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

[Remathilis]

Nope! I think people who are 100% purely skill-and-strength type characters can become just so. gorram. GOOD. at what they do, they genuinely pass beyond the limits of the mundane, without becoming "gods" to any extent or "innately magic" or whatever else.

So you are arguing that Heracles abilities are things any person could learn to do?

Man, demigodom is a rip off...

 

[Scribe]

Why?

Why is it so impossible to accept that there are stories--even in foundational European tales, the very things that inspired Tolkien himself and thus 99.9% of D&D's milieu!--where there are people who explicitly, emphatically DO NOT use ANYTHING "magical", and yet still do things that should be impossible?

Because a rose by any other name, is still a rose.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because a rose by any other name, is still a rose.

But it isn't.

"Magic" means something far more specific than that. See above, you replied before my edit went through.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh, I love the sweet smell of flogging the deceased equine in the morning. It is all just so nostalgic.

You folks do realize that no one is going to budge one iota on this issue. It's STILL the reason that WotC can't be direct about stuff. They have to pretend that 4e doesn't exist, rewrite material so that it doesn't look like it came from 4e, in order to avoid all those 4e cooties.

The fact that all sorts of other systems have things like damage on a miss - or partial successes for attacks if you prefer to word it that way - doesn't matter. It's D&D. The HP system must remain sacrosanct or all believability is lost. And, we'll keep tossing up ludicrous examples to "prove" how these new ideas are just destroying the game.

Note that virtually everyone who is arguing against things like Graze, are people who don't play 2024 D&D.

Think I'll go put some Flo Rida on my mp3 player.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So you are arguing that Heracles abilities are things any person could learn to do?

Man, demigodom is a rip off...

Some of the things Hercules did were things a person could, eventually, learn to do in myth or legend or fairytale or folklore. Because Beowulf--who is not a demigod, his mom is descended from a king and his dad was a local chieftain or the like--does things comparable to them. Other things he did, nah, that's definitely magical in some way. Consider, for instance, the Nemean Lion. Clearly a divinely-created monster (cut from the same cloth as, for example, Python), invulnerable to weapons...but not to good ol' wrasslin. The wrestling part? That's a thing a transmundane hero like Beowulf could learn to do. Using the lion's own claws to skin it and thus get an invulnerable-to-weapons cape? That's magic, specifically a magic item. Diverting a river? If Beowulf can swim home across the sea while carrying 30 sets of armor, I can't see how temporarily diverting a river would be harder. Ascending to full godhood upon being sacrificed on the funeral pyre? Definitely magical (of the divine boon variety).

 

[Pedantic]

Why?

Why is it so impossible to accept that there are stories--even in foundational European tales, the very things that inspired Tolkien himself and thus 99.9% of D&D's milieu!--where there are people who explicitly, emphatically DO NOT use ANYTHING "magical", and yet still do things that should be impossible?

"Magic" is far, FAR more specific than "things that aren't physically possible with completely mundane skills." Magic means curses, or alchemy/potions/elixirs, or spells (which, in D&D, have mostly absorbed curses), or enchanted items, or explicitly divine "boons" or the like. None of those things describe Atalanta, or Odysseus, or Beowulf. They just, flat, don't.

The only conclusion one can draw, which doesn't contradict the explicit text of the stories involved here, is that you can have things that are not "magic"--they aren't any of the things that fall under the meaning of that term--but which are beyond-the-natural. That it is possible for someone's prowess or skill or speed to become so great, it manages to break the rules, even though none of the practice that went into developing that power ever broke the rules itself.

"Magic" is not the only thing that can break the rules of nature. Other things can too. Transmundane abilities are among them. Such explicitly non-magical breaking-of-nature's-rules is rife in fiction the world over, going back thousands of years to the very foundations of storytelling.

Yeah, that's a definitional issue you're not going to solve through sheer force of insistence. I'm all in favor of a variety of different systems and power sources, but magic is definitionally anything that is impossible being achieved by using some extra-normal ability, and it's just a category error when you say something isn't magic that fits into that set. It can get a little convoluted when you have more than one magic system in play, and only one of them is formally denoted "magic" in the setting, like Captain Marvel vs. Superman, but that's ultimately just two different examples of the same thing. The "mundane" aesthetic of the fighter is defined by not engaging with any of it, at least directly.

 

[Joshua Randall]

magic is definitionally anything that is impossible being achieved by using some extra-normal ability,

By this definition, every action movie features magical characters.

 

[Hussar]

By this definition, every action movie features magical characters.

Therein lies the heart of the problem. People want to pretend that their "mundane" fighters don't achieve anything impossible, when that's easily disproven.

My "completely mundane" fighter cuts through dozens of enemies all armed with swords and emerges with barely a scratch? That's not magic. Just real skill. Despite the fact that it's pretty much impossible in the real world. Completely mundane fighter kills a dinosaur with a sword? Yup, just an example of mundane skill. No magic at all. Despite the fact that it's 100% impossible to be achieved without using some extra-normal abilities.

But, jump an extra 20 feet? Oh HELL NO. You can only do that with MAAAAAAAGIC.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

So you are arguing that Heracles abilities are things any person could learn to do?

Man, demigodom is a rip off...

Why would it need to be any character? It's not any character. It's a player character.

 

[Scribe]

Why would it need to be any character? It's not any character. It's a player character.

That's not relevant really.