I think it's less that they wat spellcasters to be more powerful than non-spellcasters and more that a martial type who gets so good that his effects are clearly supernatural, should have those effects labelled supernatural. A lot of the abilities on the list the OP put forth would be fine as abilities where the marital character transcends the natural, but not as a purely mundane ability. There is no purely mundane ability that's going to create an earthquake if you hit the ground.
All characters who can go toe-to-toe with a bus-sized magical
flammenwerfer and not only walk away, but boast of
chokeslamming it are supernatural by Earth standards. Period. There are no non-supernatural characters in D&D. I mean, hell, Gygax's own descriptions of HP (from the 1e DMG, as far as I can tell) say it outright (emphasis added):
These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and / or magical factors....
Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The some holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.
Every character, even a Fighter--someone who does not intentionally invoke or channel
magic proper--is still supernatural by Earth standards. Things that are supernatural to us might in fact be completely ordinary to D&D characters, ordinary enough that they would find our standard of "ordinary" to be rather disappointing.
Since it was already brought up, let's talk about
Come and Get It, one of the hot-button powers of 4e. This is a power that--
even in this very thread--people have described as being effectively mind control ("Why does a reasonably intelligence [sic] creature just suddenly dive at the fighter and ultimately to their doom, just because the fighter wants them to?") Here is the text of that power (formatted as best I can to resemble how it would look in the book.) There would also be a sentence or two of flavor text between the power's name and description.
Encounter ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Close burst 3
Target: Each enemy you can see in the burst
Attack: Strength vs. Will
Hit: You pull the target up to 2 squares, but only if it can end the
pull adjacent to you. If the target is adjacent to you after the pull,
it takes 1[W] damage.
So. Some terminology here. This is an Encounter power (usable once per fight), loosely analogous to the Battle Master's Superiority Dice being regained with a short rest, but slightly more reliable (as 4e SR is only 5 min). It has the keywords Martial and Weapon, so circumstances that affect Martial powers apply to it and it may gain various effects from the weapon you use to make the attack...though you do need a weapon to use it. "Standard action" = what 5e just calls "an action." "Close burst 3": a "close" power starts from your location, and a burst goes out some distance from its starting square; in this case, it affects 3 squares (=15 feet) in all directions from the user.
The attack targets all enemies you can see within the burst; enemies with total concealment, invisibility, etc. are unaffected. You roll the attack roll using your Strength modifier, attacking the target's Will defense, which is the 4e equivalent of inducing a Wisdom (or Charisma) saving throw--notably, something two BM maneuvers do. One of those maneuvers even induces disadvantage on attacks if they don't include you until the end of your next turn, even if you move away!
Targets hit by by CaGI are "pulled up to 2 squares [10 feet] but only if [they] can end the pull adjacent to" the user. "Pull" is another system term--it's a form of movement that
must have every part of the movement bring the target physically closer. If there were, say, a wall of force separating the Fighter that used this power and a target (so the Fighter could still see the target), nothing would happen to that target, because "pull" effects don't let you move the target around obstacles. If a target is hit by CaGI and pulled so that it ends its turn adjacent to the Fighter that used this power, then the Fighter deals 1[W] (one weapon damage die/dice for 2d6-type weapons, plus any static modifiers) to that target.
So...that's it. That's all it does. If an enemy is close enough, and can physically make the move,
and the Fighter actually succeeds on attacking the target's Will, then the target is effectively goaded into approaching and gets punished for doing so. It's very literally shouting "COME AT ME BRO!" and hoping your delivery is good enough that some of your opponents actually fall for it.
If 5e's Goading Attack and Menacing Attack are perfectly acceptable (Fighters inducing Wisdom saves in order to make enemies behave a certain way), so is CaGI. If anything, CaGI is
better, since (as an Encounter power), you can't pull off the same trick twice--your enemies get wise to that approach and you have to try something else.
My pleasure. I'm well aware that 4e is often the "forgotten" (rather, "never played it") edition, so I try to be informative when I can. As I did with the above, I hope.
Yes, I would call it a "different form of caster", but after hearing how it works not to the extent I was imagining before.
Which is fair. I guess what you could say is that 4e decided that (in a sense) "casual" magic--magic that infuses the stuff you do
all the time, as opposed to stuff you spend a good amount of time preparing for and then it's gone--was what differentiated Fighter etc. from Wizard etc. That is, for a Wizard, basically every single thing they do is magic. It's difficult for them to do anything that
isn't magic in some way. Throwing enemies around the battlefield, teleporting real quick across a chasm, even dematerializing in a puff of smoke to dodge enemy attacks (no joke, just found that power looking for some examples). The Wizard
oozes magic. But anyone who wants to learn how to control ritual magic, the magic of pomp and circumstance, of skillful tricks supplemented by drawing diagrams on the floor in chalk or salt or placing candles at geomantic nodes or whatever...with some investment of both training (skills, a feat) and money (learning the ritual, buying components).
For my part, I see rituals as sort of...a thing truly anyone can learn, because the magic arises from following a "recipe" rather than drawing on personal power or skill. Ritual magic is what the town priest, the blacksmith, and the wise sage pracitce. Adventurers can also learn that form of magic, but it is rare to find someone who can practice such things while an orc is trying to practice making "gish-kabobs," as it were.
