The double standard for magical and mundane abilities

Ranes · Aug 7, 2014

pemerton said:
Those same new players might wonder why a thief has to make a check to fool onlookers with a simple card check, whereas a magic-user never has to make a check to wiggle his/her fingers perfectly, nor speak the complex words of a spell perfectly, no matter how much battle is raging around him/her, arrows flying, fireballs exploding, etc.

They might. Then again, rules and guidance have appeared that call for wizards to make concentration checks in environmentally extreme conditions and certain combat situations as well, so I'd query your use of the word 'never'.

Will such things appear in the full 5e? Dunno yet but I wouldn't be surprised.

pemerton · Aug 7, 2014

Minigiant said:
It is hard to prepare a spell. That is why you need a spellbook and a decade of teaching or a magic grandma.

That's fine, but when why does the player of the wizard, who declares the action "I prepare spells X, Y and Z" get an auto-success; but the player of the rogue, who declares the action "I hide behind [whatever]" - which is probably no harder, by whatever metric of difficulty we are using - has to make a d20 roll to see whether or not the declared action actually succeeds?

pemerton · Aug 7, 2014

Ranes said:
rules and guidance have appeared that call for wizards to make concentration checks in environmentally extreme conditions and certain combat situations as well, so I'd query your use of the word 'never'.

If the thief only had to make a check for tightrope walking in extreme conditions I think we would have a greater degree of parity.

pemerton · Aug 7, 2014

ExploderWizard said:
This is at the heart of the issue. D&D is its own genre. It is not pure pulp or superheroic.

Well, the influences listed in Appendix N are mostly pulp. But you are right that 1st level classic D&D is pulply only if you view the PCs as analogous to the bearers or spear-carriers in a pulp story.

I'm not sure that I find that pushes D&D into its own genre. For me, it has tended to push the game into a degree of genre incoherence. I find 3E probably is the pinnacle of this, for me; and 4e avoids the incoherence by significantly changing 1st level play.

Of course the previous paragraph is a biographical statement. I've got no reason to think it will generalise to other players in any widespread or systematic way.

Pickles JG · Aug 7, 2014

Tony Vargas said:
I guess one way of putting it is that if any wizard (or sorcerer, or god) ever did anything magical in any story from anywhere/when, any D&D (and every) wizard with a high enough level spell slot can probably do it. But, if a fighter is to do something in D&D, it had better be something that absolutely anyone could do, on demand, at any time.

Hussar said:
But, for me, it's not hyperbolic. We see absolutely no complaints that a human has sustain more damage than an elephant. That's perfectly acceptable. But, a human being able to hide really well? Bugger that, that's a bridge too far. We have no problems with someone killing a hundred foot long, several tens of tons lizard with a sword, but being able to jump really high or swim really fast? Oh, hell no.

I find the "thresholds" to be extremely self serving and frankly thinly disguised edition warring.

These two quotes summarise the position for me. The game already makes little sense from a real world perspective why keep trying to justify some things rather than others?

The first quote does not even go far enough - pretty much anything you can think of could be turned into a D&D spell, there is no need for precedent. All of the checks & balances* from earlier editions have been removed & now magic is anything reliably on demand.

I would not accuse people of edition warring though - it's just ex post facto rationalisation of their point of view.

*Normally people say the checks & balances (random acquisition, no casting in armour, learning probability, spell failure from damage/casting times, max spells per level &c) were removed as they were "badwrongfun" & now it is no wonder mages are too strong. Noone though has advocated a return to these older rules (except arguably pemerton in this discussion). Now all the powerful mages are the fault of all those "badwrongfunners" & there is nothing we can do about it.

Minigiant · Aug 7, 2014

pemerton said:
That's fine, but when why does the player of the wizard, who declares the action "I prepare spells X, Y and Z" get an auto-success; but the player of the rogue, who declares the action "I hide behind [whatever]" - which is probably no harder, by whatever metric of difficulty we are using - has to make a d20 roll to see whether or not the declared action actually succeeds?

Because we dont know what wizards do when they cast a spell.
You can force a Strength check to jump because we know what a jump is and how it works.

But we don't know what the wizard is doing when he casts.
Is it a Dexterity check because he moves his fingers?
Oh a Intelligence check to know how to move his fingers?
Or a Charisma check to say the right words?
Or is the finger waving and word saying so easy that there is no check?
Or does the armor check fail chance of the past handle it?

No one knows.

Pickles JG · Aug 7, 2014

ExploderWizard said:
This is at the heart of the issue. D&D is its own genre. It is not pure pulp or superheroic. This is why the game world or setting that is used is so important. The setting sets the level of what is mundane vs fantastic. The ability of the game world to set the tone, and thus the greatest genre influences is one of the reasons why D&D is so awesome.

Nice post not xp spread blah blah.
I concur with this - when I used to play AD&D my players would call it playing in D&D world as it did not satifactorily represent any other fictional world we wanted it to. (Newhon for myself). I did not like ADD very much & I wonder where my nostalgic affection for it has come from.

The problem issue with what you call stock D&D is that it covers several genres at once from the hick off the farm dieing to goblins at first level to the heroic barbarian defeating TRexes with nothing more than a toothpick in the teens. Nothing about the later reflects my knowledge of what can happen in reality.

ExploderWizard said:
IMHO if play begins with the assumption of heroic status and the resolution mechanics support that, then the game is actually a supers game as far as genre focus is concerned. The setting may be fantasy, but genre tropes don't lie. I personally don't play D&D for a supers genre fix. I like the base D&D genre which is why I choose D&D in the first place.

This is where dials & switches come in. I think the baseline for D&D should be the default D&D genre. From there, modules to tweak it in a number of different directions can pull itmore toward supers, pulp, horror, or whatever.

I would say 4e goes from Action movie realism to "Mythic" over its 30 levels. We can leave comic book characters out of it! Of course since half the action movies these days seems to be about super heroes the lines blur. I agree your analysis though but I would question whether the default D&D genre is what you say it is for a majority of the player base.

ExploderWizard said:
Thus we come back full circle on the magical & mundane scale. First define what is normal for the setting. That will tell you what needs to fall in the magical or supernatural bucket.

So is that level 1 wizards being slaughtgered by house cats or high level fighters having more HP than whales & single handedly slaughtering Giants?

Hussar · Aug 7, 2014

Sadras said:
Hussar, that's not fair. Can we not immediately jump to the "edition-warring" conclusion and fire the nuke? Just because someone does not appreciate a certain version or mechanic of the game does not mean its immediate edition warring.

I'm pretty sure that many of the same people on this forum who dislike mythical/legendary powers for mundanes would have told you the same 15 years ago, before 4e came out, but back then they wouldn't have been called out for it.

I really don't think so. The same people who are complaining about the "super heroic" PC's don't seem to have problems with PC's that can take on dragons after all. They don't worry about killing something the size of a bus with a sword. That's perfectly acceptable, because the game has always allowed for that. They don't seem to worry about the bajillion and one things that make little or no sense. But, 4e is suddenly the "super heroic" version of D&D? Gimme a break. A 1e character, by about 9th level, was taking on GODS in AD&D.

But they aren't superheroes? Good grief, a 9th level PC party in 1e can stand toe to toe with any non unique creature in the game and win most of the time. By double digit levels, they can lay waste to multiple dragons. A 5th level AD&D party was expected to take on an Ancient Huge black dragon, in its lair, and win (DL 1 Dragons of Despair).

This isn't edition warring? Really? To me, this is exactly what edition warring looks like.

ST · Aug 7, 2014

I absolutely think 4e handled this problem the best way I've seen -- every class has their own power source, which largely effects the flavor of how they do things, independent of power level. FATE works much the same way, and I've always been a fan of that system and ended up bringing Aspects, etc. in when I did d20 games pre-4e.

ExploderWizard · Aug 7, 2014

Pickles JG said:
The problem issue with what you call stock D&D is that it covers several genres at once from the hick off the farm dieing to goblins at first level to the heroic barbarian defeating TRexes with nothing more than a toothpick in the teens. Nothing about the later reflects my knowledge of what can happen in reality.

The D&D genre is certainly not rooted in reality. :lol:

High level characters are certainly superhuman compared to a normal person in the world. An 8th level fighter was called a superhero after all. In the D&D context, superhero doesn't have to mean the four color comics type. The superhero title referred to such a character because he/she could fight with the power of 8 normal men at arms. Viewed in those terms, being able to battle through damage that would have killed seven regular men and still keep on fighting, well that IS certainly superheroic and not at all realistic.

Pickles JG said:
I would say 4e goes from Action movie realism to "Mythic" over its 30 levels. We can leave comic book characters out of it! Of course since half the action movies these days seems to be about super heroes the lines blur. I agree your analysis though but I would question whether the default D&D genre is what you say it is for a majority of the player base.

The D&D genre as I described it is based on early TSR versions of the game and how it was originally conceived and played.

The majority of the player base today may no longer play that way, although there are quite a few that still do as evidenced by the popularity of OSR products.

Pickles JG said:
So is that level 1 wizards being slaughtgered by house cats or high level fighters having more HP than whales & single handedly slaughtering Giants?

If that is your wish for the setting yes. Personally I wouldn't give housecats the combat stats they are given in AD&D but very high level fighters defeating giants single-handedly is very appropriate.