D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Micah Sweet]

Accurate attacks?

Not quick jabs.
Accurate meaningful power attacks at a moving living target?
And able to do in again next turn?
After running 30 feet?

Mundane my butt.

Hey, I would be happy to tamp some of those numbers down, but WotC keeps upping the ante on PC power, and once they have it you can't pry it out of player's cold, dead hands.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pathfinder (and maybe 3.5) has extraordinary (Ex) and supernatural (Su). The distinction wasn’t particularly useful and later editions got rid of it.

I see no compelling reason to bring it back.

I do. Maybe not both, but the idea of something beyond beyond mundane but not like a spell is a useful one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But it isn’t just hit points, it’s combat in general, as a fighter with a longsword shouldn’t be able to pierce the hide of an ancient dragon, much less kill it.

How do we know that? Where's the empirical evidence on the toughness of dragon hides?

 

[Minigiant]

So basically, the numbers in the game being abstracted beyond reality is excuse enough to abandon all ideas of logic and assume everyone is "magic" even if the game we're actually playing never tells us that?

No. It's

Martial classes over level 8 or so cannot be all 3 of the following

1. Bounded by the setting's base reality limitations
2. Not required to have magic items
3. Be no more than moderate in class design

One of those HAS to give.
A purely non-supernatural warrior in normal armor wielding normal weapons cannot defeat the mid to high level enemies D&D typical throws.

WOTC decided "Fighter must be simple easy class. Fighter attack a lot. No brains needed to play Fighter."
The fandom has to choose. And by the upcoming Fantasy TTRPGs being designed, the new Fantasy TTRPG designers are choosing to cut #1.

 

[Mephista]

How do we know that? Where's the empirical evidence on the toughness of dragon hides?

I would imagine the toughness of dragonscale armors and the high AC of dragon characters counts. Its an observable effect based on the presence, or lack therein, of dragon scales.

Accurate attacks?

Not quick jabs.
Accurate meaningful power attacks at a moving living target?
And able to do in again next turn?
After running 30 feet?

Mundane my butt.

Being able to run around all day in full plate without penalty while doing heavy exercise should also be an indication of unrealism, but... well, to be honest, I think that we're getting a bit away from what really matters.

Vibes. Feels. Class Fantasies.

Champion Fighters and Thief Rogues want to feel like they're the farmer kid and the street urchin that grow up into being heroes without losing their roots of just... being people who picked up the necessary skills and honed them. Not having a blessing or practicing mystical martial arts.

Arguing if a real world human could pull off the stunts a level 20 Fighter or a same leveled Rogue slightly misses the point, me thinks. The ultimate point is about letting the Fighter and Rogue fulfill their class fantasies while being fun and not breaking suspension of disbelief.

No. It's

Martial classes over level 8 or so cannot be all 3 of the following

1. Bounded by the setting's base reality limitations
2. Not required to have magic items
3. Be no more than moderate in class design

One of those HAS to give.
A purely non-supernatural warrior in normal armor wielding normal weapons cannot defeat the mid to high level enemies D&D typical throws.

WOTC decided "Fighter must be simple easy class. Fighter attack a lot. No brains needed to play Fighter."
The fandom has to choose. And by the upcoming Fantasy TTRPGs being designed, the new Fantasy TTRPG designers are choosing to cut #1.

WotC didn't decide the Fighter must be simple/easy class. The survey players voted that they wanted it of a Fighter. This is the choice they already made and voted on. They don't need to "choose" again.

Also, as an aside... only the Fighter and Rogue are Badass Normal classes - all other martials are innately mystical in some way.

 

[Yaarel]

Yea, I agree here.

I'm with @EzekielRaiden in that I'm totally good with a farmboy growing up into a demon-slaying badass who can swing a sword and destroy boulders with the shockwave. No problem with having One-Punch Man in D&D. I love the whole general idea of "martial power."

But being able to do those things is obviously supernatural. The terminology problem I have is that people often equate "supernatural" with "derived from magic, especially arcane magic". Being able to chop through boulders with your sword is not something that can be counterspelled, or removed by an antimagic field.

Within the fiction, the type of magic used by wizards, clerics, warlocks, etc., is only a small fraction of the expanse of magical and supernatural abilities that exist within the default D&D setting.

Martial is "magic", but never "spellcasting".

 

[Yaarel]

They don't actually. From the 5e Sage Advice.

"You might be thinking, “Dragons seem pretty magical to me.” And yes, they are extraordinary! Their description even says they’re magical. But our game makes a distinction between two types of magic:
• the background magic that is part of the D&D multiverse’s physics and the physiology of many D&D creatures.
• the concentrated magical energy that is contained in a magic item or channeled.

In D&D, the first type of magic is part of nature. It is no more dispellable than the wind. A monster like a dragon exists because of that magic-enhanced nature. The second type of magic is what the rules are concerned about. "

When the fighter gets to that point he is engaging the background magic that is part of the D&D multiverse's physics, creating a supernatural ability to swing a sword and cut things from 20 feet away. It's the non-traditional magic that 4e talks about.

Heh, I hope 2024 sorts this terminology more clearly!

 

[Minigiant]

And to go back to the Sorcerer.
The answer was always

More Classes​

WOTC decided to have only a dozen classes and only add new classes if setting required them.

90% of the class arguments are due to too many concepts being forced into classes and making them too broad and unfocused.

WotC didn't decide the Fighter must be simple/easy class. The survey players voted that they wanted it of a Fighter. This is the choice they already made and voted on. They don't need to "choose" again.

The Battlemaster should have been its own class and ate 3e's Warblade and 4e's Warlord.
WOTC forced the 2 concepts to meld together because they wanted few classes.

The Sorcerer should have been split into 2 classes. One like the 3e's Sorcerer who is a spontaneous caster with a lot of blasty spells and some raw magic powers.

And a themed caster who has a spell list heavily based on their origin or bloodline.

 

[Yaarel]

you can't counterspell them or antimagic field them

A Martial power cant be "counterspelled" because Martial powers are never a form of "spellcasting".

How a Martial power interacts with an antimagic zone is less obvious.


According to the Antimagic Field spell: "This area is divorced from the magical energy that suffuses the multiverse. Within the sphere, spells cant be cast, summoned creatures disappear, and even magic items become mundane." These two sentences require inference to makes sense of.

The "Weave" is this magical energy that suffuses the multiverse. Magic is a mysterious quality of existence itself. (I compare it to the quantum observer effect. A weird quality of consciousness and existence.) The Weave is something different. The Weave is ambient magic, the background noise generated by magical properties of things. Arcane magic and divine magic rely on this free-floating residual magic.

The antimagic creates a void in the Weave, where there is no free-floating ambient magic. The spell description implies, spells rely on the Weave, the avatar of a summoned extraplanar creature relies on the Weave (!), and even the magicality of a magic item needs to plug into the Weave in order to function magically. Without the Weave fueling a magic item, it is effectively a mere mundane item.

Apparently, any spell is relying on the Weave to sustain its effect until the spell ends. Thus, an Antimagic Field can "suppress" the effect itself (even after cast) while overlapping it. (It remains unclear why the fire of a Fireball or a Wall of Fire can explicitly be suppressed, while the water of a Create Water probably cant?)


By extrapolation. Martial powers are magic. But they dont depend on the Weave.

Probably the magic is the aspect that is inherent in the existence of the Martial character, whether ones material body or immaterial soul, or wherever the magic derives from.

 

[Mephista]

The Sorcerer should have been split into 2 classes. One like the 3e's Sorcerer who is a spontaneous caster with a lot of blasty spells and some raw magic powers.

And a themed caster who has a spell list heavily based on their origin or bloodline.

The sorcerer is in the game primarily because its got too many fans to remove. They tried doing that in 4e with the gnome, and it was a terrible mistake, so the sorcerer stays in by virtue of weight of existing fans. Its ONLY raison d'etre, however, is as an experimental mechanics class. Its not bloodlines - we have literal racial magic for that, plus tieflings and high elves want to go warlock for their "racial magic," wood elves to rangers and druids, gnomes want bard or artificer. It fails as a bloodline magic class from the very beginning, because sorcery doesn't reflect on the vast majority of D&D spieces.

The sorcerer struggles to do anything because no one agrees what it is. Splitting it into more classes won't help, because then they would still fundamentally struggle with that problem, just now its even MORE diluted and themeless.