I didn't say the fest was good.
I just said what 5e considers mastery.
I wasn't talking about the specifics but quantity and quality.
How many fighting styles should the greatest knight in the kingdom have mastered?
How many skills should the greatest thief in the empire have mastered?
How mastering the sword and pistol how many skills do you expect the captain of the greatest pirate fleet in the East sea have also mastered?
And do any of they need to be supernatural?
Because in most movies, books, epics, TV shows, cartoons, anime, and myths, the Greats that are Mundane typically master at least 2 fighting styles and two skills at the minimum.
And that's before you get to the point of grandmastery which usually does not exist in D&D at all.
This is because most games in the D&D sphere do not have a real sense of progression that can be felt in their lore nor mechanics due to the desire of the designers and parts of the community who prefer it to be loose, undefined, and simple
This thread is about stealing the progression of monsters to substitute for the lack of progression in Martial prowess.
I'm not saying you are wrong about how media does it. I'm saying you are insisting for something then not describing what it means.
How many skills should the greatest thief master? Well... they start knowing 8 skills, and they end knowing eight skills. So... what do you want to do? Do you want all Rogues to have all 18 skills in the game as proficient by the end of the game? And what do you think "proficiency" in a skill means? Well, you said this:
Because if you study something you wouldn't know more about That topic then even a smarter person who did not study it.
An idiot who plays D&D with no more about D&D than a genius who does not know about D&D.
But that seems... utterly bonkers, doesn't it? A rogue at level 1 with expertise in history only knows as much history as someone with a +5 Int who has never studied history? Sure, mechanically, we can say that is what is happening, but then what is the point of skills?
Because, here is a weird thing... anyone can roll a skill at any time.
The difference between a trained doctor/veterinarian who has studied the biology of all 42 playable species, all of the hundreds of monster species, and hundreds of beasts and an ordinary adventurer... is between a +2 and a+4. Ten to Twenty percent chance of success, not access to the knowledge, chance of success. And by the way, that is just the medicine skill.
Sure, a fighter with the duelist fighting style has only one mechanical style, and he only does 2 points more damage than a normally proficient character... but that +2 damage applies to TWENTY-ONE different weapons. Do you think it makes sense that a single fighting style can apply to daggers, whips, hammers, staves, longswords AND Axes?
Sure, in literature your dwarven hero might master Craghammer style and Bloodaxe style, and be really impressive because he ALSO has mastered the art of the Fading Dagger... but we can also say that that is true of the level 1 fighter who has the Dueling Style that applies to 21 weapons. Mechanically one thing, representing the skill of handling this vast array of weapons.
That is why I keep pushing you to give me what you WANT from these things? Should we redo the entire combat system of DnD into something that requires points and options for multiple ways to use every single weapon in the game that gives bonuses and penalties based on your opponents kit? That would be a nightmare, but that's how real-world combat styles WORK.
Or, do we look at the level 1 fighter and realize... they can wield anything you put in their hands, and have synthesized and combined 21 different fighting styles while also studying world history, the biology of hundreds of creatures, are a professional athlete and darn good scout too. Because, technically, all of that is true of a 1st level character. So if that isn't enough to make them high level.... what do we need to ADD, what do we need to DO. Because "give them more of the things they have" doesn't actually raise the level of where they are at.
