Dice4Hire
First Post
Why is your whole analysis damage, not attacks, being hit, AC, saves, skills, or anything else? This is very one-sided. The side you are examining is simple as you have pointed out, but other sides paint a different picture.
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How is the Wizard vs Warrior Balance Problem Handled in Fantasy Literature?
- Thread starter Iota
- Start date
Why is your whole analysis damage, not attacks, being hit, AC, saves, skills, or anything else? This is very one-sided. The side you are examining is simple as you have pointed out, but other sides paint a different picture.
Or an edition where some of the "Buffing" spells were stripped out and martial classes had access to feats that worked like Barbarian Rage so they could buff themselves. Then, creating a base for spellcasting that streamlined spells, pushed "save or suck" up higher in the spell levels, and forced casters to roll "to hit" rolls with criticals required to force the really potent spell effects? All that without making the classes into vanilla templates with simply shared, renamed powers?
Sorta working on that , heh.
Fifth Element
Legend
It shows that your conclusions are based largely on how you frame the question. Compared to non-combatant NPCs, 4E character are certainly the most powerful of all editions. Compared to typical low-level monsters, however, they're not. It's not as easy as making some assumptions and putting a chart together; your output will depend on your input, and you'll get no agreement as to what is the right input.
I agree here - my campaigns never start with the PCs as some sort of epic adventurer (well maybe in some players minds...) They are level one nobodies looking to make a name (or keep under the radar) because there's plenty of things out there just dying to kill them and plenty of adventures to be had. Any backstory is just that - backstory and won't necessarily include being some sort of "last of the immortals" or "golden child" nonsense. If it does, I'm the only one that knows and they don't find out until later anyway : )
Ok, but Fighters aren't Batman, they're "normal Joes."
Meanwhile, according to Danny, Batman is never allowed to defeat Superman because Batman isn't magical enough. Or something like that? Jesus I have no idea what his argument is at this point.
In a campaign in which I was NOT the DM, a player had his PC's backstory include a story about how he was the hidden son of a slain king, and it was his destiny to overthrow the Usurper.
When that PC died in a decidedly unheroic way- failed Climb check as it happens- the DM said something to the effect that maybe, just maybe, his parents lied about his childhood.
Kind of like how Jack Nicholson was raised thinking his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister, what you think you know about your history may not be quite true.
When that PC died in a decidedly unheroic way- failed Climb check as it happens- the DM said something to the effect that maybe, just maybe, his parents lied about his childhood.
Kind of like how Jack Nicholson was raised thinking his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister, what you think you know about your history may not be quite true.
What are you smoking?
Batman has a plan to defeat Supes. It involved a kryptonite-tipped arrow and repeated application of force to Kal-El's dome- see Dark Knight for details, as I recall. Now, it was faked, but the principle remains the same.
Bats plans on beating Supes with his wits. And he's like that not by being an inherently superior version of humanity but by taking the time to think things through. He's a normal man, just obsessively driven and trained to be one of the best single combatants in the world (though, according to DC's own stuff, he's NOT #1).
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I don't necessarily wanna keep going down this Batman road, but I think we're getting close to the real point of contention, here, and it applies to the thread topic very well, so I'm going to keep going down it, at least for a while, and try to keep bringing it back to the main topic. 
His Wits are inherently superior. His ability to think things through is inherently superior. No actual person has any of this capability, no matter how hard they try.
A D&D character should have these abilities, and by having these abilities, they would be innately superior to any actual person.
The abilities would hopefully be expressed in ways that would not require players to be mythic geniuses, so that we'd give the rogue something like I Knew You Would Do That that lets them automatically declare an attack a miss every so often (for instance).
This is how warriors influence the world just as much as wizards: if they are allowed to be truly superhuman, as wizards are.
This ability *makes* him better than anyone else in the world. That's why he's unlike any other human being who has ever lived or will live. He is above and beyond with skill.
"Insanity" is just a mythic weakness, exactly like Achilles' rage, or Odysseus's tendency to piss off Poseidon. It is part of what makes him beyond other people. Even his failings are more deep than any actual person's could ever be.
No one -- sane or not -- has the abilities that Batman has, and no one ever could, no matter how careful, no matter how practiced, no matter how insane, because Batman is not a realistic character born of the actual world, he is a fantasy character, born of legends and adolescent power fantasies.
As are other warriors in fantasy literature.
D&D fighters are not allowed to have these abilities, though, because without explicit magic being used, D&D does not let people break reality in the ways that Batman breaks reality.
His ability to do that is a fantasy.
It is not something that any person could ever actually do.
It gives him the ability to do things that no person could ever actually do, things no less fantastical than cutting down mountains with a sword or wrestling the Nemian Lion or flying because you've been given a special pair of boots by the deity of travel.
D&D warriors deserve those abilities, too. They deserve to be able to break reality like the warriors in fantasy literature do. Like Batman and Naruto and Orpheus and Gilgamesh do.
If you're arguing that Batman is somehow "a normal person" while Hercules is not, you are defining "a normal person" is a way that is very, very odd to me, and not in line with any fantasy literature that I am aware of.
Dannyalcatraz said:
His Wits are inherently superior. His ability to think things through is inherently superior. No actual person has any of this capability, no matter how hard they try.
A D&D character should have these abilities, and by having these abilities, they would be innately superior to any actual person.
The abilities would hopefully be expressed in ways that would not require players to be mythic geniuses, so that we'd give the rogue something like I Knew You Would Do That that lets them automatically declare an attack a miss every so often (for instance).
This is how warriors influence the world just as much as wizards: if they are allowed to be truly superhuman, as wizards are.
Dannyalcatraz said:
This ability *makes* him better than anyone else in the world. That's why he's unlike any other human being who has ever lived or will live. He is above and beyond with skill.
"Insanity" is just a mythic weakness, exactly like Achilles' rage, or Odysseus's tendency to piss off Poseidon. It is part of what makes him beyond other people. Even his failings are more deep than any actual person's could ever be.
No one -- sane or not -- has the abilities that Batman has, and no one ever could, no matter how careful, no matter how practiced, no matter how insane, because Batman is not a realistic character born of the actual world, he is a fantasy character, born of legends and adolescent power fantasies.
As are other warriors in fantasy literature.
D&D fighters are not allowed to have these abilities, though, because without explicit magic being used, D&D does not let people break reality in the ways that Batman breaks reality.
His ability to do that is a fantasy.
It is not something that any person could ever actually do.
It gives him the ability to do things that no person could ever actually do, things no less fantastical than cutting down mountains with a sword or wrestling the Nemian Lion or flying because you've been given a special pair of boots by the deity of travel.
D&D warriors deserve those abilities, too. They deserve to be able to break reality like the warriors in fantasy literature do. Like Batman and Naruto and Orpheus and Gilgamesh do.
If you're arguing that Batman is somehow "a normal person" while Hercules is not, you are defining "a normal person" is a way that is very, very odd to me, and not in line with any fantasy literature that I am aware of.
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
I still can't give the bananaman any experience points. 
fanboy2000
Adventurer
I would like to point out that Batman's plan for taking out Superman is "exploit well known weakness." Seriously, everyone has that plan. 5 year olds have that plan. It's a really bad example.
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