D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[FrozenNorth]

can i take it your point here is 'but the rules mean they can, so obviously we're not dealing with just a regular earth guy here, but someone stronger'?

Yup.

 

[Remathilis]

Why? it is just semantics. It is a magical world with weird crap, there is no clear line between natural and supernatural.

It's funny people say that but then want the fighter to be a "badass normal" character. If D&D is a magical world still of weird crap, then there should be no resistance to making that explicit in the fighter and rogue. Yet people still cling that a fighter should be able to do supernatural things but not be supernatural in origin.

 

[FrozenNorth]

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

It seems to me what you’re asking for is for WotC to tell you what is mundane and what isn’t, instead of every table making its own determination.

I’ve never particularly flinched at Evasion. It’s a cool ability. If it bothers you that it seems extraordinary rather than mundane, than you can decide at your table that it isn’t a mundane ability.

But at the end of the day, there’s not going to be agreement whether certain abilities are mundane or something different, and it doesn’t make sense for WotC to make this determination for everyone.

 

[Remathilis]

Isn't there? Like I said, every other class but fighter and rogue is explicitly supernatural or magical. Those two were left out, and I refuse to believe it was an accident.

They are both given a wink and a nod that their supernatural abilities aren't supernatural even though they are essentially meta currency disguised as class features. They are also the only two classes that get lambasted for being weak and needing support in the form of items to survive.

 

[Minigiant]

What makes all those attacks "full kill"? You hit me with solid stick quickly and there's a good chance I'm not going to fight you anymore, whether I'm dead or not. And the game doesn't demand that non-PCs reduced to zero hit points are dead. Its just a practical convenience many people use.

Many of those attacks in the reenactment videoes aren't solid hits.

That's my point.

They aren't swinging to wound or kill. They are swinging to make contact.

 

[Mephista]

Cut you a deal, make the wizard not need a spell book anchor tied around its neck and you can get rid of the sorcerer. But as long as the wizard has to babysit a book that is susceptible to fire, water and theft for their power, the sorcerer exists as the alternative way to get arcane magic.

I don't want to get rid of the sorcerer, though. I'm arguing about the best way to define the sor and what way to take it in the future.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's funny people say that but then want the fighter to be a "badass normal" character. If D&D is a magical world still of weird crap, then there should be no resistance to making that explicit in the fighter and rogue. Yet people still cling that a fighter should be able to do supernatural things but not be supernatural in origin.

Well, I’ve always been fine with them becoming supernatural, I just want them to start as mundane and evolve into more mythic over the levels.

 

[Remathilis]

because they all use secondary power sources, but that doesn't mean fighter and rogue don't use the inherent baseline magic that is literally part of the building blocks of all things in this magic fantasy world.

the world is stated as having a baseline of magic infused into it's very nature in everything in the world, curiously enough, fighters and rouges fall under the perview of 'everything in the world'

But the issue is that inherent baseline magic is given lip service when you need to explain why a dragon's flight is both possible despite physics but not susceptible to dispel magic. It's a plot hole handwave to keep the rules working. Literally a mix of deus es machina and A Wizard Did It. D&D wasn't designed with this in mind, and the worlds of D&D rarely make use of it except again to handwave why there are 20 level dungeons under major metropolitan areas. The classic D&D scenario assumes medieval peasants living mundane lives in farming villages somewhere between a feudal manor and a homestead who just so happen to have enough gold on hand to hire adventurers to take care of the bandits that are in the area.

If D&D was a world of ambient magic, it would lean into that magic. But D&D is a shotgun marriage of pulp (where magic is rare, unnatural and distrusted) and myth (where magic is convenient to the plot and nothing else) so you get a word that is simultaneously drenched in magic and desperately attempting to ignore that until it needs a convenient excuse for a bear with an owls head and feathers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

.
It was left out because it's better for the designers, and the game as a whole, to leave things vague. If Player A wants a 20th level fighter to be a Special Forces soldier, and Player B wants a 20th level fighter to be Thor, the book doesn't contradict either of them.

These arguments we're having about how a Sorcerer really works, or what supernatural means? They're good for the game.

Fair enough. Then stating that all characters are supernatural is subjective preference.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, I’ve always been fine with them becoming supernatural, I just want them to start as mundane and evolve into more mythic over the levels.

I say "why wait?"