D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[James Gasik]

The only Final Fantasy game I ever played was the first one, and I finished it.

Congratulations! That was back in the day of "ok, time to grind out ten levels so I can get back to actually playing the game now" as opposed to "oh you just started? Here's a care package of 20,000 xp and some artifacts to get you going.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why do you say modern? All my AD&D stuff reflects that just as well. Or did I not go from a level 1 schlub in the Village of Hommlet to eventually facing the Demon Princess of Fungi in the same adventure? I'm old, I don't remember stuff so good always.

I'm referring your theory that D&D cares about fun over verisimilitude. Even if you're right, verisimilitude is fun for some, and it has been increasingly down-played over the years in the official game.

 

[James Gasik]

Perhaps they should. They at least define magic as a trait some but not all humans possess.

Getting back to Sorcerers, if the power does come from one's ancestry, why aren't there more Sorcerers running around? There's this bit in Order of the Stick where the Wizard, infused with evil power, murders all the descendants of a dragon that threatened his family with an epic spell.

Then we get a multitude of panels showing all that's dragons' descendants, each of whom is at least part dragon. There really could be some huge Sorcerer family trees in a game world!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fantastical loses its meaning when the audience has no frame of reference. If trees look like trees, feel like trees and explode into fireballs when chopped down, the audience wants an explanation and telling them "it's fantasy, you're not on Earth" isn't going to satisfy. At best, they check out and assume that they cannot understand the rules of the world and at worst they go full CinemaSins and nitpick every contradiction they find.

Welcome to my world.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm referring your theory that D&D cares about fun over verisimilitude. Even if you're right, verisimilitude is fun for some, and it has been increasingly down-played over the years in the official game.

Oh, well, that's just an observation. Of course verisimilitude is fun for some- who doesn't like a well fleshed-out campaign world? But the opposite is just as valid.

But let me put it to you this way. If verisimilitude is fun for you, then there's no difference. If verisimilitude made the game not fun for the people playing, I would think fun should take preference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ok, so there's these two schools of thought. One, that player characters are special in the game. The other that they are not special.

If you adhere to the first, everything makes sense. The player character human is magical and can do crazy stuff because it's assumed he's special.

But if you adhere to the second, things kind of break down because player characters can have classes and magic and preternatural abilities that only special people should have...and yet, we're saying they aren't special?

Like I said, if we say some people can do these things but most people can't, so the ones that can are the exceptions, and the player characters are always exceptions, great!

But if someone starts saying "some people can do these things but most people can't and player characters aren't particularly special or noteworthy in the world" and yet just about every player has these special traits...yeah.

I see it as a matter of spotlight rather than the PCs are different in a fundamental way. There are other people with class levels running around in the setting too.

 

[James Gasik]

I see it as a matter of spotlight rather than the PCs are different in a fundamental way. There are other people with class levels running around in the setting too.

Sometimes too many. Looking at you, Faerun, where you can't throw a rock without hitting an Archmage (well, actually, not hitting them, because they all have shield and chained contingency spells going).

 

[Yaarel]

Saying that everything in a fantasy setting is fantastical (by earth standards) should not be that surprising.

Certainly, a fantastical setting comes with fantistical phenomena.

The surprise happens if defining a Fighter class as "nonmagical". Then it does magical things. To claim something is fantastical but isnt magical becomes confusing even nonsensical semantics.

The flavor of the Fighter class needs to make clear, this is a magical warrior that can achieve impossible effects.

 

[Minigiant]

Sure it can.

"You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish."

There's nothing there that says no to the wish making the wizard a fighter. Hell, it used to be doable with a 6th level spell. So while an individual DM might say no, another might say yes, making it well within the possibility of the Wish spell.

Copying fighter abilities were purposely removed from magic as part of D&D 5's design philosophy.

Spells that "make you into a fighter" were removed officially. That's a limit on D&D magic that no magic can replicate.

The D&D design team for 5e sought after ensuring that a fighter would always be a better warrior that a similarly optimized full spellcaster

 

[Gammadoodler]

Fantastical loses its meaning when the audience has no frame of reference. If trees look like trees, feel like trees and explode into fireballs when chopped down, the audience wants an explanation and telling them "it's fantasy, you're not on Earth" isn't going to satisfy. At best, they check out and assume that they cannot understand the rules of the world and at worst they go full CinemaSins and nitpick every contradiction they find.

I think that people who go into a fantasy game should go into it with the assumption that they, the players, cannot understand all of the rules of the world.

i think this is a healthy approach to fantasy.

Where there is similarity to Earth, it is a matter of coincidence, and/or convenience. Not a matter of "reasonable expectation".

Now the trick is that, whenever the DM chooses to use elements where something common to Earth behaves differently in the fantasy, it is on them to provide tools to the players to allow the PCs to react appropriately based on the PCs knowledge of the world.

Edit: note that game mechanics for PCs are there, specifically to do this last job.