D&D 5E Is 5e Heroic, or SUPER-heroic?

Flamestrike said:

Is Frodo flying through the air, firing disintegration beams out of his hands, after dealing with a nest of Beholders and Illithid monsters, and beating down Smaug bare handed?

Because that's just a standard adventuring day for his DnD counterparts.

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Again, since you did not reply to my question concerning artifacts:

Frodo has the one ring, which in your translation might be just a weird ring of invisibility, but in fact is the mightiest object on middle earth.

And he bears the artefacts curse, which is much more of superhero than to fly through the air shooting laserbeams out of whatever.

Translated to D&D:

If e.g Frodo could not resist the one rings daily urges, by passing the appropriate saves and ability checks, or if he choses willfully to give in, he could become a godlike being. Or maybe not him, but remember that Gandalf as well as Galadriel refused to take the one ring because they could not resist its promise of power.

Flamestrike said:

My point is the protagonists of LoTR are not the protagonists of T4 DnD. You cant compare Aragorn, Frodo and Gimli with 20th level DnD heroes who more closely resemble the cast of the Avengers than they do the latter Fellowship.

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I notice how you left Legolas out...

Garthanos said:

Call it what you want to ;p. For me no D&D priest reads like a miraculous thing anymore than a magic missile (its way too character driven not god driven god offered). RuneQuest had some very maybe the god will give you what you want maybe something else game elements and maybe they wont and you had to really sacrifice to do big things that doesn't happen in D&D. It lacks authenticity AND does feel like super powers. OR super science with its reliability

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I disagree. D&D allows the DM to decide how miraculous clerics are. I see no reason why a DM can't force clerics to make sacrifices to regains spells (I have in the past). What do you think the cleric is doing when he/she spends an hour preparing a new spell list?

"Oh, Aphrodite, please accept this murdered sheep as a token of my devotion and grant me the ability to close wounds and spout rays of light from my eyeballs."

WayOfTheFourElements said:

..... and spout rays of light from my eyeballs."

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Ups I misscited ....

Flamestrike said:

No, it doesn't. Your anecdotal experiences dont match mine.

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His evidence is anecdotal. But we can surmise most groups do not have four or five encounters each day. Here is why we can draw that conclusion:

• There is no game at a convention that runs a "long adventuring day" outside of the "contest games" that are meant to be deadly (so right there, a percentage of the games played are not using long days)
• The average game is four hours (see Roll20 data). It is impossible to finish four or five encounters in that time frame. How many finish two encounters in that time? Take that and ask how many DM's end one session in the middle of the day? How many finish two sessions in the middle of the day? The answer is logically, fewer rather than more. Why? Because humans like closure. It settles nicely with people.
• At higher levels (heck, even at level 5 or 6, wizard's can cast Leomund's Tiny Hut or Mordekainen's Mansion and get a long rest in relatively safety. Unless of course you don't allow those spells. Which, if you do not, would make you a minority in the DM world. Thus, supporting Garthanos's premise.

There is nothing wrong with being in the minority. There is nothing wrong with your style of game play. It is just that most groups do not play that way. I realize there are a bunch of people that love to think everything is counter-intuitive and that the obvious perception or obvious look at the numbers is wrong. But, common sense from a time, observation, and ruleset look at the long adventuring day being a rarity rather than a common event.

Flamestrike said:

Im not talking about force; it just seems like you have a trouble player. Part of the DMs job is to teach the game (and that includes showing players how to not be bad players).

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Completely agree with you. I was just responding to the "send an army after the character" phrase. And thank goodness, I have not had such players in a very long time.

What makes a superhero a superhero?

The reason I ask this is because I probably define it differently than some people. First, they should be extraordinary. Batman may not have superpowers but he is the world's greatest detective, his super power is preparation and always having the right tool for the job.

But I also think that, while powers overlap a fair bit here and there, there's uniqueness. If everybody is super, nobody is. Someone that can move faster than humanly possible or fly is superpowered, right? Except then anyone that drives a car or flies a plane is super. That may have been true a couple hundred years ago, but not today.

So it's the same with D&D. If the PCs are the only ones in the entire world that can cast fireball or there are only a half-dozen opponents with the same capability ... maybe. But in most D&D campaigns (mine included) magic is relatively common. Upper tier is rare, but that's just the difference between driving a Camry vs driving a Ferrarri. It's just a matter of scale.

A PC using boots of flying while using magic weapons and armor isn't particularly super unless they invented (or took advantage of) items that never existed before.

Well, that and most superheroes that are strength based are far, far, stronger than any PC will ever be. Superheroes that fly, usually fly far faster and further than PCs. The Flash and other speedsters move at speeds near or faster than the speed of light. In general top tier superheroes a vast magnitude more powerful at their niche than PCs. There are, of course, significant difference in "superhero" power levels.

Ultimately though it's still just a different genre. I've been watching The Umbrella Academy for example. Most of them are not all that powerful on the superhero scale, but they are extraordinary because they can do things that are not humanly possible. But if magic exists and anyone with reasonable intelligence and the proper training can learn it then casting spells in that world is suddenly possible for most humans.

Scott Christian said:

His evidence is anecdotal. But we can surmise most groups do not have four or five encounters each day. Here is why we can draw that conclusion:

• There is no game at a convention that runs a "long adventuring day" outside of the "contest games" that are meant to be deadly (so right there, a percentage of the games played are not using long days)
• The average game is four hours (see Roll20 data). It is impossible to finish four or five encounters in that time frame. How many finish two encounters in that time? Take that and ask how many DM's end one session in the middle of the day? How many finish two sessions in the middle of the day? The answer is logically, fewer rather than more. Why? Because humans like closure. It settles nicely with people.
• At higher levels (heck, even at level 5 or 6, wizard's can cast Leomund's Tiny Hut or Mordekainen's Mansion and get a long rest in relatively safety. Unless of course you don't allow those spells. Which, if you do not, would make you a minority in the DM world. Thus, supporting Garthanos's premise.

There is nothing wrong with being in the minority. There is nothing wrong with your style of game play. It is just that most groups do not play that way. I realize there are a bunch of people that love to think everything is counter-intuitive and that the obvious perception or obvious look at the numbers is wrong. But, common sense from a time, observation, and ruleset look at the long adventuring day being a rarity rather than a common event.

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Dungeon play is what the rules are based on, and under that model 4-5 encounters per adventuring day is both expected and reasonable. If that's how you play I have no doubt that you get your encounters in. But in every other situation, you are getting one, maybe two encounters per long rest. Lots of people play outside the dungeon and for them, the smaller number of encounters per day means novaing is definitely a thing.

Levels 1 to 2 - You aspire to greater things.
Levels 3 to 4 - You have the power to make a difference. I say the heroic levels start at 3.
Levels 5 to 10 - You're able to champion larger causes and make a real difference for a town or small area.
Levels 11 to 16 - You're able to participate on a national stage and make a difference on a huge level. I say the super heroic phases starts at 11.
Levels 17 up - You're able to make a difference on a planar level. You are on the cusp of being a Demi-God.

Scott Christian said:

• The average game is four hours (see Roll20 data). It is impossible to finish four or five encounters in that time frame.

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The Adventuring Day IS NOT THE SAME THING as a Game session. No-where is it written you need 4-5 encounters in a game session.

And thanks for proving my point by the way. So many damn people conflate those two totally unrelated concepts.

It's so infuriating when people do this and it happens all the damn time. It's why I take Polls like that posted above (where even in the comments people were making the same mistake) with a grain of salt.