D&D 5E [+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap

[Raiztt]

"...you cannot train hard enough that you could cut a boulder in twain with a sword, jump on top of the castle wall, lift an ox..."

Things I would never allow my players to do for $100, Alex.

(RIP Trebek)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whether they have a pass or not is immaterial to me.

I'm just saying the narrative that a 20th level fighter is just a bad dude rescuing the president isn't feasible. A high level character, of any class, is "something else" that transcends mundane origins. It's inherent to the presentation of what high-level characters do.

Well, its material to me if a game expects me to swallow it.

 

[TwoSix]

It feels like replicability is a thing too. If someone survives falling 100' unaided to the hard ground relatively unhurt irl, that's pretty astounding. If someone repeatedly falls from tall heights unaided to the hard ground unscathed, then that feels different to me.

Exactly. The longest fall ever survived unaided is something like 33,000', a little over 10 km. Do that once, that's astounding. Do it every day, and brush it off and keep going, is a whole other narrative.

You can always try to make up some edge case rule about why that wouldn't actually happen, OR you can just accept it as part of the genre and lean into it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I really think you do.

What it comes down to is that we disagree on some fundamental design goals and priorities.

I want:

• Classes that are fun to play with fun, impactful, balanced abilities.
• Game mechanics that mostly stay out of the way of tables' narrative options.

Basically, I think the table can figure out the story, if the rules supply the fun.

My understanding of what you are looking for is:

• A set of mechanics that coherently and completely simulate some fictional world.

It seems you expect that if the rules model the possibilities for the story, the result will be fun.

You likely find my priorities gamist and incomplete. I find your priorities inflexible and restrictive. We disagree.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me it is pretty plain that D&D never has tried to emulate actual reality, it emulates fantasy stories and myths. So in real life you cannot train hard enough that you could cut a boulder in twain with a sword, jump on top of the castle wall, lift an ox or slay a fire breathing lizard size of a buss. But in stories you can, so you also can in D&D. Or at least you should.

Other than the slaying, you can't do those things in D&D without magic.

 

[Raiztt]

Exactly. The longest fall ever survived unaided is something like 33,000', a little over 10 km. Do that once, that's astounding. Do it every day, and brush it off and keep going, is a whole other narrative.

You can always try to make up some edge case rule about why that wouldn't actually happen, OR you can just accept it as part of the genre and lean into it.

Or you can just have the character roll a 1d1,000,000 and if they roll a million, they survive the 33,000' fall.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, its material to me if a game expects me to swallow it.

So, to fit your preferences, what's the most parsimonious solution to fix the current ruleset's contradictions?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Other than the slaying, you can't do those things in D&D without magic.

But a high level martial should be able to. Those things are no more fantastic than dragon-fighting. And if they can do those things, it actually makes it far more plausible that they could fight the dragon too.

 

[TwoSix]

Or you can just have the character roll a 1d1,000,000 and if they roll a million, they survive the 33,000' fall.

So literally the first of the two options I presented, lol.

 

[Raiztt]

But a high level martial should be able to. Those things are no more fantastic than dragon-fighting. And if they can do those things, it actually makes it far more plausible that they could fight the dragon too.

Should? Says who? None of the fantasy literature I try to emulate features non-supernatural humans doing reality bending, physics breaking feats.

This conversation goes around and around and around but it's completely settled:

Different people have different base expectations/assumptions about their game world and what is possible. Done. Never the twain shall meet.

(For example, that's implicit in my first sentence: My game world is real world analog + magic.)