Martial Power!!! (Give the martials something to do other than "attack again")

[strangebloke]

While I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence, I disagree with the part above, cause I consider it rather extreme exaggeration. Especially the BM (also in reply to #511), it’s not “basic”, the number of maneuvers know increases through the levels, the die gets higher, and with Tasha’s there are just too many good options to pick all of them. Let me refer to this again: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...2-early-tier-3 Furthermore, these rogues and fighters get other stuff, in and out of combat, and have extra feats to increase those options if they want to. Basic, yes, but the game is such that I’ve never have them seen ‘left behind’, nor would I agree against a derogatory term as ‘trash-bin’ – not in general but definitely not for a very fine class as the BM!

There's a degree of play in the terms I've used. Tentatively I would say that in low-op 5e, the game is balanced as far as I've played it (mid tier 3), if certain concessions are made regarding adventuring day length and magic items. At higher levels of optimization, the large numbers of options that casters have can become oppressive for non-casters. Perhaps 'trash bin' and 'left behind' are too strong of terms, but its a noted trend, and I've seen a lot of high level players change away from their base class after a certain point. Certainly more than the reverse.

Feats are great, but the utility of having extra feats drops off hard after t2 because at that point everyone has spare ASIs, and feats dramatically diminish in utility as your party has more of them. For example, ritual caster is very strong, but its a lot less useful if someone else also has it or you already have a wizard and cleric in the party. Inspiring Leader is insane, but offers no utility for a second party member to take it. Most character builds can incorporate Shield Master, CBE, SS, EA, or GWM, but even the most feat intensive builds usually only incorporate three at most and will have everything they need by level 12 or so. Most of the high level fighter picks end up being defensive features, which even if strong are also fairly unexciting and don't really constitute 'customization' in my view. Having 'lucky' is great, but its not exactly something that really makes your character stand out.

(granted, my habit of giving a free feat and generous stats at 1st level does contribute to this.)

Similarly, expertise drops off in importance as levels go up because most DCs are still going to be relatively low and someone who just has proficiency will be casually rocking somewhere between +7 and +9 in t3.

Its not the most important thing in the world but it is a problem imo.

[RandomPeasant]

If the players are aware that leaders, forts, and armies can be interacted with, they'll start asking where the divide exists between subclass features and just straight roleplaying.

Exactly. "You have a castle" shouldn't be a class feature, because you are going to want to give castles to lots of people who don't have that class feature. You are also going to want to scale the amount of troops someone has separately from their level, and support high-level adventures that don't involve mass battles. As I said in my reply on the subject, I don't see a way to have a "is a baron" subclass and handle things like "the elves pledge their troops to you after you cure the blight effecting their woodlands" without causing problems. Like WBL, the solution creates more problems than it solves.

Even Batman has access to resources, tools, intellect and plans that a player could never hope to compete with. He is essentially a DMPC, only functioning because it's in the author's best interest to keep him relevant for the worldbuilding, but the same isn't true between a player and their campaign. He's also a solo-player, able to spend as much time as he wants gathering information and developing strategies, while players have to work together in the same timespan.

I also think that Batman is just not what most people want their martial character to grow up into. A lot of the "how do we make the Fighter scale" suggestions boil down to "make him Batman" or "make him Iron Man", and while you could do that, I think what most people want out of a Fighter on the level of those characters is Thor or Wonder Woman, not Batman or Iron Man. The guy who starts off with a mundane swordsman is almost always more connected to the "swordsman" part of than the "mundane" part, as evinced by the way those characters evolve in the genre as a whole. Kaladin levels up by getting superpowers that make him better at spear-fighting, not by finding a trove of fabrials.

[Man_Over_Game]

Exactly. "You have a castle" shouldn't be a class feature, because you are going to want to give castles to lots of people who don't have that class feature. You are also going to want to scale the amount of troops someone has separately from their level, and support high-level adventures that don't involve mass battles. As I said in my reply on the subject, I don't see a way to have a "is a baron" subclass and handle things like "the elves pledge their troops to you after you cure the blight effecting their woodlands" without causing problems. Like WBL, the solution creates more problems than it solves.

I could see it happen through some kind of birthright or earned privilege. A Warlock has command over a pet granted to him by his benefactor, so a Fighter could reasonably be given special privileges and honors that others don't have access to. The Magnificent Mansion spell is an example of how a home can be a unique character feature, it just happens to be tied to spells.

Maybe the Fighter only has rank among the dead, or elementals, or for some kind of Illuminati group or something.

Essentially, as long as whatever the Fighter gets, nobody else can do or imitate easily, it should be fine, I just think the suggestions I've read so far don't really address that area well enough for me to consider them plausible.

What you don't want is a situation where a Raging Barbarian ends up as useful on a Strength check as anyone else with a friend taking the Help Action. That is, completely replaceable with a bit of extra work.


The "Generic Thing You Can Do but +1!" strategy isn't doing us any favors (and is, frankly, one of my biggest concerns with Martials).

[Waazraath]

But does it make sense to protect those things to a subclass? "Kingdom management" is a thing that either the whole group needs to have a hand in, or no one should be doing. It's not like being a member of the moon circle, or a death knight, or a weapon master, or a ninja, or whatever else you might reasonably have as a subclass. It's more like making "using skills" or "talking to people" a subclass, and neither of those is a good idea. Suppose, for example, we have a subclass like this. What happens when a party where no one has that subclass is granted a keep and its surrounding lands when the rescue the royal heir from ninjas? I don't see an answer to that question that makes me happy about the subclass. (1)

... But what people seem to be saying is that "my character that does not have any ability on par with plane shift should be able to be competitive in a party where people do have abilities like that". And that is entirely unworkable. 2

I genuinely do not understand how your side seems to think "you think there's a difference between abilities people have and abilities people don't have" is supposed to be a gotcha. I'll pose you the same question I did Dr Samurai: do you think an adventure where a NPC slays a dragon on the PC's behalf is the same as an adventure where the PCs slay a dragon? If not, how on earth do you justify the idea that the PCs having an NPC take them to another plane is the same as the PCs casting plane shift?3

The entire point of the game is the illusion of things. You do not actually delve into dungeons or slay monsters, nor do you woo beautiful princes and travel the planes. But we create the illusion that you do so for our entertainment. Your sour grapes over the fact that some people want different stories than you do 4 doesn't make those stories any less real than the ones you like, because neither of them are real in the first place. No one is telling you that you can't have the stories you want. But you are trying to cut out the stories other people want.

1) if the party gets the keep and save a royal heir, that's great, they get advantages which are fitting for those situations. A subclass with a similar ability gets advantages without having to quest for it, and in addition to. I really don't see the problem. There's precedent: we already have characters decending from dragons (dragonborn), and those getting special privileges from being descended from dragons (draconic sorcerers, and in the new book monks and rangers). You can make a thing out of everything, and very little in the game makes sense if you look at it extremly critical. Somebody asked the question: how would a "normal knight" look that needs to keep up with those with superpowers. Well, voila, like this. It's a quickly conjured up example, of course anybody can shoot holes in it, but that's not the point, it's an illustration how a normal fighting man can get mechanical powers up to the level which is (according to some) required to play higher levels.

2) how does this add up with a party not being able to cast planeshift needing "DM pity"? Anyway: for many people most martials already HAVE this kind of abilities. Cause making 7 attacks with a +10 damage bonus and the ability to get an extra 1d10 on the attack roll allowing to instant kill relevant threats is exactly that, as is the possiblity to regularly hit 'almost impossible' skill checks. Without having to spend precious long rest resources.

3) I don't have a clue what you are trying to say with the first sentence, so I hope you forgive me doubting it is a correct representation of my argument. As for your question, that's an easy one. Yeah, I'm fine with somebody else casting planeshift (or with a portal, or an item), and not with somebody else killing the dragon. Cause it's dungeons & dragons, not dungeons and how to reach other dimensions. The goal is to defeat the dragon. How to get there is not the goal of the game, though the quest to find a portal, the right forked metal rod, or getting from the place you planeshifted to the relevant location on plane x, can be interesting. But who casts the spell: who cares? Really, who cares what the taxi driver was called that delivered John McLane to the Nakatomi Plaza? Who flies the Thunderhawk that brings the Inquisitor and his retinue of specialists to the entrance of the lair of the evil cult? Answer: nobody.

4) this is the most blatantly obvious case of "saying things exactly the other way than they are" (must be a term for this) I've every seen on this forum. I'm happy with the status quo, and the way normal, martial characters can keep up with the casters. They do in my experience, in real games, at least up to early tier 3, and from lots of high level play and DM'ing in an edition that actually had martial/caster disparity I'm pretty damn sure it won't be a problem at higher levels, bar wish/simulacrum nonsense and the like. You are the one who wants to deny characters without very obvious supernatural powers high level play. Something Dr.Samurai already pointed out earlier. The claims you make in this alinea are without any substance or foundation.

snip due to post length

I don't know... martials already have lots of supernatural abilities. I think this was adressed earlier somewhere in this thread, but the sheer amount of hp they have alone is supernatural, or above and beyond human in the real world. You mention barbarians as an example that suffers from the guy at the gym influencing design, but I don't see it. Hp is huge, capstone is strenght of a giant, hp in combination with rage means the ability to withstand abnormal punishment, while subclasses offer obvious supernatural abilities. With a realative weak subclass like the (only eagle) totem, a barbarian can see up to 1000 feet in detail, fly short burst, be supernatural fast, in addition to all regular stuff, including some rituals for divinations. It would have been totally fitting for a member of the X-men.

I think that's a pretty decent example for a D&D party, by the way (also with your remark in mind that it's hard to write about superheroes without superpowers among those who do): plenty of different types of power, some obvously stronger than others (but with risks), and somebody like wolverine being almost normal but just being very athletic, good fighting capabilities, and regeneration (lets say a champion fighter above level 15?). And the strongest powers have the biggest risks (just as casters, who can do occasionally fantasitc stuff at higher levels, run the risk to run emtpy, have their concentration disturbed, have less hp/ac in general, etc.).

I agree though that, without specific permission in the rules, many tables will rule as you say regarding skills, that they stay with in 'the normal', and I think that's a design flaw: some examples of supernatural skills could have been given for 25 and 30, and that would have been an inmprovement imo. So yeah, I see plenty of ways the game could be improved, also regarding martials and the amount of options that they have, but I also see plenty that could be improved regarding spellcasting. But the better shouldn't be the enemy of the good afaic, and 5e already does this "giving martials options" thing pretty well, if you want to have them.

snip for brevity
Its not the most important thing in the world but it is a problem imo.

Fair enough. I don't experience it as a problem, but for those who do, I think your skill trick suggestions @homebrew are fine start.

[Man_Over_Game]

I don't know... martials already have lots of supernatural abilities. I think this was adressed earlier somewhere in this thread, but the sheer amount of hp they have alone is supernatural, or above and beyond human in the real world. You mention barbarians as an example that suffers from the guy at the gym influencing design, but I don't see it. Hp is huge, capstone is strenght of a giant, hp in combination with rage means the ability to withstand abnormal punishment, while subclasses offer obvious supernatural abilities. With a realative weak subclass like the (only eagle) totem, a barbarian can see up to 1000 feet in detail, fly short burst, be supernatural fast, in addition to all regular stuff, including some rituals for divinations. It would have been totally fitting for a member of the X-men.

However, what you're describing is about a level 15+ Barbarian. Would you put one of the X-men on the classification of power on the same level as a level 15 Sorcerer? A Storm Sorcerer at that level can do a lot more than Storm can, one of the strongest X-men in the series.

It's subjective, I just think the X-Men are better represented at the 6-13 level range.



But more than that, using bigger numbers doesn't necessarily solve much, because the way you think about those numbers doesn't really change whether they're bigger or smaller. For instance, if you were playing a game with Action Points, and more points means you could do more actions in a turn, a +1 would be a big deal. It changes how you perceive the game, allows newer combos and abilities, better mobility and bigger booms. HP and Damage, on the other hand, function exactly the same way they did at level 1. Making them bigger doesn't give the player any more game to play with. If anything, all it does is give more room for mistakes.

Falling 1000 feet and surviving from your massive HP pool isn't a form of utility, that's surviving a mistake. What's better than ignoring a mistake? Being able to prevent one.

Even if the end-result is the same, the character that fell feels like he messed up (and his character is so dumbfire that it doesn't matter how badly he fails), while the other one felt responsible for his success.

I'd rather have the tools I need to fix a problem than have a ton of cushioning needed to ignore it, since the former means that my decisions carry a lot more weight and what I do matters.

[Brookshw]

I love how the more this conversation goes, the more people are talking themselves into wanting 1/2e features restored.

[Ralanr]

I love how the more this conversation goes, the more people are talking themselves into wanting 1/2e features restored.

Which ones? The followers stuff?

[Psyren]

High level abilities are generally things whose description alone is enough to tell you the character using it is high level (much in the way DC 10 is medium, because medium is DC 10).

Low level games with bigger numbers are slay 5 rats -> slay 5 giants -> slay 5 mountains to invoke the MMO parallel. Numbers go up, cosmetics are different, but gameplay loop remains wholly unaltered.

Those aren't just differences in scale/numbers though, the actual play changes at those tiers to create meaningful differences in kind too. Going from rats to giants, now you have to worry about things like reach/range, and cover, and tactics/positioning, and opposed ability checks etc. And if you go from 5 giants to 5 dragons (not sure what you meant by 5 mountains so I'm using dragons), you get all of the previous plus area attacks, energy damage, auras, spells etc. The gameplay loop does materially change, as it should.

1
I don't know... martials already have lots of supernatural abilities. I think this was adressed earlier somewhere in this thread, but the sheer amount of hp they have alone is supernatural, or above and beyond human in the real world. You mention barbarians as an example that suffers from the guy at the gym influencing design, but I don't see it. Hp is huge, capstone is strenght of a giant, hp in combination with rage means the ability to withstand abnormal punishment, while subclasses offer obvious supernatural abilities.

Okay, repeat after me - HP are not meat. Especially not in 5e, where you don't even show signs of any kind of damage until half, with "cuts and bruises" below that, and the only true sign of trauma usually comes from the attack that dropped you to zero (PHB 196-197).

Champion is the deliberately simple sub-class for people who want simplicity. Battlemaster is closer to the archetypal fighter subclass and is at least medium complexity to my mind.

Its fine that the game has a deliberately simple sub-class, its a useful design decision for some players. Nobody has to play it and calling it the default is just your opinion not a fact.

In fact that seems to be the problem with a lot of this discussion. Not wanting a simple design space for those who value that, even when other less simple options are equally as available. Plenty of them in fact.

Agreed, and in fact, there should be at least one "simple subclass" for each class in core imo. Even if it has a lower ceiling than other subclasses, that's fine.

Yes, I could choose not to include cool expensive things in the adventures I write, thereby making it so that the players looting everything that wasn't nailed down didn't push them off the power curve. But they I wouldn't get to include cool expensive things in the adventures I write. That sounds kind of awful, and I would prefer to instead have a system where the bad guy can have a castle that is made of diamonds or simply filled with expensive furniture without me needing to invent some reason why that stuff can't be sold for money.

"Expensive things" does not have to equate to them being readily tradeable or keeping all of their market value. Finding someone both willing and able to pay for a "diamond castle", or even just a pile of fancy artwork, can be an adventure in itself.

[Brookshw]

Which ones? The followers stuff?

Yup, it was a fighter class feature (and the various Handbooks had additional rules)

[Morty]

I love how the more this conversation goes, the more people are talking themselves into wanting 1/2e features restored.

Which ones? The followers stuff?

Yup, it was a fighter class feature (and the various Handbooks had additional rules)

I can honestly say that if you gave me the option of playing the 5E fighter as-is or adding followers to it, I'd pick the former every time. Throwing minions at the fighter solves none of its problems - hooray, my generic beatstick now has more generic beatsticks under their command, except weaker - while making me engage with what's possibly my single least favorite activity in gaming.

[Ralanr]

I can honestly say that if you gave me the option of playing the 5E fighter as-is or adding followers to it, I'd pick the former every time. Throwing minions at the fighter solves none of its problems - hooray, my generic beatstick now has more generic beatsticks under their command, except weaker - while making me engage with what's possibly my single least favorite activity in gaming.

It also rarely fits with the character aspect I (and potentially many others) want to play. I don't want to be some town lord or leader. I want to cleave the heads off of dragons.

One requires paperwork and town hall meetings, the other's a legendary epic.

[OldTrees1]

I can honestly say that if you gave me the option of playing the 5E fighter as-is or adding followers to it, I'd pick the former every time. Throwing minions at the fighter solves none of its problems - hooray, my generic beatstick now has more generic beatsticks under their command, except weaker - while making me engage with what's possibly my single least favorite activity in gaming.

In contrast for some Rogues I would prefer the 20th level Rogue with a multiplanar organization vs a 20th level Rogue with other things instead. Of course for other Rogues I would prefer the "other things instead".

An organization can allow for "action at a distance" in a similar but different way than teleport can.

[Man_Over_Game]

I kinda like the idea of Fighters having Fighting Styles as modifications to the standard Actions (Attack, Dodge, Disengage, etc), and what subclass you take adds further utility to change how you think about your Actions.

For instance, a Defensive Fighting Style might allow the Fighter to make an Opportunity Attack when an enemy misses him after he takes the Dodge Action. A subclass feature for the Purple Dragon Knight makes it so that every time the Fighter takes the Dodge Action, an ally can spend their Reaction to do it too. An Eldritch Knight, on the other hand, gets to cast a Cantrip as a Bonus Action after taking the Dodge Action, perfect for maintaining Concentration on an important spell while maintaining a presence, or locking down an enemy with Booming Blade. How you think about the Dodge Action changes based on your Fighting Style, as well as ​your subclass. And for those that don't care about complexity, you give them the "Balanced" Fighting Style for +1 AC and +1 to Hit, and a balanced Champion subclass.

That way, it's still the core gameplay that everyone does, the Fighter just does it better but in a way that makes them think about combat differently. The Dodge Action, as-is, is just an expensive defensive feature for 1 person on the battlefield against a future attack, but changing those parameters around isn't all that hard and would add a lot and feel much more impactful than the currently optimal "+2 to hit with ranged attacks".

I dunno, just an idea I felt like jotting down.

[OldTrees1]

I kinda like the idea of Fighters having Fighting Styles as modifications to the standard Actions (Attack, Dodge, Disengage, etc), and what subclass you take adds further utility to change how you think about your Actions.

A Fighter with qualitative changes to existing at will abilities? Yes please!!

This will probably lead to the Fighter having upgrades to all of those actions. I would be cautious to not give the fighter too few buffs/features with this design. Having many solid options can be balanced against someone with a great option they spam, provided the solid options are good and not merely moderate.

[Talakeal]

I would imagine the answer to the dragon question is about where the focus of the game is. D&D generally focuses on combat, so thats what most games focus around.

For something like Lord of the Rings, which is more about the journey, flying the eagles to Mordor would ruin the story, but having Bard the Bowman show up to kill Smaug doesn’t.


Although I will say that if you have a setting where people can cast plane shift, simply getting to another plane is not a good focus for an adventure, rather it is just one step in a longer adventure.

Likewise, if the Dragon can be reliably killed by a single spell, it probably isn’t a good focus for an adventure either.

[Dr.Samurai]

Dr.Samurai, could you provide a list of ten example challenges for which most 20th level characters (but not 10th) can comfortably engage with about five of?

Probably not, I don't have a lot of experience at those levels. I've got some experience with several one-shots in the mid teens, but none at 20. But even before I engage in this endeavor, what am I trying to demonstrate here? I want to be sure it's something I am actually arguing for.

Does the possibility of a Wizard who refuses to prepare combat spells mean we have to throw out the idea of level-appropriate combat encounters? Of course not.

Your premise literally hinges on "high level gameplay requires high level abilities which includes bypassing travel". The point is that no one is required to actually have these abilities at high level. Your premise is founded on nothing but your opinion on how the game should be.

So the answer to your question is No, but also "your question is absurd" and "the point you're arguing is unfounded".

Yes, and as-is that character is not balanced with the casters that people can play at 20th level. Casters have a dramatically higher ability to advance the plot and interact with the world, and are comparably powerful in combat.

Yes but casters have a harder time standing in front of a monster and getting bashed in the face for rounds at a time. Each class brings different things to the table.

The question is how we move towards a paradigm where that character is balanced, and doing that requires giving it abilities on par with the ones casters get.

Is it your opinion that casters should also have d12 HD and heavy armor proficiencies and Extra Attack features, among other melee combat abilities?

If you think those abilities are necessarily supernatural, then you agree with the premise that the only way for martials to be balanced at high levels is to give them supernatural abilities (which because you still won't use consistent terminology does not necessarily mean spells).

Someone asked "what do you consider a martial" and I answered the question succinctly. This bit you keep playing is not convincing.

No, I don't. You do not use consistent terminology when talking about your position, and you engage in what looks to be strategic conflation between entirely reasonable positions ("I just want a character who doesn't cast spells") and completely unworkable positions ("I want my 20th level character to still be a mundane sword guy and have that be balanced with 20th level spellcasters").

Unworkable for you. And improve your ability to read. It will help you with this problem you're having.

So your position is that you didn't complain about it, you're just saying that if there's a problem there (which you totally weren't saying there was), the problem was definitely that plane shift was used?

I never once said it was a problem. When you replied to me, you put those words in my mouth. I corrected you, but added that the more common trope is traveling to adventure, not plane-hopping, so if the rules would be changed, it should be obvious where to target.

There are spells that trivialize things. I don't think that means we have to mutate every class so that all classes can trivialize things. Create Food and Water can trivialize survival games with food and water resource management. It doesn't mean all classes now must have some sort of "does not starve" mechanic built in to even the playing field.

Because I find that to be a distinction without a difference.

I'm sure you do. As I said in the post you're quoting, you seem to have an issue with Plane Shift, not me. I am not advocating for removing it, at all. You are fixated on it as the central thesis to the weird homebrew 6E edition of D&D you're pushing here.

I really don't see why I should answer your questions when you refuse to answer mine.

Because my questions are straightforward whereas yours require a lot of unpacking that makes it seem like I'm not answering them. Case in point, see below.

Tell me, why is "arrow guy" a fair trade for "space god"?

What in the world does "fair trade" even mean here? It's a team game, we all come to the table and play the character we want. What is meant by "fair trade"?

What is meant by "space god"? You're obviously referring once again to Thor, but in what way? Thor absorbed the power of a neutron star in the movies. Your questions comes off as absurd to me because I don't know if you mean "wizard" or "gish" or "invincible", and what "fair trade" means in this context. I'm not sure why I have to prove to you that this is a "fair trade".

Why is it desirable to spread Aragorn or Conan's progression over twenty levels, when the characters don't advance at all in the stories they are actually part of?

Again... there's so much loaded into this question. Firstly, are we supposed to be simulating the stories from novels and movies? Secondly, do we need to understand the desire in order to include it in the game? D&D assumes level progression. If I want to play an Aragorn, why do I have to explain myself for wanting to fight monsters, which provides me with XP and therefore levels, and continue going until the game ultimately stops for natural organic reasons? Thirdly, who says the characters don't advance? Did Conan advance on his time at the mill? What about when he is captured and forced into a fighting pit? What about when he goes thieving? How about when he takes on a bunch of warriors at once? In the first movie (as I'm not familiar with the pulps) the BBEG is a sorcerer. In the second movie, the sorcerer is even stronger than the first one but is only a trial Conan must overcome to the real BBEG.

Aragorn is a ranger in the North, and over the course of the trilogy fights Ringwraiths, hordes of orcs, and leads an army of undead to save Gondor, and leads the forces of Men into Mordor to buy time for Frodo, all before becoming King. But nah, he never levels up. It's all low level stuff, I mean... did you ever see him teleport or anything???

Do you see how answering your question is a distraction? You posit something as self-evident when it isn't, stick it in the form of a question, and now we are going to argue about whether or not Aragorn or Conan actually leveled up, and if they did, to what level, instead of addressing your unfounded notions about "high level play".

Is an adventure where an NPC kills a dragon for you the same as one where you kill that dragon?

No, someone killing something for you is not the same as killing it yourself. The two being different does not prove any point you are making though.

No equivocation about how the things you like are important and the things other people like aren't...

Projection noted, lol.

So then you would say that you agree that a badass normal is an inappropriate character at levels where planar travel is an ability people would be expected to have?

I wouldn't say there is a level where characters are expected to have planar travel abilities. I mean... how many times do we have to go over this? You are treating a spell as a class feature and basing your entire argument on it. Where have I ever given you the impression that I think badass normals are not appropriate at some time or another? Where have I ever conceded to your ridiculous premise that at some point the game transforms into "supernatural gods only" and mundanes are not allowed?

There is virtually nothing that you have said that I agree with. We simply have a very different idea of what the game is.

Your option is preserved in 3 different manners (each bolded clause).
1) The player has the option to not have this, that is inherent in the player having the option to have it.
2) Since I listened to your preferences I scoped the question to just badass-normal methods. This uses your standard for whatever a badass normal method means. For example a Ranger might understand nature enough to have knowledge of how to find naturally spawning portals in nature. Thus they may have a player controlled capability to travel to the city of brass by finding a portal between a material plane volcano and the plane of fire.
3) The option might not be part of the character class, or even the character themselves. In addition to the reliable ability check example above, my 3rd level party had the player controlled ability to find and pay a temple to raise our leader.

The actual position is hardly controversial. Yes it has a word jumble appearance, because most reasonable positions take into account various different preferences in the pursuit of satisfying them all. For example I like Extraordinary Rogues but my preference is for the players to have the option to have a level appropriate Rogue be level appropriate without conflicting with the player having a choice between their Rogue being badass-normal, Extraordinary, magical, or (the list has more than 3 options).

Thank you for this OldTrees, and I'm good with all that you've suggested here. And I want to reiterate, if there is a fighter subclass that also gives them a feature to plane shift 1/day or something, I would not be against that either. But it wouldn't be my default preference for a subclass, because I prefer the badass martial aesthetic, so I'd like to play something without that overt magical power. I think the Ranger being so in tune with the natural world that he can sense planar boundaries is fine. I'd generally prefer options 1 and 3 in most cases.

Thinking about it, books and shows manage to work around this through power being granted from outside influences. Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files, was a relatable investigator with some control over magic...and becomes something more when he accepts more roles and powers from greater beings. His friends recognized him as something more than a normal person.

I'm not certain that Harry becomes any less relatable as he gains more power though. He's still courageous and altruistic and thick-headed, etc. Harry's character doesn't become alien to us as he gets stronger.

I appreciate your point about relatability, but I think it has more to do with the nature of magic and the nature of mortals. We understand that magic operates outside the bounds of reality, or acts upon or changes reality. So we naturally don't put limits on it because it's supposed to work outside those limits. Lifting things up without touching them, moving instantly from one location to the next, turning invisible or turning into stone, etc.

By contrast, the nature of mortals is to be constrained by reality. In D&D, when you play a human fighter, you understand that if you fall from too high a height you can die, or that lava will burn you, possibly to death, or that if you are trapped in a room with the walls closing in you will be crushed to death. There is nothing to suggest that one day you will simply stop being subject to these things. We recognize that you can take down a kobold in a couple of swings because it is small and puny, but an ogre may be tougher because it is much bigger. But nothing suggests that if we keep swinging our sword then one day we can cut through several mountain peaks or through planar boundaries. I don't think this is an unintended consequence due to relatability. I think this is intended, I just think it needs some tweaking.

It's hard to write a superhero among superheroes that has no superpowers. Even Batman has access to resources, tools, and plans that a player could never hope to compete with. He is essentially a DMPC, only functioning because it's in the author's best interest to keep him relevant for the worldbuilding, but the same isn't true between a player and their campaign.

And I guess Superman is the default standard (the wizard with Plane Shift) that everyone else should be able to keep up with? As opposed to another example of a DMPC?

[RandomPeasant]

Essentially, as long as whatever the Fighter gets, nobody else can do or imitate easily, it should be fine, I just think the suggestions I've read so far don't really address that area well enough for me to consider them plausible.

I think you're basically agreeing with me then. I don't think there is a version of "you get a castle" that A) it is appropriate to role-protect B) has a comparable impact to spells and C) fits within the "Fighter must be mundane" paradigm.

1) if the party gets the keep and save a royal heir, that's great, they get advantages which are fitting for those situations. A subclass with a similar ability gets advantages without having to quest for it, and in addition to. I really don't see the problem.

You don't see a problem with "everything that makes your character special is something the rest of the party could get for free"? I strongly suspect that if, in an actual game, you picked a "has a castle" subclass, and then the party got a castle as a reward (possibly before you even unlocked yours), you would be rather less sanguine about the situation.

how does this add up with a party not being able to cast planeshift needing "DM pity"? Anyway: for many people most martials already HAVE this kind of abilities. Cause making 7 attacks with a +10 damage bonus and the ability to get an extra 1d10 on the attack roll allowing to instant kill relevant threats is exactly that, as is the possiblity to regularly hit 'almost impossible' skill checks. Without having to spend precious long rest resources.

If you can demonstrate that a party with no martials has as much of a problem with combat encounters as a party with no casters has with getting to other planes under their own power, I will retract my argument. Since the later clocks in at "literally impossible", I'm not holding my breath.

The goal is to defeat the dragon.

And "NPC does it" achieves that goal. But as we can see, you would not find that as satisfying as doing it yourself. Because what abilities people have, and how they use those abilities, matters. Maybe you don't personally care about plane shift. I certainly can't force you to. But if you're going to say that your lack of interest in it means it isn't important, you don't really have a leg to stand on when you insist that other people must allow your exact vision for what mundane martials should be doing in the game.

You are the one who wants to deny characters without very obvious supernatural powers high level play.

Yes, I think that characters that do not have the abilities that allow them to engage with challenges cannot engage with those challenges. Again this is not a gotcha. The exclusion that is happening here is not me taking the ability to participate in a campaign based on The Chronicles of Amber away from Conan. Conan never had that ability in the first place. The exclusion that is happening (in the sense that people use the term, not the way it is wielded as a boo light by Team Fighter in these arguments) is your insistence that a campaign based upon The Chronicles of Amber is not a valid thing for D&D to model because it cannot include Conan.

I love how the more this conversation goes, the more people are talking themselves into wanting 1/2e features restored.

I wouldn't say "restored" so much as "done right". The game badly needs a system for handling things like "you have an army", but it's never really been done well.

"Expensive things" does not have to equate to them being readily tradeable or keeping all of their market value. Finding someone both willing and able to pay for a "diamond castle", or even just a pile of fancy artwork, can be an adventure in itself.

Sure, I could invent reasons why "a giant pile of diamonds" cannot be turned into money, but the small pile of diamonds found in a dragon's hoard can be. Or we could just play in a system where large amounts of money do not break the game. You have yet to explain why that is not a desirable state of affairs. You have to break verisimilitude very hard to enforce WBL, and I do not see why that is desirable.

I can honestly say that if you gave me the option of playing the 5E fighter as-is or adding followers to it, I'd pick the former every time. Throwing minions at the fighter solves none of its problems - hooray, my generic beatstick now has more generic beatsticks under their command, except weaker - while making me engage with what's possibly my single least favorite activity in gaming.

That's another side of it. When you have a problem that "mundane sword guy" can't solve, it's pretty rare that "lots of mundane sword guys" can solve that problem. Having a kingdom or an army needs to be a parallel and optional advancement track, not a replacement for individual character power. Mandating that every game turn into Logistics and Dragons to give the Fighter something to do is a bad idea, even if the possibility of games turning into Logistics and Dragons is a valuable thing to have.

Although I will say that if you have a setting where people can cast plane shift, simply getting to another plane is not a good focus for an adventure, rather it is just one step in a longer adventure.

So you would then acknowledge that an adventure which was appropriate for people with access to plane shift was different from one which was appropriate for people who did not have access to that ability? And since it's different, we might reasonably want some term to differentiate the types of adventures, and since plane shift is acquired a fairly high level, it might be appropriate to call it a "high level adventure".

So the answer to your question is No

That's all we need. If the answer to that question is no, you agree with me. Fling all the insults you want, but once you accept the premise that anti-optimization doesn't invalidate the notion of "level-appropriate", your "but what if they don't pick plane shift" argument evaporates. I agree that the game does not handle the transition to high level play as well as it should. But part of fixing that is giving martials high level abilities, which you are resolutely opposed to the game doing.

Unworkable for you.

If you think it's workable, work it. Show me the paradigm where "space god" and "arrow guy" are options of comparable power.

There are spells that trivialize things.

At 20th level, a single baseline goblin is a trivial encounter. Is this a bad thing? Maybe you think it is. And that's a fine position to have, but it's not really a position that's served by having a game where people progress through twenty levels of advancement. If you want people to be challenged by the same things at 20th level they were at 1st level, why are you telling the Barbarian that get can't get Indomitable Might until 18th level?

It's a team game, we all come to the table and play the character we want.

No, we don't. We all come to the able and play a character that we want to play who is acceptable within the paradigm of the game. I do not sit down to a D&D game and say "my character is an Ork Street Samurai", or an Exalted game and say "my character is a Mage who's a member of the Sons of Ether". I don't sit down to a 3e D&D game and say "my character is a Battlemaster Fighter". I don't even sit down to a 3rd level 5e D&D game and say "my character is a 14th level Rogue". Hell, in some systems I don't even expect that a character of a specific level (or point allocation or whatever), built with the sources approved by the DM, and designed to fit in the setting will be automatically approved. So: why should we consider "arrow guy" and "space god" comparably powerful concepts such that saying that the group allowed one at the table would lead you to expect that the other would automatically be allowed?

If I want to play an Aragorn, why do I have to explain myself for wanting to fight monsters, which provides me with XP and therefore levels, and continue going until the game ultimately stops for natural organic reasons?

Okay, here's something we can work with. Why should this be the default assumption? If you want to play Aragorn, and you've built a character who Aragorns to the maximum degree the system allows, why should going on Aragorn-appropriate adventures require you to gain additional powers that will, by assumption, cause you to become a less perfect Aragorn? Why not have a model of gameplay where you can go on an adventure of whatever level Aragorn is, then go on another adventure of that level, rather than being forced to go on a higher level adventure?

Thirdly, who says the characters don't advance?

"Don't advance" was overstating it, and if you look back at the first time I discussed the issue, I do acknowledge that Aragorn has at least one clear "level up" moment when he commands the spirits of the fallen by being the True King of Gondor (though that would seem to be the sort of supernatural power martials are supposed to not have). But can you really point to twenty moments where he advances? More than that, can you really point to twenty moments where he advances, each of which is a big enough deal to be a worthwhile level up? I can't do that for Aragorn. Frankly, the only story I've read where I think I could do that is Worth the Candle.

Aragorn is a ranger in the North, and over the course of the trilogy fights Ringwraiths, hordes of orcs, and leads an army of undead to save Gondor, and leads the forces of Men into Mordor to buy time for Frodo, all before becoming King. But nah, he never levels up.

Do you have to level up to do those things? As noted, I will grant that the army of undead is a level up. But do you really need to be higher level to fight "a bunch of orcs" than "a wraith"? Is it necessary that you become more personally powerful in order to lead an army or run a kingdom? If Gondor one day assimilates the Shire or unifies with Rohan by treaty, will that mean that whoever sits atop the Gondorian throne on that day must become more personally skilled at killing people with swords than he was the day before?

addressing your unfounded notions about "high level play".

But in the process we will address your unfounded notions that it is desirable for D&D to model Aragorn as a 20th level character, or that becoming a king is an activity that must necessarily result in level gain. Again, flinging insults doesn't make you right. My position is no less founded than yours, it simply happens not to be compatible.

[Talakeal]

So you would then acknowledge that an adventure which was appropriate for people with access to plane shift was different from one which was appropriate for people who did not have access to that ability? And since it's different, we might reasonably want some term to differentiate the types of adventures, and since plane shift is acquired a fairly high level, it might be appropriate to call it a "high level adventure".

Not at all, no.

Its like saying I have a dog, my dog has black fur, therefore anything with black fur must be my dog.


Some characters gain the ability to plane-shift at mid level. Most characters never get it regardless of level, and a few characters even get it at low level. To define a high-level character by their ability to cast plane-shift is completely backward, as is defining the level of adventure by how much plane-shift factors into it.


What I am saying is that an adventure which can be solved with a single spell (or similar ability) is not an appropriate adventure, but that has very little to do with level.

For example, if you really want to make a high level adventure about tracking down a portal to travel to another plane, one can simply deny the ability to use plane-shift through some form of rules legal DM fiat such as the destination being warded or unknown or saying the local region is cut off from the planes like in Dark Sun or Ravenloft. Plane-shift is actually a really bad example for this sort of thing as it is one of the few spells that actually requires DM fiat to use as intended due to the requirement of a rod attuned to the appropriate plane.

Likewise, if you want to run a low level adventure that requires trivially getting to another plane first, just put a portal in front of the PCs or give them an ally / magic item who can cast plane shift for them.

A character who has specific abilities or connections can trivialize encounters at any level. Getting a royal pardon for a wrongfully accused criminal might be a decent adventure, but probably not if the king owes one of the PCs a favor or is a close personal friend. A dungeon full of poison gas that is instantly fatal to all living creatures might be a decent impediment to a low level adventure, but not if the PCs are warforged and deathless. Etc.

[strangebloke]

Yeah, one of the first campaigns I ever played in was a plane hopping campaign and we started jumping from like 3rd level onward. I believe the spell plane shift was outright banned.

spells like this aren't that big a deal.

[Talakeal]

Okay, here's something we can work with. Why should this be the default assumption? If you want to play Aragorn, and you've built a character who Aragorns to the maximum degree the system allows, why should going on Aragorn-appropriate adventures require you to gain additional powers that will, by assumption, cause you to become a less perfect Aragorn? Why not have a model of gameplay where you can go on an adventure of whatever level Aragorn is, then go on another adventure of that level, rather than being forced to go on a higher level adventure?

I generally agree with this.

The problems of this are threefold though:

1: Its a team game, and not everyone's idea of the perfect spot is in the same place. Guy who wants to play the Aragorniest of aragorns and the Dr Strangiest of Dr. Strages are not going to have the same balance point; but they may be able to compromise on a spectrum that includes both points.

2: The rest of the world needs to be calibrated to the PCs. If you want to have the full Aragorn experiance, he needs to be in Middle Earth. Likewise, the opposition needs to be calibrated. If you wanted a Middle Earth experience but swapped out Morgoth for, say, comic book Lucifer Morningstar he will be far too powerful, but on the other hand if you swapped him out for TV Lucifer Morningstar he will be far too weak.

Rewriting the entire monster manual / campaign setting for every PC is a lot more work than its probably worth.

3: Some people need advancement. There are lots of players who quickly get bored with characters and need to keep getting new abilities to stay interested. There is one guy in my gaming group who doesn't really like anything about RPGs except he is addicted to the "carrot" part of the game where he gets to level up. Neither of these people are going to enjoy a game where they remain at a single level forever even if it is the best representation of their concept.

[Dr.Samurai]

RandomPeasant... it is difficult to see our discussion going anywhere productive. When you say "play Aragorn", I assume you mean "play a human warrior with some survival skills". I don't assume you mean "map out the LotR storyline". So I'm not trying to fit in 20 levels of D&D gameplay into the LotR trilogy. If we continue to use that though, then imagine the story continues. Aragorn is king but continues to adventure, with a steward watching the Kingdom in his stead. Can Aragorn find a powerful and possibly supernatural mount that allows him to travel across the realms faster than normal? Can he obtain magical armor and a magical sword that would let him tackle a balrog? Can he take down a dragon similar to the way Bard did? Can he venture into Mordor and hunt down all the great evils of the world still lurking there like Shelob?

This is D&D, so we're not constraining ourselves to the world of LotR. I originally brought up Aragorn way back when just to give everyone an image of a mundane warrior, not to say "I want D&D gameplay to mimic LotR".

Your comment about coming to the table to play... whatever it was you said is baffling to me and I don't know what to make of it so I can't really reply. I really do think we are not going to see eye to eye on this no matter how many times we quote/reply to each other.

Hopping onto what Takaleal said, your comment about acknowledging "appropriate" adventures simply doesn't follow from what you're saying. "Appropriate" is a loaded term.

[PhoenixPhyre]

"Appropriate" is a loaded term.

And one that can only be defined:
* at the system level by the developers[1]
* at the table level by the individual table[2]

Neither of which lends itself to "discussion" on the internet. And to the degree that "appropriate" is defined in some kind of objective, global fashion (see footnote 1), the issue is that some people don't like that definition and want to substitute their own. And that's just not useful.

If barbarians not having planeshift is a problem at your individual table, fix it at that level. Because not everyone agrees that it's a problem; even those that agree on the problem don't agree on the solution. Any global "fix" would break people's flow, which means that global fixes are off the table (unless the developers feel strongly about it, in which case they bear the costs of breaking things for players). Note: this is not a fallacy--the dispute is over the existence of the defect in the first place. One says "All characters need planeshift." The other says "All characters do not need planeshift" (which is different from "no characters need planeshift", fyi). Those are incompatible statements if taken at the global scope. The resolution is to prepend "At my table". At which point both can be true, and the one for whom it's an issue bears the weight of departing from the default. Because the system itself and the developers don't consider it to be a problem.

[1] the devs have given many examples of what they consider "appropriate" adventures. That includes, well, all the printed adventures (which are well within the capabilities of a low-op, Basic Rules Only party). Etc. None of which require planeshift or teleport.
[2] A table where planeshift is necessary really says nothing about a different table's needs. And there are tools included to allow anyone to meet those capabilities. See the first part of the section of the DMG where it talks about the planes. And calls out finding portals before it talks about magical methods. Plus all the items and other issues.

[OldTrees1]

Thank you for this OldTrees, and I'm good with all that you've suggested here. And I want to reiterate, if there is a fighter subclass that also gives them a feature to plane shift 1/day or something, I would not be against that either. But it wouldn't be my default preference for a subclass, because I prefer the badass martial aesthetic, so I'd like to play something without that overt magical power. I think the Ranger being so in tune with the natural world that he can sense planar boundaries is fine. I'd generally prefer options 1 and 3 in most cases.

Thank you Dr.Samurai, that was cathartic.

While I can't speak for RandomPeasant, there is a lot of talking past each other, and I suspect their actual position is very similar to what I outlined there.

At this point I will drop out of that conversation. Again, thank you, that was cathartic.

[Man_Over_Game]

A Fighter with qualitative changes to existing at will abilities? Yes please!!

This will probably lead to the Fighter having upgrades to all of those actions. I would be cautious to not give the fighter too few buffs/features with this design. Having many solid options can be balanced against someone with a great option they spam, provided the solid options are good and not merely moderate.

The trick is to never give the player more of what they already have while still giving them plenty of fun things to play with, through antisynergies. It's how you give neat toys to people without having to worry much about them being overpowered. Specializations are what increases power creep and makes the game less adaptive evolving, more predictable and boring. Antisynergies make games more fun.



For instance, my Dodge bonus that gives you a Reaction attack doesn't actually increase your defense, it makes increasing your defense a better option by also mixing in some damage. You can do the same with your attacks or the Disengage Action.

A few examples of what I mean:

Aggressive Fighting Style: The first time you hit an enemy each turn with a weapon attack, for each enemy, they take extra damage equal to your Proficiency*. If you hit an enemy twice in the same turn with a weapon attack, gain THP equal to your Proficiency Bonus. This THP expires at the start of your next turn. (Encourages either changing targets or tanking against a single target that you hope hits you back).

Mobile Fighting Style: When you use the Disengage Action, you may Shove one enemy adjacent to when you took the Disengage Action. You can also choose to reduce your speed to 0 at any time after taking the Disengage Action to Shove an additional enemy adjacent to you. You may use your Dexterity score for these Shove contests when using this Fighting Style.

Balanced Fighting Style: You get +1 to AC and +1 to hit (designed for those who prefer something less complicated but still want something effective).


Which end up creating an aggressive playstyle that discourages single-target combat (unless you're tanking) while also making the 'Run Away' Action work great for both maintaining distance and close-ranged control. What this doesn't do is make the Attack Action all that much better against single targets (which it's already good for) and it doesn't make the Disengage Action much better to retreat with (which it's already good for). Even the Balanced option isn't very strong in either direction, since AC is hard to wrack up synergies with, and a +1 to hit isn't much more than a minor bonus.

*6 damage per each unique target sounds like a lot, but even at a 6 Proficiency Bonus, that's a maximum of 24 damage after hitting 4 different targets for about 12 damage each. It bumps up their individual damage from ~12 to ~18, so you're probably not going to kill anything that was actually a threat, and you might get more value out of hitting one target four times for 54 damage.

[RandomPeasant]

Its like saying I have a dog, my dog has black fur, therefore anything with black fur must be my dog.

No, it's like saying that it is reasonable to describe your dog as a thing with black fur.

Some characters gain the ability to plane-shift at mid level. Most characters never get it regardless of level, and a few characters even get it at low level. To define a high-level character by their ability to cast plane-shift is completely backward, as is defining the level of adventure by how much plane-shift factors into it.

The ability to deviate from expectations does not invalidate the concept of expectations. Yes, there will be games where the DM gives everyone at-will plane shift or bans it entirely. Yes, there are characters who don't get it. But that doesn't mean we can't describe plane shift as a high level ability any more than the fact that a party full of Clerics does really well against undead means undead CRs are all wrong.

Plane-shift is actually a really bad example for this sort of thing as it is one of the few spells that actually requires DM fiat to use as intended due to the requirement of a rod attuned to the appropriate plane.

That doesn't really matter. "The DM can say no" and "the DM has to say yes" are still different paradigms. Any ability would have some nitty-gritty that people would dig down into, but the fundamental premise remains the same: having abilities is different from not having them. The responses the dragon question gets show that people understand this, they just don't want to accept the implications.

Rewriting the entire monster manual / campaign setting for every PC is a lot more work than its probably worth.

I don't think you need to do that. Consider that Hawkeye and Thor do exist in the same universe, and that their doing so doesn't particularly impede the ability of either character to participate in the stories that are appropriate for them, or for those stories to be enjoyable. The fact that Hawkeye would not have been able to do anything particularly useful in the climax of Thor Ragnarok doesn't make it a worse film, nor does the fact that the opposition of the Hawkeye TV series will presumably pose absolutely no threat to Thor invalidate that series. In D&D terms, you don't need to rewrite the setting or the Monster Manual. You just need to ensure that there are enough monsters in the manual for both Hawkeye and Thor to have a reasonable variety of foes to fight, and that the setting is big enough that high-level characters are not getting up in everyone's business all the time.

Some people need advancement. There are lots of players who quickly get bored with characters and need to keep getting new abilities to stay interested.

I would submit that the overlap between people who need to keep advancing for the game to be worthwhile to them and people who have a specific concept that is closely tied to a specific power range is fairly small. If you want to be Aragorn, and not to grow into various Aragorn-adjacent characters at a higher power level (Corwin of Amber works as an example, if you squint) or gain abilities that conflict with whatever you consider Aragorn's schtick to be (rage might be an example), but you also want to continue gaining in power, I would say that your desires are necessarily in conflict with each-other and there probably isn't a way to make you happy.

That said, I do think there is room for non-level-based advancement. Horizontal growth is a useful thing to have, and there are many sorts of advancement that benefit from being decoupled from level. You should not need to become more personally powerful to rule a larger kingdom or lead a larger army, so those are benefits you could plausibly accrue without gaining any levels (and therefore being pushed towards a paradigm for which your concept might not be appropriate). Similarly, I think allowing people to select new abilities (whether those are class abilities or just feats) without needing to level up would solve a lot of problems the game has.

That last thing is what I mean when I talk about how spreading Aragorn out over 20 levels seems like a bad deal for Aragorn, any questions of balance aside. Hawkeye has a bunch of trick arrows that he uses (some of my examples may be Green Arrow trick arrows, but the characters are basically the same). He's got exploding arrows and hacking arrows and shield arrows and fist arrows and fire arrows and net arrows. If Hawkeye is supposed to get his full assortment of arrows over twenty levels, that means you have to make some declaration like "bomb arrow is a 3rd level arrow and net arrow is a 12th level arrow", which will be disappointing to some subset of people who want to play Hawkeye, but think that Net Arrow is the key part of his kit. But if Hawkeye is a concept that exists at a specific level (or relatively small level range), and gets his arrows by horizontal, non-level, advancement, each person who wants to play a Hawkeye character can get the arrows that are compelling to them from day one.

RandomPeasant... it is difficult to see our discussion going anywhere productive. When you say "play Aragorn", I assume you mean "play a human warrior with some survival skills". I don't assume you mean "map out the LotR storyline". So I'm not trying to fit in 20 levels of D&D gameplay into the LotR trilogy.

But you are trying to fit them to a LotR character. I'm not saying that "play Aragorn" has to mean "pick up some halflings in a bar, then go to an elf down, then an abandoned dwarfhold, then a tribe of horsemen" and so on through the LotR storyline. But I am saying that if you want to "play Aragorn", that means you're stuck with the kinds of capabilities Aragorn displays in the stories he is actually in. And that means he does not get an epic mount or an artifact sword, because in the stories he is actually a part of he factually does not get those things. If you want to have a character who gets artifacts that allow him to overcome his personal lack of superpowers, that's fine, but that character is Iron Man, not Aragorn.

Your comment about coming to the table to play... whatever it was you said is baffling to me and I don't know what to make of it so I can't really reply. I really do think we are not going to see eye to eye on this no matter how many times we quote/reply to each other.

What is baffling about "Shadowrun characters are not appropriate for D&D games"? Character creation is not (at least not in anything but the most rules-light of games) simply "you play whatever you want". There are constraints of many types, and you haven't really done anything to explain why "arrow guy is not an appropriate character concept for a game scaled to space god" is not an acceptable one (indeed, I rather suspect that if I showed up with space god to a campaign you balanced around arrow guy, you would rightly tell me to rework my character).

Hopping onto what Takaleal said, your comment about acknowledging "appropriate" adventures simply doesn't follow from what you're saying. "Appropriate" is a loaded term.

Appropriate is a necessary term if we are to talk about the abilities characters should have.

[Dr.Samurai]

And one that can only be defined:
* at the system level by the developers[1]
* at the table level by the individual table[2]

This is the crux of it. It's baffling that anyone is trying to tell everyone else what is objectively "appropriate" for all games. This is also why I mentioned modules before, as you note in your footnote, because if the developers felt this way about travel they would require parties to have these abilities. But they don't. No game can assume a caster will have a spell because spells known are choices that players make.

If barbarians not having planeshift is a problem at your individual table, fix it at that level. Because not everyone agrees that it's a problem; even those that agree on the problem don't agree on the solution. Any global "fix" would break people's flow, which means that global fixes are off the table (unless the developers feel strongly about it, in which case they bear the costs of breaking things for players). Note: this is not a fallacy--the dispute is over the existence of the defect in the first place. One says "All characters need planeshift." The other says "All characters do not need planeshift" (which is different from "no characters need planeshift", fyi). Those are incompatible statements if taken at the global scope. The resolution is to prepend "At my table". At which point both can be true, and the one for whom it's an issue bears the weight of departing from the default. Because the system itself and the developers don't consider it to be a problem.

Agreed.

Thank you Dr.Samurai, that was cathartic.

While I can't speak for RandomPeasant, there is a lot of talking past each other, and I suspect their actual position is very similar to what I outlined there.

At this point I will drop out of that conversation. Again, thank you, that was cathartic.

Well I apologize if I wasn't clear but yes, the options you laid out all work for me.

But you are trying to fit them to a LotR character. I'm not saying that "play Aragorn" has to mean "pick up some halflings in a bar, then go to an elf down, then an abandoned dwarfhold, then a tribe of horsemen" and so on through the LotR storyline. But I am saying that if you want to "play Aragorn", that means you're stuck with the kinds of capabilities Aragorn displays in the stories he is actually in. And that means he does not get an epic mount or an artifact sword, because in the stories he is actually a part of he factually does not get those things. If you want to have a character who gets artifacts that allow him to overcome his personal lack of superpowers, that's fine, but that character is Iron Man, not Aragorn.

Aragorn is an example of a human warrior in a medieval fantasy setting. The fact that you can't imagine an Aragorn-type character (a heroic noble human warrior) getting artifacts but your mind immediately goes to Iron Man tells me we're not going to see eye to eye on this. I don't know, as far as I'm concerned there is a big disconnect here. I can easily envision a badass normal having magic armor and a magic weapon to help him fight big bad supernatural threats (to stick with Marvel, Captain America with his shield and Mjolnir come to mind).

Bringing up Aragorn was a mistake because I see now that he can't be disassociated from LotR. I was just trying to think of a heroic human warrior from media that we all would recognize but the intent was to slot him into a D&D game and imagine him... you know, leveling up in D&D.

What is baffling about "Shadowrun characters are not appropriate for D&D games"?

Because I did not suggest that. I get the sense that you are reading way more into what I say than I intend. Or you're equivocating things that I would never suggest are the same thing. Your comments don't make sense to me because I don't feel they are hitting on any of the things we're discussing. I don't think you understand how much of what you think is self-evident is really just your opinion that isn't supported by anything. So you make comments that are confusing because there is a lot packed into them that others don't necessarily agree with.

As an example, you think playing a human fighter in 5E alongside a wizard "space god" (whatever that means, you refuse to define) is akin to rolling up a Shadowrun character for a D&D game. This feels like to me that at every turn you are throwing up wall after wall after wall that makes it difficult to meet anywhere in the middle.

Appropriate is a necessary term if we are to talk about the abilities characters should have.

Not quite. The game already allows you to play a badass normal. I would like that to continue being the case. The original point of the thread is to discuss how to make that more interesting.

You are positing something else; that the game shouldn't have these things at higher levels.

Those are two different conversations. You are going against the grain, whereas we are talking about something that already exists in the game, but how to make it better. You're here telling people they're playing the game wrong.

[Lord Raziere]

But you are trying to fit them to a LotR character. I'm not saying that "play Aragorn" has to mean "pick up some halflings in a bar, then go to an elf down, then an abandoned dwarfhold, then a tribe of horsemen" and so on through the LotR storyline. But I am saying that if you want to "play Aragorn", that means you're stuck with the kinds of capabilities Aragorn displays in the stories he is actually in. And that means he does not get an epic mount or an artifact sword, because in the stories he is actually a part of he factually does not get those things. If you want to have a character who gets artifacts that allow him to overcome his personal lack of superpowers, that's fine, but that character is Iron Man, not Aragorn.

Yeah, its like the fanfic ship of theseus problem: how much can you change a character before they are no longer that character? Take Naruto, give them Sharingan, make them female, give them fox ears and a tail, make them depressed broody and pragmatic, make them hate their home village, give them Zabusa's sword, make them fall in love with Ino, make them dress in colors other than orange, make them eat something other than ramen, don't teach them rasengan but give the flying thunder god technique instead, make them go missing nin.....at what point have you stopped playing an alternate version of Naruto, and started playing some OC that shares a couple similarities to him?

and while the 1-20th growth thing, yes the point is to not know where you end up and to allow the character to change, but sometimes you don't feel like doing that for a character. there are some characters built for the growth thing. generally those concepts involve being an apprentice or squire or something. but sometimes you want something more complete and to do things with that completeness and have a journey that isn't necessarily about physical growth.

[Talakeal]

No, it's like saying that it is reasonable to describe your dog as a thing with black fur.
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If you are just making the tautology that plane shift is (typically) available to high level characters therefore it is (typically) a high level ability, that's perfectly reasonable.

What's not reasonable are further extrapolations that therefore any character with plane shift is high level, that characters without plane shift aren't (or shouldn't be) high level, that adventures must require plane shift to be high level, etc.

I don't think you need to do that. Consider that Hawkeye and Thor do exist in the same universe, and that their doing so doesn't particularly impede the ability of either character to participate in the stories that are appropriate for them, or for those stories to be enjoyable. The fact that Hawkeye would not have been able to do anything particularly useful in the climax of Thor Ragnarok doesn't make it a worse film, nor does the fact that the opposition of the Hawkeye TV series will presumably pose absolutely no threat to Thor invalidate that series. In D&D terms, you don't need to rewrite the setting or the Monster Manual. You just need to ensure that there are enough monsters in the manual for both Hawkeye and Thor to have a reasonable variety of foes to fight, and that the setting is big enough that high-level characters are not getting up in everyone's business all the time.

Aragorn is one of the greatest warriors and most influential statesmen in the history of middle Earth. Drop him into Forgotten Realms or Exalted, and he is just some irrelevant footnote who is unlikely to accomplish much of anything.

Likewise, Saint George the Dragon Slayer's most notable feat would be impossible if you put him up against a D&D red dragon.

Or heck, how about trying to recreate Drizzt Dourden who is a 16th level martial character who regularly overcomes challenges appropriate to a level 16 character. If you suddenly drop him to sixth level because that's the limit for a purely martial character, you suddenly become incapable of recreating drizzt feats with your peak Drizzt build.


If you aren't going to reorganize the setting accordingly, all limiting martial characters is going to do is codify "Casters rool martials drewl!" into the lore as well as the rules, and that isn't going to make anyone happy except the caster supremacists who weren't going to play martials in the first place.

[Angelalex242]

To be fair, it's just lucky for Aragorn that the only wizard around is actually an angel who was told to use his powers as little as possible. Narsil cut the ring of power from Sauron's hand, so let's eyeball it as a sword of sharpness +3.

...only so much you can do with that.

[RandomPeasant]

Aragorn is an example of a human warrior in a medieval fantasy setting. The fact that you can't imagine an Aragorn-type character (a heroic noble human warrior) getting artifacts but your mind immediately goes to Iron Man tells me we're not going to see eye to eye on this.

I can imagine that. I can imagine a character who, instead of growing in personal power, accumulates a larger and larger collection of magical artifacts. But that character is Iron Man (actually, the most specific analogy I'm aware of for that character is a Doctor Fate ripoff in the Incursions saga, but that's an excessively deep cut). That's what a high level character who relies on gear for power looks like. Maybe it's a version of that archetype who has moved some points from Engineering to Weapon Skill, but that character is closer in every meaningful respect to Iron Man than Aragorn.

(to stick with Marvel, Captain America with his shield and Mjolnir come to mind).

You mean the thing that gives him the lightning powers you have explicitly listed as a no-go for martials? What "Captain America in Endgame" looks like as a D&D character is a subclass that gives you magical weapons automatically for leveling up. That's a totally fine thing to have, but I would not call that "mundane" in any meaningful sense.

Because I did not suggest that.

Yes, you did. What you said was that we should all "play the character we want". Nothing there about "no Shadowrun characters in D&D games" if what I want to play is a cyborg Ork. Now, perhaps you meant something more nuanced, but the nuanced position is something that cannot be held as distinct from my own in any principled way. Once you start saying "no, not that", you have no leg to stand on when someone else says it right back to you.

You are positing something else; that the game shouldn't have these things at higher levels.

And those characters are not competitive with casters at high levels. As people in this thread repeatedly acknowledge. Adding some marginal tactical depth to them will not fix them. The only way to fix the Fighter at high levels is A) to give the Fighter abilities that are comparable to what casters can do at those levels or B) start excluding things casters can do. You've rejected A, so you get B. Now stop projecting your desire to exclude things from the game onto me with excuses about how I am "excluding" Fighters from getting to write a really big number of their character sheets.

and while the 1-20th growth thing, yes the point is to not know where you end up and to allow the character to change, but sometimes you don't feel like doing that for a character. there are some characters built for the growth thing. generally those concepts involve being an apprentice or squire or something. but sometimes you want something more complete and to do things with that completeness and have a journey that isn't necessarily about physical growth.

I really think having a section where you explain that not every campaign needs to level from 1 to 20 or even level at all in the DMG would make like 90% of these problems go away. The root problem here is not that a 20th level Wizard is better than a 20th level Fighter or that Thor is better than Hawkeye. It's that the game tells you that to keep playing your character you have to keep gaining abilities, even if you have all the abilities you need to actualize your character concept. So you end up with people demanding that they be allowed to keep gaining abilities that don't change their character concept, despite the fact that there is no reason to gain levels if that is what you want to do. If you want an ability that was appropriate for the character concept you had at 5th level, there is no earthly reason you should need to be 6th level (let alone 16th level) to get it.

What's not reasonable are further extrapolations that therefore any character with plane shift is high level, that characters without plane shift aren't (or shouldn't be) high level, that adventures must require plane shift to be high level, etc.

Not a single one of those things is an accurate representation of my position as I have said repeatedly. The closest is the idea that without plane shift you aren't high level, and that's a conflation of "you need to have abilities that are as broadly impactful as plane shift" with "you need to have exactly plane shift".

Aragorn is one of the greatest warriors and most influential statesmen in the history of middle Earth. Drop him into Forgotten Realms or Exalted, and he is just some irrelevant footnote who is unlikely to accomplish much of anything.

Aragorn doesn't win a "greatest warrior" trophy that is accredited by the Middle Earth UN. He just has a bunch of fights with specific opponents which he beats. He could have all of those fights in a world where there were a bunch of more powerful things he didn't fight and it would change absolutely nothing about his character. His career as a statesman has essentially nothing to do with his personal power, and could very easily be replicated in any setting where he was a respected political figure (consider that in the real world pretty much any soldier could kill pretty much any diplomat, and we still have respected diplomats).

Likewise, Saint George the Dragon Slayer's most notable feat would be impossible if you put him up against a D&D red dragon.

Yes, because the thing he slays isn't a D&D red dragon, and nowhere in the story of him slaying it is it claimed to be. It is simply something that people call a dragon which could be represented quite adequately by a wyvern, which a mundane warrior can comfortably slay.

Or heck, how about trying to recreate Drizzt Dourden who is a 16th level martial character who regularly overcomes challenges appropriate to a level 16 character. If you suddenly drop him to sixth level because that's the limit for a purely martial character, you suddenly become incapable of recreating drizzt feats with your peak Drizzt build.

I will confess a lack of familiarity with Drizzt. What are the specific feats you think could not be adequately modeled as accomplishments of a lower level character? Imagine you were telling someone who had never played D&D about Drizzt's adventures, and that you then told them about the adventures of a 6th level character. What are the things that would jump out to that person as being clearly more impressive about the things Drizzt did?

all limiting martial characters

Who said anything about limiting martial characters? Thor is a martial character. Kaladin is a martial character. Indrani is a martial character. All of them have capabilities that allow them to do things mundane characters can't.