D&D 5E 2024 D&D is 2014 D&D with 4E sprinkled on top

[EzekielRaiden]

Tbf D&D didn't have full plate armor or rapiers in it when it came out.

Are you sure? Chainmail has "plate" and "plate and shield" as armor categories, in contrast to "Chain/Banded/Studded/Splint". Plate armor, that was not made from splints or bands or chain, did not exist until the late 1300s. True full plate armor didn't exist until 1420--well into the Renaissance.

It's since become Renaissance Faire.

I'm not so sure. But even if I grant that, people specifically reject the presence of gunpowder because it's "unrealistic". Not because it doesn't fit their preferences, but because, according to them, it simply should not be there, yet plate armor should.

Keep in mind: cannons existed in Europe by 1326, and were used in warfare by 1348 by the English, y'know, the people literally the furthest away from China (within the Old World, I mean) where cannons had originated.

Many of the polearms that Gygax so lavishly covered were also developed in the early Renaissance, rather than the middle or late Medieval Period. For example, the "bardiche" as we understand it didn't come into existence until the very, very end of the Medieval Period. The Bohemian Earspoon, so beloved for its humorous name, did not appear until the 14th century--the same time as gunpowder. Yet I know for a fact that Gygax included it amongst the polearms mentioned in his books.

So...yeah. It was already, from its foundation, a mishmash hybrid of whatever stuff people felt like stealing from a literally thousand-plus year range (from roughly the fifth century to the fifteenth century).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A little judgemental, don't you think?

If judgment is warranted, judgment should be made. If it is not, then it should not.

If you think judgment is not warranted, perhaps it would be useful to instead argue why such a claim is wrong, rather than arguing that I am in some way deficient for having made the argument.

 

[Scribe]

Why does magic get to be terrifying in a way that non-magic does not?

Because

1. Its Magic, its already outside the rules of what we know.
2. I can go pick up and swing a piece of metal right now. Its the same as a Fighter doing it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because

1. Its Magic, its already outside the rules of what we know.
2. I can go pick up and swing a piece of metal right now. Its the same as a Fighter doing it.

1 is literally just saying "magic can be better because magic is better." Magic operates by whatever rules you WANT it to operate by. You're not somehow off the hook for creating rules that blatantly and objectively favor magic over all other approaches! Fiction is creationist, not evolutionary! You are quite literally saying, "Magic is better because I said it is" in response to someone asking WHY magic is just always better. That's not an answer.

2 is simply straight-up false, and a HUGE part of why martial characters constantly get dumped on for incredibly frustrating AND FALSE "realism" reasons. You cannot "go pick up and swing a piece of metal right now" and have it be "the same as a Fighter doing it." I promise you that. You need, y'know, TRAINING to do it correctly. You need practice and timing. You need a body that is fit for the purpose, which emphatically would not mean the lovely rippling muscles of weightlifters (which I am quite a fan of!), because those lovely rippling muscles are for show, not for use.

Claiming that your own swinging of a random long piece of metal would be exactly the same as a trained Fighter wielding a sword is precisely the huge, huge, huge problem D&D has with martial characters. It's what I like to call the "guy at the gym" argument, or perhaps fallacy (though throwing around the word "fallacy" tends to raise hackles, regardless of its truth or falsity). Martials are restricted to what laypeople think a guy at the gym could do, which is provably and objectively less than what even real-world Olympic athletes can do and have done, let alone actually fantastical feats of strength or speed or precision.

 

[Scribe]

1 is literally just saying "magic can be better because magic is better." Magic operates by whatever rules you WANT it to operate by. You're not somehow off the hook for creating rules that blatantly and objectively favor magic over all other approaches! Fiction is creationist, not evolutionary!

Define 'better'. I believe they can be balanced.

2 is simply straight-up false, and a HUGE part of why martial characters constantly get dumped on for incredibly frustrating AND FALSE "realism" reasons. You cannot "go pick up and swing a piece of metal right now" and have it be "the same as a Fighter doing it." I promise you that.

Its your perspective. I, and many others, want the martials to be more 'mundane' and neither of us will ever be convinced by the other.

You need, y'know, TRAINING to do it correctly. You need practice and timing. You need a body that is fit for the purpose, which emphatically would not mean the lovely rippling muscles of weightlifters (which I am quite a fan of!), because those lovely rippling muscles are for show, not for use.

Yet, people CAN do this. They CAN train with a Sword, they CAN train their bodies to reach heights that the vast majority of people will NEVER touch.

What we will NEVER do?

Levitate.
Generate and through a ball of Fire from nothing.
Speak a word, and have something drop dead due the power of that word alone.

There is a fundamental difference between Magic, and swinging a Sword.

 

[Zardnaar]

Are you sure? Chainmail has "plate" and "plate and shield" as armor categories, in contrast to "Chain/Banded/Studded/Splint". Plate armor, that was not made from splints or bands or chain, did not exist until the late 1300s. True full plate armor didn't exist until 1420--well into the Renaissance.


I'm not so sure. But even if I grant that, people specifically reject the presence of gunpowder because it's "unrealistic". Not because it doesn't fit their preferences, but because, according to them, it simply should not be there, yet plate armor should.

Keep in mind: cannons existed in Europe by 1326, and were used in warfare by 1348 by the English, y'know, the people literally the furthest away from China (within the Old World, I mean) where cannons had originated.

Many of the polearms that Gygax so lavishly covered were also developed in the early Renaissance, rather than the middle or late Medieval Period. For example, the "bardiche" as we understand it didn't come into existence until the very, very end of the Medieval Period. The Bohemian Earspoon, so beloved for its humorous name, did not appear until the 14th century--the same time as gunpowder. Yet I know for a fact that Gygax included it amongst the polearms mentioned in his books.

So...yeah. It was already, from its foundation, a mishmash hybrid of whatever stuff people felt like stealing from a literally thousand-plus year range (from roughly the fifth century to the fifteenth century).

Don't think to many are saying no gunpowder. It's an ask the DM situation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Define 'better'. I believe they can be balanced.



Its your perspective. I, and many others, want the martials to be more 'mundane' and neither of us will ever be convinced by the other.



Yet, people CAN do this. They CAN train with a Sword, they CAN train their bodies to reach heights that the vast majority of people will NEVER touch.

What we will NEVER do?

Levitate.
Generate and through a ball of Fire from nothing.
Speak a word, and have something drop dead due the power of that word alone.

There is a fundamental difference between Magic, and swinging a Sword.

Y'know what else folks will never do?

Wuxia sword-saint stuff. And yet that's a tale we tell. Or use a river to flood a filthy stable to clean it in one night. Or shoot enough arrows to kill multiple enemies all at once. Etc., etc., etc.--yet we still tell these tales.

Or having the mighty thews of characters like Beowulf, or Liu Bu, or Artemis, or Rostam, or Odysseus, or whomever else. People who are not the children or even grandchildren of gods, but just kickass mortals.

Your logic remains circular. Magic is better because you've decided magic is better. The real world around us shows what a world with profoundly weak (as in, nonexistent) magic would look like. That said...

neither of us will ever be convinced by the other.

This is probably true. But, at least in my opinion, only one position here is amenable to giving both of us what we want.

It isn't yours.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If judgment is warranted, judgment should be made. If it is not, then it should not.

If you think judgment is not warranted, perhaps it would be useful to instead argue why such a claim is wrong, rather than arguing that I am in some way deficient for having made the argument.

Hey, I have no problem with non-magic being cool. I just want it to make sense to me. If something exists in real life, I want my game to mirror its actual properties as much as is practical. I will not apologize for that, and if you want to judge me or my playstyle for it, so be it.

You were complaining earlier about people saying gunpowder and Renaissance plate shouldn't co-exist (not a claim I've ever made, by the way). Give the fighter a barrel of black powder. I'll support a petard or six all the way. Heck, let them make some use of that crazy strength score and have them haul around one of those "light" cannons folks usually attach wheels to.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Don't think to many are saying no gunpowder. It's an ask the DM situation.

Oh, I have absolutely seen it time and time again, even on ENWorld and other forums I have frequented in the past.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh, I have absolutely seen it time and time again, even on ENWorld and other forums I have frequented in the past.

You kept bringing up stuff you've seem somewhere.

On internet you can find anything though.

And gunpowder is in ask the DM territory.