D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[Eric V]

My opinion is that D&D is heroic fantasy and there are plenty of stories of people with no magical or supernatural abilities confronting and winning fights against dragons. Just like John McClane could take out dozens of trained mercenaries by himself.

It's also my opinion that this discussion is pointless, but I have a bad habit of responding to people that ask direct questions. Buh-bye.

All right, so not the same thing then, yes?

And yeah, "there are plenty of stories of people with no magical or supernatural abilities confronting and winning fights against dragons." They break a lot of the laws of our real-world physics to do so, and perform far beyond what we typically think of normal humans can do in the real world. Yet, they remain distinctly non-magical from the point of view of the narrative that they are in.

So, we can say they perform truly extraordinary feats, but make no access to actual magic.

Like the 4e maneuvers allow the characters to do...even if mechanically, it's found under the same structure (AEDU) as the magic-wielding heroes.

 

[Oofta]

My point, as its always been, is that I can imagine what it would take for a human/demi-human to wade into melee with an Ancient Red Dragon...in its own lair...and not only survive...but to slay the mythological beast.

The thing is, if I were building a model for it to happen, I wouldn't parameterize the human/demi-human with earth-like limits. Even with magical armaments, I'm confident that if I did...and even if I instantiated it 10,000 times...not a single model run would emerge with the human/demi-human surviving, let alone slaying the beast.

The only way that I can conceive of a model run spitting out "human survived, dragon slain" is if I tuned the physical parameters of the human WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY beyond what our humans are capable of.

---

Put another way, if you put Jon Jones (arguably the greatest melee combatant, with the greatest physical profile, in the history of the human race) in magical armaments, trained him to human perfection with his weaponry...and put him in the lair of an Ancient Red Dragon?

He's toast.

Let him do it 10,000 times.

He's toast 10,000 times.

And not one of those 10,000 times would there even be a moment of drama. It would be instant anti-climax all the way down.

People often talk of "breaking my immersion" and "verisimilitude". To my mind, there is little more "immersion breaking" than the idea of Jon Jones in magical armaments defeating an Ancient Dragon in mortal combat. That is just not in the realm of remotely conceivable.

So if there were a fighter without magical assistance only martial skills that could fly, had superhuman strength, x-ray vision, heat vision, cold breath, super-speed, enhanced hearing, and nigh-invulnerability would that feel out of place in D&D to you?

Because Superman would definitely feel out of place to me. We all draw the line somewhere.

Sure a group of high level fighters (a solo would probably be toast) could take out a dragon. In 5E, enough foot soldiers with bows could take out a dragon. How do I know? Because those are the parameters of the game.

Does that match up to your vision of a dragon? Doesn't really matter, some dragons in fiction are barely crocodile size while others can devour worlds.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So if there were a fighter without magical assistance only martial skills that could fly, had superhuman strength, x-ray vision, heat vision, cold breath, super-speed, enhanced hearing, and nigh-invulnerability would that feel out of place in D&D to you?

Because Superman would definitely feel out of place to me. We all draw the line somewhere.

Fair enough. I'd find many of Superman's capabilities out of place on a purely martiial character as well. - But that example is rather cross-genre.

How would you feel about a pure martial character matching the feats of Beowulf, or Cuchulainn or similar heroes at a suitably heroic tier?

Sure a group of high level fighters (a solo would probably be toast) could take out a dragon. In 5E, enough foot soldiers with bows could take out a dragon. How do I know? Because those are the parameters of the game.

Does that match up to your vision of a dragon? Doesn't really matter, some dragons in fiction are barely crocodile size while others can devour worlds.

Lets go with elephant-siized, since the example of mastodons has been brought up as something that a human could not fight face-to-face.

 

[Oofta]

Fair enough. I'd find many of Superman's capabilities out of place on a purely martiial character as well. - But that example is rather cross-genre.

How would you feel about a pure martial character matching the feats of Beowulf, or Cuchulainn or similar heroes at a suitably heroic tier?


Lets go with elephant-siized, since the example of mastodons has been brought up as something that a human could not fight face-to-face.

Many mythic heroes cross over into the supernatural, especially depending on the version of the story. Yes, Beowulf took out a troll, and it's mother and finally meets his match with a dragon. Cuchulainn is descended from a god, trains with a goddess and takes out a bunch of soldiers. The base stories don't make them super-heroic, just very strong and competent warriors. Apparently there are variants I'm not familiar with that make them more supernatural.

Sometimes mythic heroes were explicitly supernatural, whether discussing Achilles, Hercules or Paul Bunyan.

As far as dragons, they are exactly as hard to kill as the rules say they are in 5E. If a group of 5E fighter types could take out a dragon then it kind of makes my point because barring the odd subclass here and there they fit my vision of what a fighter can accomplish without the aid of magic or supernatural abilities.

Of course in my campaigns, nobody has managed to take out an ancient red dragon yet (they don't fight fair or fight to the death), so YMMV.

 

[pemerton]

Or maybe I, and the vast majority of people I actually played with, just have a different opinion. The fact that I disagree has no impact on the validity or value of your opinion.

To each their own, I'm not going to argue about this.

I don't see how the rules about ammunition for thrown attacks are a matter of opinion.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hunters used to kill mastadons with rocks and spears. That didn't make them supernatural. Or to quote Arnie from the old Predator movie "If it bleeds we can kill it".

Mmm... With Atlatls, which is far easier to kill big game with than a melee weapon cause physics.

 

[Oofta]

I don't see how the rules about ammunition for thrown attacks are a matter of opinion.

I was initially referring to a 4E power that let my buddy's rogue throw a dagger (singular) at every creature in a 15 ft burst if I remember correctly. So he could hit up to 9 creatures with 1 dagger.

Listen, if you liked 4E, more power to you. I just got tired of it and decided it wasn't the game for me for a whole plethora of reasons.

 

[pemerton]

When what he does can't be explained by any known laws of physics, it's either magic or - to use both the game term and the real-world term - supernatural. Either way, from the point of view of asking "could a real person do that" it's the same thing.

But then this is true for most mid+ level fighters and rogues in most versions of D&D - they can go toe-to-toe with giants and dragons, for instance, or kill lions and elephants with their bare hands, which can't be explained by known laws of physics.

Which means the point about 4e is lost, at least to me.

(And really in this post I'm just recapping @Manbearcat. And @Eric V.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was initially referring to a 4E power that let my buddy's rogue throw a dagger (singular) at every creature in a 15 ft burst if I remember correctly. So he could hit up to 9 creatures with 1 dagger.

Listen, if you liked 4E, more power to you. I just got tired of it and decided it wasn't the game for me for a whole plethora of reasons.

Except that @pemerton gave the actual rules reference which says you need one piece of ammunition per target if using mundane ammunition. So you would need nine daggers to hit nine people.

Listen, if you didn't like 4e, that's fine. But stop spreading misinformation about it and stop claiming that a problem you had with your house rules not being realistic was something to do with the actual rules not being realistic. The actual rules of 4e said you could not do the thing that you were claiming it was unrealistic to do. Your criticism of 4e is that your table got the rules wrong. This is not a problem with the rules of 4e.

You might have been misinformed at the time, but now the page reference has been produced you have no excuse for spreading outright falsehoods.

 

[pemerton]

But that's just saying that anything you decide is not supernatural is not supernatural because you've decided it isn't based on your narrative. Words becomes meaningless if you do that.

My opinion is that D&D is heroic fantasy and there are plenty of stories of people with no magical or supernatural abilities confronting and winning fights against dragons. Just like John McClane could take out dozens of trained mercenaries by himself.

These two quotes seem to be in direct contradiction with one another.

How is Batman or the other non-magical ninja who takes out enemies by throwing multiple batarangs/shuriken/knives a less legitimate non-magical trope than non-magical knights beating up on dragons?