Those are also two examples that are clearly not class abilities for those characters.
Why shouldn't they be? I've always held, for exemple that counting the arrows your character shoot so he/she can run out is silly when a spellcaster can't run out of spell components. So, if my concept is "this guy has gear that allows this effect", and that effect is already present in another class, but flavoured differently, why is that a problem?
The archer simply has a powerful item, and the fighter has taken a feat or simply made a series of checks if you like the UA incantation rules (which are a nice concet). They are not part of the standard training and experience that those classes represent.
Nope, my guy went to a special school to learn what he did, or maybe he had a trainer that used the same style. Maybe he just Macguyver'd it after being impressed by an alchemist's tricks. I haven't decided yet. How is that more problematic than "went to Hogswart". As for necro-fighter, yeah sure, he could just have picked a "ritualist" feat, or the equivalent background or something. I'll concede on that point.
If you're arguing that characters should be able to access those types of abilities, I agree. That doesn't mean we need a new class that makes an archer that duplicates the function of an evoker or a fighter that duplicates the function of a necromancer.
No need for a new class either, make the existing ones work that way.
There have always been rules for natural healing.
Sure, but the rules are badly designed considering HPs are not only meat and blood.
There are also rules for improving it. There are variant rules for changing the rate of healing. Again, these are all fine, but the notion that clerical instant healing is required to play or that a nonmagical class must be not only able to do it but be largely built around it does not follow.
Magical healing used to be the sole province of the cleric (with some minor healing being awarded to the druid). The reason behind this was... sketchy at best (something about how giving wizards healing abilities would make them too strong, I think). Then, in 3.X, shock and amazement! the bard can cure. So that whole "arcane magic cannot heal" thing got thrown in the garbage, but it still didn't answer the question of : "if hit points are what the description of them in the rulebooks say what they are, how come it takes forever to recover 'mostly' my 'agility, luck, and/or magical properties' without magical aid?" (paraphrased and translated from 1st Ed PHb)
Clerics/Spellcasters, going by this rule, have no right to have sole control over healing. Period. And "natural healing" needs to represent that fact too. Next is the first edition in the going-on 40 years of the game redefining this central tenet.
Characters get hurt in D&D, that's a fact. Whether that's from getting torched by dragon's breath, getting stabbed in the gut, getting her mind scrambled by psionics, having his life energy drained by a wraith or falling from a ladder. So if you offer a measure of a character's resilience, you have to offer ways of recovering it, and make it fit what it represents. Having more than one class capable of doing that/expediting the process is not a problem. There's more than one way of stabbing people in the face, why shouldn't there be more than one way to recover lost hit points.
Realism, as always, is overstating the issue. Logic and consistency are more apt goals. I'd say the rotten part is the people who have this opinion about magic. Magic isn't "special", simply different. D&D has pretty clear precedents on what makes magical abilities different from nomagical ones. They're accessed differently, and they have specific limitations and specific capabilities you don't see in the base game. There's nothing wrong with that. Plenty of people have played nonmagical characters in all editions of D&D with out developing an inferiority complex about it.
Different is fine, as long as we are talking real differences : red and blue are different colours. They each have their uses, and people can state their preference clearly without one being made out to be better all the time. Both are equaly valid. The "difference" between magical and non-magical characters in D&D (mostly 3rd edition, but previous editions and Next fit the bill somewhat) is not a choice between red or blue, it's a difference between an infinite number of canvases and all the colour palettes you can imagine vs. a piece of cardboard and a sharpee. Sure, you can make the same doodle with both, but you can't paint the Mona Lisa with one of them. Can't we share the canvases and the colours more equally without sacrificing what makes each unique. Magic is limitless because it's "magic", how can you define and frame it. Non-magical is seen as mundane, the stuff of everyday life. A fighter is just some yokel with a piece of steel, why does he deserve narrative control when my Hogwarts alumni can rewrite reality to her whims? That's the disease I was talking about.
It has nothing to do with having an "inferiority complex", it's not about being jealous.
If magic didn't change the world by its very existence, if having it didn't allow characters to do things they couldn't do otherwise, it wouldn't be magic would it? After all, the "type of fiction D&D has always sought to emulate" certainly doesn't treat it that way.[/QUOTE]
But why can't a strong sword-arm do the same. That happens in a lot of novels and movies and video games too, right?