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

[Scribe]

You can't have it both ways. You can't hold one thing to "it must be 100% perfectly achievable on Earth" AND "sure whatever who cares it's Magic and Magic can do whatever it wants."

Yeah you can. One is mundane, like a Fighter, the other is magic, like most everything else.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Let me put this simply.

Training + Supernatural power source = Supernatural effects.
Training + NonSupernatural power source = mundane effects.

Let me put it simply.

That's a choice. There are other, equally-valid choices.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah you can. One is mundane, like a Fighter, the other is magic, like most everything else.

So, again: "My preferences are better than your preferences. Get used to it."

I reject such hostile design.

 

[Remathilis]

I generally agree with your assessment, I would just add that, IMO, the "supernatural power source" can simply be the setting. So in a setting were the supernatural power source is everywhere, then the effects are, effectively, "natural" for that setting. In such a setting, someone can simply train and achieve supernatural effects (though in setting they would be deemed "natural").

The issue here is that if magic is natural and not supernatural, then you end in a world where the supernatural is integrated into life (ghosts can own shops, gargoyles deliver the mail) and everything is magic (bakers can prepare heroes feasts, farmers can shield plants from harm, masons carve stone that is indestructible.) Essentially Eberron on steroids. In such a world, supernatural or mythic feats wouldn't be limited to just PCs, but to any sufficiently talented NPC as well. nothing is supernatural because everything is.

My ideal would be that most of the world's population is mundane, but every PC has something special built into their class that makes them special. A cut above the unwashed masses. An innate spark of supernatural power that lets them channel primal magic into rage, prepare arcane magic, or smite enemies with divine fire. The normal folk can be guards and bakers and brigands. Yes, that puts the PCs into main character syndrome. No, I don't care. PCs are already special by virtue of being played by a player and having the game focus on them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This IS all magic. It's not Arcane study, but it IS magic.

So you say.

Clearly, this isn't something everyone agrees with. I've already laid out how "magic" has TONS of baggage that make it not an acceptable term.

Have you responded to said argument? Because if so, I missed it. If you have not, then I would like a response to it. There's a reason people keep pushing back against this claim that absolutely anything whatever beyond the incredibly limited "mundane" has to be "magic." As I quoted before, there are more things in heaven and earth.

 

[Remathilis]

Let me put it simply.

That's a choice. There are other, equally-valid choices.

You can create a world where the laws of physics don't apply and things impossible in our world are just normal everyday things in that world, but I think such a setting would be hard for most people to grasp.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You can create a world where the laws of physics don't apply and things impossible in our world are just normal everyday things in that world, but I think such a setting would be hard for most people to grasp.

Whoever said there weren't any rules at all? Now you're inventing a strawman argument. I never--EVER--said that. If you can point to where I did say that, I'm all ears. Otherwise, I'm going to take this as a blatant demonstration that you have no argument to make, and thus have to spin up a falsehood in order to respond.

 

[Remathilis]

This IS all magic. It's not Arcane study, but it IS magic.

Magic in D&D language is a specific thing. Barbarian rage is not magic, but it is not natural/mundane either. It's essentially extraordinary and so close to supernatural they can make out. Monk ki/focus is likewise. Anti-magical abilities don't affect either, but I would not call either of them mundane. This is that third space where things are more supernatural than mundane, but not exactly magic either.

 

[Pedantic]

You can create a world where the laws of physics don't apply and things impossible in our world are just normal everyday things in that world, but I think such a setting would be hard for most people to grasp.

Right, the sin is not having a "normal" non-empowered baseline, it's making that a player-facing class. It's very clear at this point the fighter is stuck in that box with little room to expand. Either they need offload all their power to external sources (items, player skill, maybe metacurrency if you want to fight a separate battle to get that into D&D), or they need pivot into an archetype that can support the necessary power growth.

 

[CreamCloud0]

You can create a world where the laws of physics don't apply and things impossible in our world are just normal everyday things in that world, but I think such a setting would be hard for most people to grasp.

The laws of physics still exist and things are pretty much all the same (more or less as they’re managed to be simulated by game rules) the only difference is that when they train for it people can become stronger, faster, tougher than they can in the real world, I don’t see what’s so hard to grasp about that?