D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Micah Sweet]

Sure

But I want to continue playing them to level 20.

Then why can't you do so with a shift to the supernatural power that IMO you would obviously need to fight giant demons and ancient dragons?

 

[Micah Sweet]

And the response is

Why do they need to become supernatural?

Because that level of power doesn't make sense for a mundane character, unless you want to move into metacurrency.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

soooo.....your characters have never encountered a situation where they needed to jump any mildly notable distances or you've ignored the rules for jumping distances?

Rarely have we encountered a situation where we need to jump something more than what we know we can. It is farther than we know we can do and we still want to try. It’s a check.

Sorry, I’m voice dictating in the rain walking downhill. I’ll try to clean this up later.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then any difference in capabilities is a plot element and that’s something I firmly disagree with.

A character's capabilities is a key defining part of their plot elements. I don't even understand how you CAN disagree with that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I stated it a few times. But this thread is long

My position is that multiple sources of media has non-supernatural heroes who face threats from the lowly street thug to the world ending super easy with nothing but non-supernatural weapons training, armor training, and skill training.

D&D barely supports multiple archetypes of this.

And now fans suggest these archetypes be supernatural rather than pushing for support of these non-supernatural archetypes.

Examples from fiction use metacurrency and narrative tropes to even things up, as I've said to you many times.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

See, I want the rules to actually support me and provide a consistent experience and I would never say that the fact that I can ignore the rules means the rules support that.

The fundamental rule of DND is the ability check. The covers virtually everything you need. That is the rules supporting you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, the non-magical martial, by 20th level should be able to do things like:

• Pick up and move a 400 lb. boulder, and break it in half with a single karate chop
• Snipe a running enemy with a longbow from a mile away
• Kill an army, bare naked, while surrounded (with Flanking rules active) with the jawbone of a donkey
• Swim to an island miles away in full plate mail armor, in a thunderstorm while fending off a kraken
• Lasso a flying dragon, haul it to the ground and subdue it to use it as their mount
• While bleeding out (at 0 hp) keep on fighting for the next half hour

These don't have to be things that they can do unfailingly, every single time. But at the same time, they should possible at least once between long rests or so.

That character may not use spells, but they are absolutely supernatural.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Okay. I made a "Battle Axe Mastery" feat that gives +1 Damage and +1 Accuracy to all Battleaxes. Is my character now a sufficient master of the Battleaxe? He has a Mastery Feat now after all.

Actually, let's go crazy.

"Master of All Weapons" +1 to damage and Accuracy for all weapons. Is that enough?

If it isn't... then what are you using to define "mastery"?

This is... somehow even less compelling than a plain +x weapon.

Bottom line, I want to be able to do things. As in the same way a wizard can do things by casting fly or spider climb, or charm person. More numbers aren't all that important to me, especially since bounded accuracy means the dice are firmly in charge anyway.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe we should start here. What is level? IMO. Level is an arbitrary indicator of character power level.

*Versatility is a form of power.

Thus, similarly powerful characters should be similarly leveled. I don’t think this should be very controversial?

If versatility were a form of power in D&D, casters would be higher level than non-casters.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The fundamental rule of DND is the ability check. The covers virtually everything you need. That is the rules supporting you.

And the Jump ability check strictly limits how far and high one can jump.

Hence the problem I have with it.