succeed, because they're fantastic.

And I'm fine with scaling those up--I'd be fine with a high level barbarian causing earthquakes with his hammer; I'd be fine with a fighter cutting a hole into reality. However, I'm not fine with demanding that the game should have a paradigm shift and go from "things you can sword" to "5D counter-chess with reality warpers". Because that's a guarantee of an incoherent game and setting. No coherent setting can survive unleashed reality warpers except highly meta-settings, which I dislike. And consonance of setting is a key factor in my enjoyment.

[1] 5e and 4e make that explicit; you could play a Commoner in 3e and never pick up a magic item, but you'd be far undershooting even the very rough benchmarks that system had. Every character is supposed to be fantastic in some way. This is not to say that 3e showed that well or that 5e couldn't do better about clarifying this. But the intent is crystal clear--PCs are fantastic.

[Cluedrew]

I feel that something like "fantastic" works--a fantastic character can do things that would not be possible (or probable) for a real-life person.

Oh yes, I like that one too, you will find the phrase "fantastic (of fantasy)" in my works. And here fantasy does not refer to a pseudo-medieval setting but simply the fact the story (and hence the character and their abilities) are not trying to conform to reality. So it does include all those over the top action heroes who have adventures in the "real world".

The issue here is it doesn't work as a descriptor of either of these two groups because - and this is important - both sides should be allowed to be fantastic. The caster side kind of has to be fantastic unless you have them be some sort of inventor. The other side, whatever you call it, does have a stronger root in reality so they can get away with following (or appearing to follow) real rules for a time but there is no reason that they have to. There are plenty that don't.

I mean if you want them too that's nice, but that is the thing that should be limited to low levels, not the entire family of archetype of people who are powerful because of physical ability.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Oh yes, I like that one too, you will find the phrase "fantastic (of fantasy)" in my works. And here fantasy does not refer to a pseudo-medieval setting but simply the fact the story (and hence the character and their abilities) are not trying to conform to reality. So it does include all those over the top action heroes who have adventures in the "real world".

The issue here is it doesn't work as a descriptor of either of these two groups because - and this is important - both sides should be allowed to be fantastic. The caster side kind of has to be fantastic unless you have them be some sort of inventor. The other side, whatever you call it, does have a stronger root in reality so they can get away with following (or appearing to follow) real rules for a time but there is no reason that they have to. There are plenty that don't.

I mean if you want them too that's nice, but that is the thing that should be limited to low levels, not the entire family of archetype of people who are powerful because of physical ability.

The point is to collapse the mundane/magical divide. Once you do, you just have to decide what the appropriate level of fantastic is for that game. And that could be action heroes on up. What you can't have is zero to reality warper, because there's no stable setting path that allows it. You can do full reality warpers from the get go (Nobilis, exalted), but you can't scale up to that without shattering setting consistency and doing all sorts of special pleading as to why the existing warpers don't notice your threat to the status quo and obliterate you before you get there. Which would be rather un-fun and kinda ruin the point.

[RandomPeasant]

1) It may have started that way, but rapidly changed to be much different. The cosmology is completely different, the magic system is entirely different, the characters are way out of range of anything you can build by the rules, etc.

Yes, clearly the fact that the cosmology is different makes it not D&D. This places it among other non-D&D settings like core 3e, core 4e, Eberron, and the Forgotten Realms, none of which have the same cosmology. Similarly, the idea that a novel magic system disqualifies you from being D&D is just laughable. Do you know how many magic systems there are in D&D? Because I don't. I'm not even sure I could tell you how many magic systems there are in 3e specifically. Finally, saying "you can't make D&D include those characters because you can't build those characters in D&D" is the definition of a circular argument. Malazan is a guy's D&D campaign. It the most central possible example of "things in the fantasy genre D&D should support".

I want a game that doesn't change paradigms half way through

I agree, you want a game that is not D&D. Again, D&D has been about a zero-to-hero progression with big paradigm shifts since before I was born.

"all 'low' power all the time" (ie D&D as designed).

How exactly do you think D&D was designed? Because when I look at the powers characters have, the monsters characters face, and the environment players face them in, none of those say "low power" to me. "Let's go to a world where everything is on fire all the time and kill the king of genies with death spells" is not what I would call a "low power adventure".

3e only worked (for any definition of worked) when played as designed

3e worked best (this idea that high level 3e doesn't work is as unsupported as your notion that D&D is entirely disjoint from the fantasy genre) at the levels where it was tested. That's not because those are the only levels that makes conceptual sense, it's because you need to test things to make them work. Your thesis is, again, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.

Quick Ben is shown manipulating Elder Warrens, having concurrent access to 7 warrens (which is well beyond what is thought possible by any being, let alone a mortal) and casting spells that are off the power scale.

Oh, I see, you're confused because he's a high level Sorcerer. I don't know a lot about the 5e community, but in the 3e community, it's not considered "cheese" to be a 15th level character.

no, demon princes and Dukes of Hell are not gods. They're explicitly not on the same power scale at all. They're explicitly designed as "things you can sword to death".

And the reason they are that way is that the game took away the ability to kill actual gods. People want to kill the guy who is in charge of undeath. The reason they kill Orcus is because the game has told them they cannot kill Nerull. You point to the workaround as if it negates the problem.

Yeah pretty much. As I have said before I find martial (having to do with war) to have less problematic connotations than mundane (boring or everyday, a term which applies to very few protagonists even if they are real world humans). Ultimately though I think neither quite hits the mark of describing the not-a-spell caster with physical, social or intellectual abilities that are rooted in the natural (or industrial) world. And if all those descriptions don't feel quite right to you, well yeah, that's kind of the problem.

But the problem is that there's a real change in semantics between the two terms. Thor is martial. Thor is in no sense mundane. The problem is very different if you phrase it as "mundanes should be viable" rather "martials should be viable". And maybe you fall on the side of things that "martial" really is better for. But I think this thread shows that there very much are people pulling for "mundane".

However, I'm not fine with demanding that the game should have a paradigm shift and go from "things you can sword" to "5D counter-chess with reality warpers".

And that's a straw man. Seriously, go read the books people are talking about. they are not "5D counter-chess with reality warpers". A Practical Guide to Evil is a perfectly standard military fantasy story where the power level simply happens to be higher than people in this thread are okay with the game covering. So is Malazan, even if the prose is dense and the themes more philosophical. Sanderson's works are not at all hard to fit within a mechanical framework. The idea that anything that makes Conan sad is going straight to Creatures of Light and Darkness or The Quantum Thief levels of gambit pileups is just deflection.

you'd be far undershooting even the very rough benchmarks that system had.

The benchmarks in 3e were the firmest they have been in any edition of the game. The designers intentionally made it less clear how powerful PCs were supposed to be moving forward because people tested martial characters against those benchmarks and found them wanting. They did this instead of fixing the martial characters for reasons I have never seen explained in a way that did not reduce my faith in the people making D&D.

[Cluedrew]

But the problem is that there's a real change in semantics between the two terms. Thor is martial. Thor is in no sense mundane. The problem is very different if you phrase it as "mundanes should be viable" rather "martials should be viable". And maybe you fall on the side of things that "martial" really is better for. But I think this thread shows that there very much are people pulling for "mundane".

So first off I think the problem is neither word quite covers what people are talking about. Because there isn't one so people reached for words that kind of but did not really mean what they are talking about.

Secondly, are people arguing for mundane? In the sense of boring/everyday/confined to reality? I've reskimmed over posts from PhoenixPhyre, Talakeal, BRC and GloatingSwine and the closest thing to that I see is some comments about why certain attempts to power up martials failed. I haven't gone over everything with a fine tooth comb but- hey I have an idea:

Is there anybody reading this who believes non-spell-casters should be limited to the "mundane", abilities achievable in real life? If so please reply with your rational as to why.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So first off I think the problem is neither word quite covers what people are talking about. Because there isn't one so people reached for words that kind of but did not really mean what they are talking about.

Secondly, are people arguing for mundane? In the sense of boring/everyday/confined to reality? I've reskimmed over posts from PhoenixPhyre, Talakeal, BRC and GloatingSwine and the closest thing to that I see is some comments about why certain attempts to power up martials failed. I haven't gone over everything with a fine tooth comb but- hey I have an idea:

Is there anybody reading this who believes non-spell-casters should be limited to the "mundane", abilities achievable in real life? If so please reply with your rational as to why.

Certainly not I.

[RandomPeasant]

I've reskimmed over posts from PhoenixPhyre, Talakeal, BRC and GloatingSwine and the closest thing to that I see is some comments about why certain attempts to power up martials failed.

Maybe I'm misreading him, but Talakeal seems pretty adamant about the idea that an entirely non-magical character should be able to be a contributing part of a 20th level adventure. Now, I do think that he's defining his terms in a way that is not really meaningful, but insofar as I can tell what his point is, he seems to feel that you should be able to get to at least 20th level without picking up any superpowers.

[icefractal]

The PCs are always supposed to be the underdogs, not cosmic forces of their own.

...

I want a game that doesn't change paradigms half way through

...

D&D (at least 4e and 5e) have decided that their gameplay won't change, that even a level 20 character is a mortal who can't take on gods[1] or reshape reality at will.

I have to ask then - what is the purpose of having twenty levels?

If the PCs position in the world stays the same, and their type of capabilities remain the same, and really you could make a 20th level adventure by going through a 1st level adventure and boosting the monster stats and treasure amounts ... then what makes the paperwork of advancing 19 times worth it?

Because most systems that want to stay in the same groove thematically do that by staying in the same groove mechanically as well. Hero system, for example, or Fate, have fairly limited advancement in most campaigns (and not by a level system), you just go from "fairly skilled" to "very skilled", or "novice superhero" to "experienced superhero".

And yes, you only specifically mentioned the high end of power, "changing reality" and the like. But there's nothing in there about what level of change is permissible, and purely mortal changes like going from "hiding from the Evil Empire" to "overthrowing / reforming the Evil Empire" are still changing the paradigm, so I'm not seeing much freedom in that direction.

[Cluedrew]

To PhoenixPhyre: It occurs to me that you could save the paradigm shift idea (on a setting level) but shifting so far that your power in terms of low level play is about the same. So a high level fighter actually can't fight much better than a mid-level fighter, but can command armies as well. Mind you there are a lot of mechanical issues here, in that you have to make people enjoy both paradigms.

To RandomPeasant: Does Talakeal have a vague definition of mundane, possibly. Different from the one you are using, almost certainly. Meaningless? Probably not. This topic is surrounded by terminology and conceptual landmines, this particular one is problematic enough I posted a warning about it and Talakeal themselves, in the post that brought me back into this thread, tried to clarify what they meant (under the second quote). It's not a precise definition but its a start.

To icefractal: That is a good question I don't have a good answer for. Marketing? This is about 20 levels.

[BRC]

Is there anybody reading this who believes non-spell-casters should be limited to the "mundane", abilities achievable in real life? If so please reply with your rational as to why.

Not I.

but what's the definition of "Mundane abilities achievable in real life"

Like, do I think a non spellcaster should be able to take on a dozen skilled swordsman at once in an open field and triumph? Yes.

I also think that Wire-fu shenanigans, shield-bashing enemies so hard they go flying, jumping off a castle wall and unleashing a hail of pinpoint arrows before hitting the ground, blocking an arrow with a sword, and similar "Larger than Life" impossible feats are valid.

More ridiculous feats of impossible athleticism, leaping 30 feet in the air in order to deliver a downwards swordblow on the enemy, slicing an armored knightin half with a single strike, shooting an arrow with so much force that it penetrates a dozen enemies, and the like are all things I consider valid for non-spellcasters, but I respect that some people might not, and so I think it's valid to at least want to make it possible to build a valid high-level fighter who sticks to the theoretically possible (Even if it's just "The best person at this thing might do it one time in a million, this fighter pulls it, along with a half-dozen similar feats off reliably).

[RandomPeasant]

I have to ask then - what is the purpose of having twenty levels?

That's the thing that gets me. If you want to keep characters grounded, why bother with 20 levels of progression? That's a huge amount of advancement (seriously, try making a list of twenty characters from whatever you think the source material for D&D is that are all at different levels). If a 1st level Fighter is a skilled guy with a sword, and none of the things a 20th level Fighter does are things someone who is just a skilled guy with a sword couldn't do, why are we keeping those abilities from a 1st level Fighter? Or on the other end, if a 20th level character is King Arthur or Conan or Guts, are there really twenty chunks of advancement you can break that into that are all meaningful?

And yes, you only specifically mentioned the high end of power, "changing reality" and the like. But there's nothing in there about what level of change is permissible, and purely mortal changes like going from "hiding from the Evil Empire" to "overthrowing / reforming the Evil Empire" are still changing the paradigm, so I'm not seeing much freedom in that direction.

It really is kind of an unprincipled distinction. Presumably no one thinks you can't have an adventure where you overthrow the local evil baron, or that you can't do a Magnificent Seven riff where you protect a town from an army of bandits. Characters are allowed to impact the setting on some level. Why is it that the entire system needs to stop before people start throwing around Fimbulwinters just because you want to? D&D is a big game, not all of it needs to meet your seal of approval.

So a high level fighter actually can't fight much better than a mid-level fighter, but can command armies as well.

That's kind of the thing. What people are asking for isn't really that the game change fundamentally. I've explicitly said that the game shouldn't change in a way that invalidates "go to a place and kill some monsters" as an adventure structure. What people want is the ability to do new things. I refuse to believe that having mechanics for leading armies or invoking vasty rituals of mighty power is impossible to achieve in D&D.

Meaningless? Probably not.

Well, that's the thing. I don't think you can have a meaningful definition of "mundane" that includes "can fight a demon lord". And whatever your definition of mundane is, you run into the same fundamental problem: it is only ever a limit. Never an allowance. There is nothing you can do because you are "mundane", only things you can't do. And that's just a bad idea as a thing to define a third to a half of your classes as being.

That is a good question I don't have a good answer for. Marketing? This is about 20 levels.

Tradition. 5e is, in many ways, reactionary. 4e changed how many levels there were (which was a mistake, 20 levels is already a lot, you really don't need 30), and people didn't like 4e. So 5e has 20 levels. Now, 5e is just E6 or E10 3.5 stretched out over 20 levels, so it really should have been a ten-level game with twice as many classes, but the designers were deathly afraid of doing anything that looked like rocking the boat.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I have to ask then - what is the purpose of having twenty levels?

If the PCs position in the world stays the same, and their type of capabilities remain the same, and really you could make a 20th level adventure by going through a 1st level adventure and boosting the monster stats and treasure amounts ... then what makes the paperwork of advancing 19 times worth it?

Because most systems that want to stay in the same groove thematically do that by staying in the same groove mechanically as well. Hero system, for example, or Fate, have fairly limited advancement in most campaigns (and not by a level system), you just go from "fairly skilled" to "very skilled", or "novice superhero" to "experienced superhero".

And yes, you only specifically mentioned the high end of power, "changing reality" and the like. But there's nothing in there about what level of change is permissible, and purely mortal changes like going from "hiding from the Evil Empire" to "overthrowing / reforming the Evil Empire" are still changing the paradigm, so I'm not seeing much freedom in that direction.

As far as progression--my reading of 5e's intent is that you exactly go from "novice superhero" (of the Jackie Chan action-hero protagonist, more capable and more durable than average, but still mostly handling local thugs by stealing, punching, and shooting, plus some talking) to "experienced superhero" (of the end-of-movie Guardians of the Galaxy sort--not rewriting the universe or taking on the true masters and powers that be, but handling large-scale events that threaten planets, mostly by stealing, punching, and shooting, plus some talking). You were never a zero; you were always a hero. At level 20 (numbers chosen entirely for legacy reasons) you're still a hero, but now a hero at a larger scale.

And I'm talking about the paradigm of the game, not the fictional paradigm. You go from foiling the plots of local thugs (mostly by gathering allies, delving into enemy-held territory, and shooting things) to foiling the plots of planetary (or even local-planar) thugs, mostly by gathering allies, delving into enemy-held territory, and shooting things. Where you adventure changes, the scope of the threat changes, and your station in the world changes, but you don't go from being "squad level combat, mostly running from housecats and fighting rats in a basement" to "ruling the planes and reshaping reality." Basically, you're always playing "Fantastic Special Forces", not "Average Joe" and then "Demigod".

Which, as far as I can tell, was the original design intent of 3e as well, as born out by the printed adventures. I've yet to see one that leaned into the strategic-level "commander of armies" or "adventures from a pocket demiplane via astral projection" or the "chain binding armies of demons" or the "you must be able to (personally) cast planeshift or you can't be of assistance" high-op T1 game paradigm people talk about. 3e's designers just screwed up and underestimated their own system (aided by the internet-fueled analysis boom). Their later classes, as a note, generally converged on the T3 level, which is pretty close to the (upper end) of 5e's design scale. This, to me, indicates that the as-played 3e we talk about here on the forums is fundamentally unintended. Note--That does not make it wrong. Just not what the designers intended, like hacking an Apple Watch to run Windows 95. Or the microwave oven my undergrad lab had that ran Windows 95. Definitely not a supported configuration.

To PhoenixPhyre: It occurs to me that you could save the paradigm shift idea (on a setting level) but shifting so far that your power in terms of low level play is about the same. So a high level fighter actually can't fight much better than a mid-level fighter, but can command armies as well. Mind you there are a lot of mechanical issues here, in that you have to make people enjoy both paradigms.

That's the thing. Any large-scale paradigm shift means that you're going to be leaving out a huge chunk of gamers at one end or the other (or both). And you'll have to make completely different mechanics for both ends, because the same ones don't scale. Like physical laws, game rules are not scale-independent. What works for a small-unit tactical dungeon crawl or mystery wont' work for a kingdom simulator. And unless everybody can participate, you end up sticking to one end or the other. We saw this with the name level of AD&D--it didn't get played the way anyone intended at all. People generally either kept playing their "retired" characters well past where the system as it was stopped supporting them well (hence the whole "taking on gods" thing) or started over. Stapling two completely different games onto the same thing means half of it is wasted for a good chunk of your player base. Why not do one thing and do it well?

[Talakeal]

For the record, I looked it up, Baphomet is CR 24, not 20. I thought it was weird that a Demon Lord had the same CR as a Balor.

Maybe I'm misreading him, but Talakeal seems pretty adamant about the idea that an entirely non-magical character should be able to be a contributing part of a 20th level adventure. Now, I do think that he's defining his terms in a way that is not really meaningful, but insofar as I can tell what his point is, he seems to feel that you should be able to get to at least 20th level without picking up any superpowers.

What is a super power? And, more to the point, does it matter if it is innate?

That depends, is Batman mundane? Is Captain America? Are they still mundane if you throw on 810k gold worth of magic items?

Likewise, at what point does interacting with magic in the world make someone no longer mundane? For example, does being immune to magic really make one magic them self? Does mixing magical materials to create alchemical potions make one no longer mundane? Does hitting a ghost with a silver knife?

Is there anybody reading this who believes non-spell-casters should be limited to the "mundane", abilities achievable in real life? If so please reply with your rational as to why.

I prefer "badass normal" level characters, but I have no problem with high level characters abiding by over the top action movie physics. Besides, what is "possible" in real life is a lot more extreme than people often give credit form. Real people can do really amazing things that your average "guy at the gym" would never believe, and that isn't anywhere close to the theoretical limits of possibility, for example while the current world speed record is ~28mph, biomechanics suggest that a theoretical "perfect human runner" might be able to get closer to 40 mph.

Well, the nature of advancement is that unless you arbitrarily stop the game, people will eventually be able to solo stuff they used to need a party to beat. Look back at Baphomet again. At 16th level, he's a boss monster that takes the whole party a good deal of prep to beat. At 20th level, he's a normal encounter you're supposed to be able to clear four times in a normal adventuring day. And at 24th level, he's a chump that anyone in the party should be able to cleanly one-shot.

But the game does arbitrarily stop at some level depending on the version, usually around level 20. What happens after that point is a different conversation.

Seriously, what's your plan for supporting someone like Kaladin? He's a fully competent mundane combatant. He's got as much spear-wielding skill as anyone in his world. He also has some decent-to-good magic. Where does that guy fit in the game if simply being a fully competent mundane combatant is supposed to be a 20th level character?

When you say "as much skill as anyone in the world" do you mean the real world of the fictional world?

I assume the former.

And in that case, I just imagine someone being that much better. For example, Batman is a fictional non-super powered fighter who is probably a better combatant than any real person, but he still gets outfought by more skilled fictional non-super powered fighters such as Lady Shiva or Richard Dragon.


The big problem with D&D is that combat is super abstract, and things like AC, HP, and Attack Bonus are pretty much divorced from any sort of narrative benchmarks in a way that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, a level 1 guy with a 20 constitution is harder to kill (when they aren't resisting) than a level 10 guy with an eight constitution, because reasons. D&D is not a good game for you if you are trying to analyze characters at that level of specificity.

Well, that's the thing. I don't think you can have a meaningful definition of "mundane" that includes "can fight a demon lord". And whatever your definition of mundane is, you run into the same fundamental problem: it is only ever a limit. Never an allowance. There is nothing you can do because you are "mundane", only things you can't do. And that's just a bad idea as a thing to define a third to a half of your classes as being.

How about Doom-guy? He is just a normal, if super badass, marine, and he routinely takes down demon lords, that's pretty much the whole point of his character, and, atleast until maybe Doom Eternal, he never had any sort of super powers beyond lots of guns.

On a broader note though, I am not sure why having limitations is a bad thing. Every character has limitations, that's what makes them unique. There is little difference between a special ability you have and a limitation that other people have; and insisting that people get to ignore their limitations as a necessary part of levelling up means that the endgame is just going to be a bunch of interchangeable members of the Q continuum.

That's the thing that gets me. If you want to keep characters grounded, why bother with 20 levels of progression? That's a huge amount of advancement (seriously, try making a list of twenty characters from whatever you think the source material for D&D is that are all at different levels). If a 1st level Fighter is a skilled guy with a sword, and none of the things a 20th level Fighter does are things someone who is just a skilled guy with a sword couldn't do, why are we keeping those abilities from a 1st level Fighter? Or on the other end, if a 20th level character is King Arthur or Conan or Guts, are there really twenty chunks of advancement you can break that into that are all meaningful?

It really is kind of an unprincipled distinction. Presumably no one thinks you can't have an adventure where you overthrow the local evil baron, or that you can't do a Magnificent Seven riff where you protect a town from an army of bandits. Characters are allowed to impact the setting on some level. Why is it that the entire system needs to stop before people start throwing around Fimbulwinters just because you want to? D&D is a big game, not all of it needs to meet your seal of approval.

That's kind of the thing. What people are asking for isn't really that the game change fundamentally. I've explicitly said that the game shouldn't change in a way that invalidates "go to a place and kill some monsters" as an adventure structure. What people want is the ability to do new things. I refuse to believe that having mechanics for leading armies or invoking vasty rituals of mighty power is impossible to achieve in D&D.

Well, that's the thing. I don't think you can have a meaningful definition of "mundane" that includes "can fight a demon lord". And whatever your definition of mundane is, you run into the same fundamental problem: it is only ever a limit. Never an allowance. There is nothing you can do because you are "mundane", only things you can't do. And that's just a bad idea as a thing to define a third to a half of your classes as being.

Tradition. 5e is, in many ways, reactionary. 4e changed how many levels there were (which was a mistake, 20 levels is already a lot, you really don't need 30), and people didn't like 4e. So 5e has 20 levels. Now, 5e is just E6 or E10 3.5 stretched out over 20 levels, so it really should have been a ten-level game with twice as many classes, but the designers were deathly afraid of doing anything that looked like rocking the boat.

I actually agree with most of this. Twenty levels is a bit too much, and I think the game would be much tighter if we limited advancement to ten levels like in the OD&D days.

But its not just mundane characters, most people really only advance every other level; casters get new spells every other level, fighters get new feats every other level, rogues get more sneak attack every other level, etc.

I think the 1-20 scale is just tradition at this point.