D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Oofta]

What does this mean to you? John McLane hides in air vents and elevator shafts and pops out of hiding to ambush 1 or 2 humans with semiautomatic and automatic firearms and remote detonated explosives

How is this D&D fighting?

McClane should have died many times over in the first movie Survive Hard: All The Times John McClane Should Have Died In The ‘Die Hard’ Series and it just got more over the top after that.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Man, we should get a barbar that can Hulk jump.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Because they represent cool examples of people fighting things with weapons?

They're how we want to see our characters fight, not the stumbling, sad mess that most actual fights are. Like I don't want my murderous muscle-bound monster man to just go around hugging people and asking them politely to smell his feet like in MMA.

Using automatic firearms and explosives in a modern setting against modern humans.

How does anyone expect D&D to deliver on that experience with melee martials?

 

[Gammadoodler]

McClane should have died many times over in the first movie Survive Hard: All The Times John McClane Should Have Died In The ‘Die Hard’ Series and it just got more over the top after that.

If someone came to you with an idea for an adventure, and it was that a group of evil human soldiers take over a castle, and your PC has to go around alone killing them 1 or 2 at a time, but has to avoid engaging more enemies than that or your PC will likely lose the fight (and die)...

What D&D character level would you guess that adventure was designed for?

Edit: Look I love action movies and action movie heroes. They just completely fail to emulate my experiences with actual D&D combat scenarios, and they aren't close.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Using automatic firearms and explosives in a modern setting against modern humans.

How does anyone expect D&D to deliver on that experience with melee martials?

Every single one of these characters has stand-out melee sequences that showcase quick, powerful, effective and most of all flashy moves.

John wrapping the big dude's neck in a chain and hanging him.

Natasha doing that flying takedown thing she does in every movie.

Bond grappling with Jaws before electrocuting him on the bars in the pyramid.

Hawkeye doing a dynamic entry on some tracksuits with the zipline.

Punisher constantly assaulting the genre and helping suplex it into the garbage heap of the 90's.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

My DM was planning on using this epic level homebrew book for 5e, one of the level 30 Mythic features was doing super Hulk jumps for many miles, was pretty cool.

The casters got a spell to create a whole universe at the same level, but ya get what you can.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

So, because I hurt my shoulder and am in pain I read the whole thread as a distraction and it worked ... because greater pain can overshadow weaker pain.

Boy, does this discussion goes in circles.

First - Supernatural Fighters.

So - are fighters in D&D supernatural? If you compare them to earth humans - yes. Also James Bond John McLane, Hawkeye and Co are supernatural in that regard.
That comes with the territory (Action Genre).

Why are "mudane" D&D fighters tough term then their earthly counterparts?

Because it is a game and without them being tougher the game would be quickly over.
In like 99% of all Action Games the characters, be it PCs or NPCs, need to be tougher in order to have a satisfactory game experience.
Counter Strike (or Fornite for the younglings) would be boring if you die (or get incapacitated) by one bullet hit.
The same with D&D - if my character would be real, it would have 1 maybe 4 HP max and never get more. The game would be over after the first giant rat.

The same with Action movies. If John McClane or Conan only could withstand what a normal real human could withstand, it would be over after the first encounter.

It is a concession to the Action Genre. You need tough characters or their would be barley any action in it.

And D&D is an action RPG.
In a physical sense Call of Cthulhu Characters are more realistic. They will not win a fight against a Lion ever with their bare hands. But Call of Cthulhu doesn't have 80% combat rules.

Second - Taunt ability and suspension of disbelief

So, now we know, why fictional Fighters in the Action Genre are tougher (supernatural tougher) than normal humans. Its needed in order to function as intended.
So, what about other unrealistic stuff? In D&D we have Magic, Monsters and so on. That is also needed or it wouldn't be a western fantasy rpg.Thats fine, too.

But for any Fantasy/unrealistic thing to work, we need realism in other places. How much is Genre dependent.
If their would be suddenly Aliens in Die Hard, John Wick (or Indiana Jones!) people would hate it. If John McClane could at will breath fire or Taunt all people always into attacking him, it would kill them story. It would break the suspension of disbelief for a lot of people.

So D&D, Action Movies and so on are unrealistic where it is need to be in order to function. But they need to be realistic where they can. Like in social interactions in D&D. They ground the game a little bit more in reality. They make the world feel alive (when done correctly).
If you make anything, every aspect, unrealistic, the game or the movie would be unrelatable.
Thats why a lot of people here hate the Taunt ability. It sucks, because it causes (NonPlayer)-Characters in the game to behave unrealistically in comparison to real world people. Which breaks their suspension of disbelief. Suddenly they are not inside the game world anymore. Suddenly they are at the game table and John used a homebrew character ability that wouldn't survive any playtest.

So you always need a degree of realism in your story. And "human" behaviour is the most important thing.
People can accept Magic, Dragons, Tough guys, but if a person doesn't behave like a real person in that unrealisticnsituation would, it breaks most people's suspension of disbelief.

That's why the Taunt ability is bad.

For other realistic or unrealistic stuff (outside of "human" behaviour) it depends on the individual how much realism they need to stay grounded.

This is wrong.

The taunt ability as I outlined in my initial post is explicitly not supernatural.

Non-magical and non-supernatural features can obviously affect the minds of people

1: The deception skill is a trivial example that influences the mind of a target. You lie to them. They may or may not fall for it.

2: The frightful presence of a dragon is another one, one that compels movement.

3: Menacing Attack: "When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to frighten the target. You add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it is frightened of you until the end of your next turn." Ie the mind of the target has been affected.

4: The Battle Master's ability that grants an ally the ability to take an extra reaction is not about compelled movement, but demonstrates that you can have abilities that are non-magical and which grant movement to other characters.

So I have proven that the system as it is already allows the non-magical characters to influence the minds of opponents. Therefore the taunt is realistic.

 

[Oofta]

If someone came to you with an idea for an adventure, and it was that a group of evil human soldiers take over a castle, and your PC has to go around alone killing them 1 or 2 at a time, but has to avoid engaging more enemies than that or your PC will likely lose the fight (and die)...

What D&D character level would you guess that adventure was designed for?

Edit: Look I love action movies and action movie heroes. They just completely fail to emulate my experiences with actual D&D combat scenarios, and they aren't close.

The point is that the guy had plot armor up the wazoo. Just like D&D fighters, especially at higher levels. Meanwhile, while he only interacted with the world around him physically, many of the things he did only had one in a million chance to survive.

 

[Vaalingrade]

My DM was planning on using this epic level homebrew book for 5e, one of the level 30 Mythic features was doing super Hulk jumps for many miles, was pretty cool.

The casters got a spell to create a whole universe at the same level, but ya get what you can.

I want to preserve this post in amber to represent exactly what the issues is.

"At my pinnacle of power, I conjure into being an entire cosmos! The Power of a God in the palm of my hand!"

"I jump good."

"Ah. Clearly we are equals. You can't ask for anything more than that. No seriously. don't you dare do it. It will make me sad."

 

[Gammadoodler]

Every single one of these characters has stand-out melee sequences that showcase quick, powerful, effective and most of all flashy moves.

John wrapping the big dude's neck in a chain and hanging him.

Natasha doing that flying takedown thing she does in every movie.

Bond grappling with Jaws before electrocuting him on the bars in the pyramid.

Hawkeye doing a dynamic entry on some tracksuits with the zipline.

Punisher constantly assaulting the genre and helping suplex it into the garbage heap of the 90's.

Melee sequences that are less than 1% of what they typically do (except for natasha). And aren't ever done on anything larger than a single human at a time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for flashy combat abilities, but using these as your "upper limits" for D&D fighting capabilities ignores the mismatch between the action movie genre expectations and the typical scope and hazards of D&D combat at high levels.