Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
It's fairly impossible if looked in the light of reality for 250lb man to using strength and mortal skill alone to "put the beat down" on a beast the size of buildings and armored like a tank… this however is something enabled for a very long time in D&D. However it is equally impossible such an individual would be terrestrial mundane in the ability to perform stunts outside of pure combat actions. Matching impact of magic and skill use may not be required for this to juxtapose correctly but it seems most likely to be the route to how much we can make the hero extraordinary within the game.
D&D eventually got around to introducing mechanics which covered this including broad and extraordinary amounts of Skill advancement, Skill Challenges and to an extent at least in principle Martial Practices and most pertinent Utilities and Skill Powers
Skill challenges (particularly with the DMG2 guidelines lined up the awesome of magic and the awesome of skill rather well albeit in a practical way the effect of a ritual on a broad adventure goal in the form of skill challenges could be gained by spending healing surges ie the use of skill could be backed up by extraordinary effort at the cost of a healing surge and or cash. Rituals were cheaper unless you improvised one (easily extrapolated based on the cash cost) and this inspired me to rework the cost of martial practices.
Utility powers were configured from the beginning to be of the same caliber for both caster and martial they even enabled martial daily utilities in some cases (although I might like more higher level ones). Now utilities only ever reached level 22 and honestly this makes me feel like epic is unfinished just like how 4e never had an epic DMG. That may in part be motivation behind this idea.
The players handbook 3 introduced a number of things I really like how Hybrids granted extraordinary character design versatility (if you were careful - I think we needed more feat glue but that is another discussion) and the other Skill Powers also not so coincidentally added versatility to your utility powers by tying them with skill use instead of classes. Skills began the game with built in skill powers / functions ... which everyone can use. Some of them had super versatile skill powers that are hard to adjudicate (Intimidate i am looking at you). Most were pretty locked down, dare I say too realistic? While skill does scale it really doesn't have enough impact on many of the skill functions to really be too impressive ie an epic running long jump is real world super Olympic good but not approaching what is enabled with magic (ahem) not what might one expect from someone able to knockdown a dragon.
Skill powers in many cases unlocked the built in skill functions taking off the top bringing skill use closer to empowered at least within limits ... For instance allowing one to periodically do a standing jump farther than a move action but really that is only going to happen when your skill reaches paragon or if you get a lucky roll - in fact that jump still provokes opportunity attacks and in spite of its combat context is really really situational. (There are people blinking about so having that not provoke would not have been so bad)
In mid-paragon you are just starting in flavor text and skill powers to be able to use skill alone to do impossible things and ultimately the skill numbers really are backing this up. However utilities halt at very early epic (level 22) and skill powers themselves only reach mid paragon.
So let's figure out how to do the impossible with skill and join Alice if nothing else the question of the moment is "What would a level 22 or 26 skill power look like?"
D&D eventually got around to introducing mechanics which covered this including broad and extraordinary amounts of Skill advancement, Skill Challenges and to an extent at least in principle Martial Practices and most pertinent Utilities and Skill Powers
Skill challenges (particularly with the DMG2 guidelines lined up the awesome of magic and the awesome of skill rather well albeit in a practical way the effect of a ritual on a broad adventure goal in the form of skill challenges could be gained by spending healing surges ie the use of skill could be backed up by extraordinary effort at the cost of a healing surge and or cash. Rituals were cheaper unless you improvised one (easily extrapolated based on the cash cost) and this inspired me to rework the cost of martial practices.
Utility powers were configured from the beginning to be of the same caliber for both caster and martial they even enabled martial daily utilities in some cases (although I might like more higher level ones). Now utilities only ever reached level 22 and honestly this makes me feel like epic is unfinished just like how 4e never had an epic DMG. That may in part be motivation behind this idea.
The players handbook 3 introduced a number of things I really like how Hybrids granted extraordinary character design versatility (if you were careful - I think we needed more feat glue but that is another discussion) and the other Skill Powers also not so coincidentally added versatility to your utility powers by tying them with skill use instead of classes. Skills began the game with built in skill powers / functions ... which everyone can use. Some of them had super versatile skill powers that are hard to adjudicate (Intimidate i am looking at you). Most were pretty locked down, dare I say too realistic? While skill does scale it really doesn't have enough impact on many of the skill functions to really be too impressive ie an epic running long jump is real world super Olympic good but not approaching what is enabled with magic (ahem) not what might one expect from someone able to knockdown a dragon.
Skill powers in many cases unlocked the built in skill functions taking off the top bringing skill use closer to empowered at least within limits ... For instance allowing one to periodically do a standing jump farther than a move action but really that is only going to happen when your skill reaches paragon or if you get a lucky roll - in fact that jump still provokes opportunity attacks and in spite of its combat context is really really situational. (There are people blinking about so having that not provoke would not have been so bad)
In mid-paragon you are just starting in flavor text and skill powers to be able to use skill alone to do impossible things and ultimately the skill numbers really are backing this up. However utilities halt at very early epic (level 22) and skill powers themselves only reach mid paragon.
So let's figure out how to do the impossible with skill and join Alice if nothing else the question of the moment is "What would a level 22 or 26 skill power look like?"
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