D&D 5E The Magical Martial

dave2008 said:

No, @Micah Sweet is correct. I was not talking about a the same level. Sorry for the confusion I was writing at 3am on 1.5 hrs of sleep (dog woke me up). Castle and Lobo would be the same class at different levels.

My point is: what ever level the Castle character tops out at (10, 20, 30)- that is a "full game." You can go beyond that, extra levels if you will, and play Lobo.

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Okay, I am 100% fine with that.

Micah Sweet said:

Because its fun to imagine and explore a different world than our own. That desire doesn't demand that the things in that world need to be nonsensical.

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Ok. And is part of the 'fun' imagining and exploring differences that are fantastical in nature?

ezo said:

I'm throwing this out to get different POVs:

Which of the following creatures do you feel a 20th-level Fighter or Rogue should be able to defeat solo without the aid of magical items?

TO BE CLEAR: I am not asking what you think they could defeat using current RAW classes, but what YOU FEEL THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEFEAT?

Beholder (CR 13)
Storm Giant (CR 13)
Vampire (CR 13)
Adult Black Dragon (CR 14)
Ice Devil (CR 14)
Retreiver (CR 14)
Purple Worm (CR 15)
Iron Golem (CR 16)
Death Knight (CR 17)
Demilich (CR 18)
Balor (CR 19)
Pit Fiend (CR 20)

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Rogue is trickier, because the very concept of a rogue to me indicates hit and run, which plausibly can work on anything if they are lucky enough.

Fighter, solo, no special gear, level 20... It won't be easy and may leave them messed up, but CR 17 feels about right for that. That's where I think the limit should be where the odds are, say, 70/30 in the fighter's favor.

Above that, and I feel the fighter is going to be pushing their luck in solo fight with no aid. CR 18 would be closer to a 50/50 toss up, and 19 the fighter would be in trouble.

Clint_L said:

This is an argument about taste. It's subjective. It comes down to verisimilitude: what feels believable to people in their stories.

Let's go with the example of the 100' leap that was proffered earlier as an example of what a fighter should eventually be able to do baseline. I'll add another: being able to lift a car, or weight equal to a car, over their heads.

For me, those are firmly in superhero territory. If I see that in a movie, I need some kind of explanation. I'm not just buying it as something people can do. If Conan suddenly leaps over a 100' gap, verisimilitude is out the window. Although it's a fantasy setting, that does not mean that anything goes.

Or take the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. We have Peter Quill hanging out with a bunch of superheroes. When Drax can crumple a robot in his hands like it is tissue, I'm fine with it, because we've established that he's a super strong alien. If Quill did it, I would need a reason or I'm not buying in. When Peter jumps long distances, it's fine because we see his little jet boots go off, or whatever. I don't need the schematics for them, I just need to know that they are there, so that I'm not taken out of the story.

However, the film finishes with a bit of a mystery - it seems like Peter is able to handle an infinity stone just through the power of friendship. And thus the second film establishes that there is a reason for this: he's not as mundane as we thought.

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Right, but Peter Quill isn't a frontline fighter. He's a rogue. If a killer robot is coming towards the team, we expect Drax or Gamora to be able to engage it in physical combat. Draw can crumple it with his hands, Gamora might get it in a hold and rip its head off. Quill and Rocket are going to shoot it.

But the situation we keep finding is, Drax is strong enough to rip apart a robot that can resist a gatling gun... and weak enough that steel bars can hold him in a cage. That would also break your verisimilitude, right? Drax is strong, he's strong enough to rip apart robots, why is he too weak to rip the bars off a cage?

Clint_L said:

For me, and evidently for a lot of folks, it is important that D&D keep room for characters who are mundane people. Who can keep up, right to level 20, while not needing obviously supernatural powers. Quibbling about what feats or abilities, etc. logically have to be superhuman, and implying that therefore our taste is subjective and wrong, is missing the point entirely. Everyone's taste is subjective and wrong, much of the time, to everyone else. In a game targeted to mass appeal, like 5e, the priority is to make it work for the majority.

The 5e fighter patently does that. It is, by a wide margin, the most popular class in the game. It is widely considered a strong class, as demonstrated by its popularity and persistent placement towards the middle and upper placements in class tier rankings. Many of us have pointed out that we see it working well in our games, and in actual play shows. It scratches the itch it was designed to scratch, not for everyone, but for a whole lot of people.

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Fighters are good at combat. So is everyone else. They were designed to be good at combat. They are.

The game has three pillars of play. Not one.

Clint_L said:

And the thing I find most curious is that this discussion keeps ignoring the fact that there are plenty of options for those who want to play a fighter and have supernatural abilities. You can be a pure fighter and blink across a 100' chasm all day long as an Echo Knight. You can be a Psi Warrior and lift ridiculously huge things over your head and make giant leaps and such. It's already in the rules.

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The fighter is the strong guy. The only class whose conceptual niche is more "the strong guy" is the barbarian. Sure, the Psi Warrior can lift 1000 lbs at level 18, once a day by casting telekinesis. But if I want to play a samurai, who lifts a wooden platform over his head for an hour to protect his servants, recreating a scene I very much enjoyed.... I can't do it, because I can't cast telekinesis and move things with my mind.

Yeah, the rules exist for very specific exploits with very specific subclasses using very specific abilities. At high levels only. Why can't we have more generic things? And why should we be selfish and say "well, the echo knight, rune knight, psi warrior, and arcane archer are all magical, so they will get access to these more generic abilities, but the battlemaster cavalier and champion won't, because they are non-magical and people want non-magical fighters." That seems kind of petty to me.

nevin said:

how about not limiting either gives you more options?

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Technically true... but it sits with me wrong.

A 20th level fighter should be a hero of myth and legend, a force of inspiration for all... having most of their cool abilities be because they found a cool magical item cheapens that. Like, I actually did a project in college where we made hindu gods, and my class mates wanted to have all of the gods abilities be because they had these special items. Which immediately raised the question "why is this a god, if all their powers come from items, and not themselves"

Micah Sweet said:

Have you ever engaged with any existing fantasy property? How many of them are "literally anything goes, as long as its cool". Much of the time, the "cool" stuff has rules and reasons to exist within the framework of the setting.

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Most fantasy settings have one, singular magic system. Some have two. Very very very few have three.

Dungeons and Dragons has a minimum of SIX magic systems. And I could probably ferret out another three or four if I went digging.

We are not arguing "there are literally no rules". We are arguing "there are anywhere between six and ten sets of rules, all of which have exceptions. And each system can potentially mix. One size fits all answers are not going to work here."

I think high level martials, especially those that function on strength should be able to perform superhuman feats of strength, but they cannot even come close to what completely mundane normal humans in the real world are capable of.

Recently in my campaign the characters have needed to move around certain rather heavy object, they obtained from a giant. (A magical stone cube.) By the actual rules the high Str characters are pathetically weak. We have two characters with Str 19, so one would imagine, that this would not be an issue, but no. Under the variant encumbrance rules even the stone giant from which this cube was obtained from (the stone would fit on one palm of the giant) would be encumbered if it tried to carry two of them. And whilst the characters could lift it, they could not carry it. (I totally did let them carry it, but I did the math later and realised that this should have not been possible by the rules. I also had the giant to throw a boulder that was way bigger than this stone cube which it by the rules probably couldn't even lift.)

Meanwhile deadlift world record is 1100 pounds, which would in D&D require strength of 37!

Chaosmancer said:

That seems kind of petty to me.

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So...it's petty because it doesn't match what you want. But getting exactly what you want and denying other folks what they want, is not petty.

That's the crux of the entire argument. The insistence that your subjective preference is not subjective.

Some folks want all fighters to progress into being gods. Hercules, for one recent example that has been mentioned. Others do not want that, and think the status quo, which allows options for supernaturally enhanced fights and mundane ones, is working well. That's all this is, is a question of taste. Trying to prove to people that their taste is less logical than your taste...well, good luck with that.

Crimson Longinus said:

I think high level martials, especially those that function on strength should be able to perform superhuman feats of strength, but they cannot even come close to what completely mundane normal humans in the real world are capable of.

Recently in my campaign the characters have needed to move around certain rather heavy object, they obtained from a giant. (A magical stone cube.) By the actual rules the high Str characters are pathetically weak. We have two characters with Str 19, so one would imagine, that this would not be an issue, but no. Under the variant encumbrance rules even the stone giant from which this cube was obtained from (the stone would fit on one palm of the giant) would be encumbered if it tried to carry two of them. And whilst the characters could lift it, they could not carry it. (I totally did let them carry it, but I did the math later and realised that this should have not been possible by the rules. I also had the giant to throw a boulder that was way bigger than this stone cube which it by the rules probably couldn't even lift.)

Meanwhile deadlift world record is 1100 pounds, which would in D&D require strength of 37!

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This is exactly why I made the homebrew strength rules I made. I posted the math before:

First number is minimum lift
Strength score^X determined by size.

• Tiny^1
• Small^1.5
• Medium ^2
• Large^2.5
• Huge^3
• Gargantuan^3.5

Second number is maximum lift/push/drag, First score x 2

Lifting More
You may attempt to Lift/Push/Drag more with the following Athletics rolls
DC 15 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 1.25
DC 20 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 1.50
DC 25 = Maximum Lift/Push/Drag x 2.00

So, with this a fighter with 19 strength should be capable of easily carrying 361 lbs, lifting 722 and with a DC 15/20/25 roll they could lift 902.5/1083/1444 lbs. Never considered two characters working together, but I'd let them split it in half.

The Stone Giant numbers meanwhile (in the same order) would be 12,167/24,334/30,417.5/36,501/48,668 lbs

For context, an African Elephant is about 13,000 lbs, so this means the stone giant could lift the elephant and carry it while encumbered. Which seems about right for a huge giant lifting a huge creature.

Crimson Longinus said:

I think high level martials, especially those that function on strength should be able to perform superhuman feats of strength, but they cannot even come close to what completely mundane normal humans in the real world are capable of.

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Just like no human in the D&D game could match world-class sprinters in speed... The "Speed" of such a PC would have to be nearly 70 feet. Sure, you could build a high level PC human with that speed, but only via the Mobile feat...

Crimson Longinus said:

Recently in my campaign the characters have needed to move around certain rather heavy object, they obtained from a giant. (A magical stone cube.) By the actual rules the high Str characters are pathetically weak. We have two characters with Str 19, so one would imagine, that this would not be an issue, but no. Under the variant encumbrance rules even the stone giant from which this cube was obtained from (the stone would fit on one palm of the giant) would be encumbered if it tried to carry two of them. And whilst the characters could lift it, they could not carry it. (I totally did let them carry it, but I did the math later and realised that this should have not been possible by the rules. I also had the giant to throw a boulder that was way bigger than this stone cube which it by the rules probably couldn't even lift.)

Meanwhile deadlift world record is 1100 pounds, which would in D&D require strength of 37!

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Actually, the world record is close to 1200 pounds, and "unofficially" just over 1200 pounds, so STR 40.

Now, frankly, the humans who are doing such things in real life would certainly qualify for having a special feature, such as Powerful Build, in which case a STR 20 would do it.