D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Chaosmancer]

From the perspective of the reader/viewer, all those things are obviously beyond Earth reality and thus need no further explanation. And in any case stories and games are different things, as I've said many times before.

Show me a game where people perform superhuman feats without implicit or explicit explanation, because it matters there where it doesn't in a story. Like @dave2008 said, this is a question of game terms. Continuing to bring up stories does nothing to prove your point to me.

Okay, hmm, this will be hard.. let's start with... Dungeons and Dragons.

Okay, Okay, I know that's a low bar. What about Savage Worlds: Deadlands? Cold Steel Wardens is good. Sentinel Comics the Role-playing game. OVA. Maid. I guess technically the system I made for God's road would count, but it isn't a published system.

Is that enough? Or do none of those count because of reasons?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, hmm, this will be hard.. let's start with... Dungeons and Dragons.

Okay, Okay, I know that's a low bar. What about Savage Worlds: Deadlands? Cold Steel Wardens is good. Sentinel Comics the Role-playing game. OVA. Maid. I guess technically the system I made for God's road would count, but it isn't a published system.

Is that enough? Or do none of those count because of reasons?

All of those games have beings performing superhuman feats without any explanation? I played Deadlands, and it is chock-full of explanations for the many supernatural abilities of its creatures. So do virtually all superhero games I'm familiar with. Where are characters presented as mundane but demonstrably not so?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yeah...so weird to have stuff that is beyond real life reality in a fantasy game called out as such in the game to the players living in real life reality..

Are your players generally capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality?

If so, then, yes, it is weird to think they'd need the book to hold their hand and tell them which parts of it are fantasy.

If not, then I think they have bigger problems than we should expect an RPG rulebook to solve.

 

[Umbran]

I am not a ragger like you - rage if it makes you happy.

Mod note:
Hey. Please keep the discussion about the topic, not the people having the discussion. The personal comments don't address the topic of the thread, and you should be able to do better without them.

 

[Minigiant]

But by the laws of our reality, it is effectively supernatural. And those terms are in comparison to our reality, not theirs.

Not really

Many gama or below mutants are just genetics that we could could see today

If Beast was walking around and said we have beastism, no one would bar an eye. There actually ARE blue skinned humans on earth.

So if Beast and Beak are not supernatural, the X-Gene isn't.

 

[CreamCloud0]

What narratives? This just sounds like an embrace of pretense to me, and I don't understand it.

of nonmagical heroes, who earned their feats through hard work and training,
of the humble everyman who rises to the occasion,
to be the underdog who matches with their betters through superior skill.

to be batman, rock lee, sanji or zorro, hawkeye or black widow.

 

[Micah Sweet]

of nonmagical heroes, who earned their feats through hard work and training,
of the humble everyman who rises to the occasion,
to be the underdog who matches with their betters through superior skill.

to be batman, rock lee, sanji or zorro, hawkeye or black widow.

And being honest about the superhuman nature of these characters, in the game material, from the perspective of the real life players, destroys those narratives? Self-deception and pretence are required?

 

[dave2008]

Right but... that's level 1, isn't it?

At level 1 a character can summon fire from thin air with mere words and gestures. That is an action clearly beyond what we can expect IRL. Or swim in full plate. Or climb incredibly fast.

Okay, but you don't want to count mages or people who take magic initiate as a feat, and you think those physical accomplishments are silly... then level 3, when the majority of fighter subclasses suddenly start summoning flaming chains, creating shadow clones, or shooting ghost arrows?

Level 5 when the rogue can dodge psychic damage?

So, you are going to need a different line for every class, and every subclass? Are magical subclasses allowed to get extraordinary abilities sooner than non-magical ones?

I appreciate the idea of the line, think level 9 to 11 is a good place for a line, but we need to make a lot of exceptions to that line.

I am not explaining myself clearly and it is not important enough for me to try anymore. I know what I mean and want. I don't expect others to understand or have the same desires.

I would rather get back to doing product D&D work. Thank you for the discussion, I am done with this thread (really this time).

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

All of those games have beings performing superhuman feats without any explanation? I played Deadlands, and it is chock-full of explanations for the many supernatural abilities of its creatures. So do virtually all superhero games I'm familiar with. Where are characters presented as mundane but demonstrably not so?

In Mutants and Masterminds you decide your own descriptors. It is trivial to design a character who is purely mundane.

I will quote, for example, this power from Power Profiles (3e) which comes from the Talent chapter. It is the chapter with techniques that are pure skill and no fluff.

Perfect Defense: Immunity 40 (attacks targeting Dodge or Parry), Concentration Duration

As long as you concentrate you are functionally immune to any attacks that target dodge or parry. You are simply that good at blocking.

Or what about this one. Brilliant Deduction. You are so intelligent that you effectively can scry on events that happened at a particular location that you can see.

Or what about this: Master of Disguise. You can change clothes and disguise yourself as a standard action.

This one is particularly great: Master Escape Artist. You are effectively insubstantial when you attempt to escape from imprisonment or shackles. It is like being a liquid.

 

[CreamCloud0]

And being honest about the superhuman nature of these characters, in the game material, from the perspective of the real life players, destroys those narratives? Self-deception and pretence are required?

they might be superhuman by our standard, but they are not considered such, or as magical or supernatural either by any measure in their universes, by the same kind of standards of DnD these characters archetypes would be martials there too, and yes making them magical would undercut the narratives told by them.

there is no self-deception or pretence happening here.