D&D General Insanely Epic Arrow Deflection

[Tony Vargas]

Qi life force ability to draw on your discipline raw energy and inner reserves sure. But to me that is martial by a slightly adjusted name and perceptual context.

It's a natural part of the world, in that paradigm. Everyone has chi in traditional Chinese medicine, just as everyone had humors in medieval western medicine, and everyone has adenosine phosphates in modern molecular biology. None of those things were actually regarded as supernatural, because they're all describing the natural processes of the human body. Some with models that just didn't prove out as at all effective in making predictions or prescribing treatments.

Conflating Qi with magic is just a product of the distorted lens of orientalism.

Then so is a Burning Hands spell.

If you find a video of someone shooting six-foot jets of flame from their fingers in a 120-degree arc (because I find it easier to remember the 1e version than the 5e version I happened to read just the other day), I expect it'll've been done with CGI (or, possibly, a little more low-tech and a lot more dangerous, some careful camera angles and off-label use of a propane tank).

 

[Garthanos]

Then so is a Burning Hands spell.

Does not follow. A source can be the same and yet a particular expression available in one culture and not in another. So maybe a Burning hands like effect might not be achievable in one and still be in another. Its the access and drawing on those deep energies that I see as the same.

Basically Ki and Superiority dice could have been merged in 5e. Two classes might then express them differently

 

[Garthanos]

Conflating Qi with magic is just a product of the distorted lens of orientalism.

Nods

 

[Tony Vargas]

Does not follow. A source can be the same and yet a particular expression available in one culture and not in another. So maybe a Burning hands like effect might not be achievable in one and still be in another. Its the access and drawing on those deep energies that I see as the same.
Basically Ki and Superiority dice could have been merged in 5e. Two classes might then express them differently

For instance, a burning-hands (5e - looked it up - 15' cone) effect is readily available (OK, with significant restrictions) in western culture via flamethrowers. The focus is heavy but it's good for more than one 'casting.'

For the purpose of D&D

No, not, "what arbitrary mechanics has D&D traditionally assigned to magic?" "What is magic?" before we drag D&D into it. Otherwise, you're just making Umbran's point, that it's nothing more than which thing the game designer applied a 'magic' label to first.

I'd like to go more general, and suggest we try thinking about what is supernatural, especially given that, by definition, nothing reproducible IRL is. So, unless there's some CGI or something in Garthanos's videos, they shouldn't be magic if modeled in D&D.


What makes Burning Hands or Fireball supernatural (whether you're a mage or a pyrokinetic) isn't the fire damage or the area or the limited uses (WP grenade, anyone?), but that lack of anything that should be burning/exploding like that. It's fire conjured ex nillo. So's lighting a candle by just staring at it, whether you can do it only occasionally, or as much as you want.

 

[Celebrim]

It's a natural part of the world, in that paradigm. Everyone has chi in traditional Chinese medicine, just as everyone had humors in medieval western medicine, and everyone has adenosine phosphates in modern molecular biology.

One of those things is not like the other.

Conflating Qi with magic is just a product of the distorted lens of orientalism.

I disagree. Not viewing Qi as magic is just a product of the distorted lens of Orientalism. It's a product of the idea that it's all different over there... somehow.

Traditional Chinese practice regarding Qi prior to contact with the West extended the concept of Qi to such things as divination techniques, spell-casting, and virtually all other things we would recognize as a magical practice. To suggest that Feng Shui or Baguadao or any of the other schools weren't practicing magic just because they believed that they had an accurate description of how the world works, would be to suggest that cabbalism or theurists or Renaissance "natural philosophers" like Cornelius Agrippa weren't practicing magic because they also believed they were manipulating what was a natural part of the world.

The division between natural and supernatural tends to be one that you can only have if you have a naturalist view of the world. Of course you don't find it in places where naturalism doesn't flourish as a philosophy.

If you find a video of someone shooting six-foot jets of flame from their fingers in a 120-degree arc

Again this comes back to one of those things being not like the other, but what you can certainly do is find Chinese myth and legend of people manipulating the qi of their body in order to start fires. You can actually find qi praticioners today who believe or claim to believe that they can use qi to start fires, or kill at a distance, or otherwise engage in all sorts of 'action at a distance' activities. Heck, those fireballs in "Street Fighter II" have a foundation in traditional qi based magic and eastern martial arts. Are you suggesting fireball isn't magic?

 

[Tony Vargas]

One of those things is not like the other.

They're all beliefs about what's goin' on inside your body that makes you, well, alive.

So if you're watching a martial arts demonstration and the Aikidoka explains that he 'seized control of the ki flow between them' to perform a no-touch throw, that doesn't make it magic. You can believe (as I did in that instance) that it was just that his student's muscle memory and expectations led him to safely rolling into a fall that hadn't actually been initiated by an outside force.

So if a traditional legend has it that Qi is involved in cutting arrows, and a modern video has someone cutting arrows without any CGI or the like, well, cutting arrows, probably not magical, beliefs about Qi notwithstanding.

I disagree. Not viewing Qi as magic is just a product of the distorted lens of Orientalism. It's a product of the idea that it's all different over there... somehow.

So, that thing where you reverse what someone said, to try to illustrate that it's arbitrary, it only works if it was arbitrary. Look up "orientalism."

The idea that the "Other" would have supernatural powers, or believe in supernatural powers in an irrational/pervasive way is just a bit of cultural centrism.

Again this comes back to one of those things being not like the other

Sure, yeah, the third one is not like the other two, because it's backed up by SCIENCE! ...OK, repeatable experiments, & peer review...

...now, Orientalism, OTOH, would have us assume that Qi is not like the humors, because of it's Otherness.

The division between natural and supernatural tends to be one that you can only have if you have a naturalist view of the world. Of course you don't find it in places where naturalism doesn't flourish as a philosophy.

Thus supernatural, a word very much in our vocabulary, because we do tend to have such a worldview.
The real world we live in does not have any sort of magical or supernatural phenomenon going on. It boasts a lot of beliefs and speculation and even anecdotes about such things, but they're never demonstrable/repeatable.

 

[Tallifer]

It all depends on whether, when it comes to martial classes and characters, you want to simulate a somewhat historical but heroic mediaeval warrior like Richard the Lionheart or El Cid, or you want to emulate characters from certain legends and fairy tales like slaughtering a thousand men singlehandedly with the jawbone of an ass. Cultures which believed in the omnipresence of their gods or spirits or magic assumed that heroes were blessed in some way and thus supernatural even though they themselves were not sorcerers.

That is why 4th Edition talked of a character's Epic Destiny after 20th level. "Once per day, when you die..." and all that However such demigod status was only achieved at the highest levels even then, just as in the movie.

(On a side note, I am also usually opposed to any scientific or evolutionistic analysis of monsters. The gods or archdevils made them that way.)

At the same time, I can sometimes enjoy a gritty realistic adventure with disease, starvation and almost no magic. Fortunately my friends run a variety of games so we can enjoy many different genres of story.

 

[Garthanos]

It all depends on whether, when it comes to martial classes and characters, you want to simulate a somewhat historical but heroic mediaeval warrior like Richard the Lionheart or El Cid, or you want to emulate characters from certain legends and fairy tales like slaughtering a thousand men singlehandedly with the jawbone of an ass.

Well it is more elaborate than that I think is your Hiawatha an incredibly inspiring guy around whom others become even greater heros and who could fire a dozen arrows before the first hit or is he just a a guy with a decent charisma. Is your Tactical Genius Alexander the Great on par with the mages he stands next to... or a suboptimal 5e build because Int is a dump stat.

“All legendary warriors develop martial power to such an
extent their abilities are the equal of magical abilities” - Martial Power​

 

[Tony Vargas]

It all depends on whether, when it comes to martial classes and characters, you want to simulate a somewhat historical but heroic mediaeval warrior like Richard the Lionheart or El Cid

I see no problem with that - though, you'd really need a decent take on the Warlord. And, of course, you'd also want to simulate somewhat historical but renowned magic-users, on the other side of the aisle, like Paracelsus or John Dee.

Is your Tactical Genius Alexander the Great on par with the mages he stands next to...

The mages of his day - goetes and magoi? I can't think of one to equal his renown, so perhaps not merely on par. Though presumably, the earlier Empedocles could be counted as an equal.

 

[Garthanos]

So you are all-in when it comes to making this about players being bad people for having expectations of genre emulation from an RPG?

Surely, if someone were to sit down to an FRPG, be given the choice of playing a magician, read in the magician class that it's inspired by characters from legend and literature like Merlin and Gandalf, and then discover that all it can do is card tricks and, after a few levels, make fireworks, he might be disappointed. But, by the standard you're proposing, he would be wrong to want to play such a powerful character as he saw in the movies.

incredibly wrong... so so wrong. I meant you forgot animating smoke rings.