D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

CreamCloud0 said:

okay, so the base argument was about the capabilities of fighters and how they don't keep up at high levels without relying on supernatural workarounds right? but then you immediately deny the fighter the mere capability to reliably climb things? wow! i wonder why they're not keeping up?

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That's not at all what I said. I mean if you're going to give fighters something not at all their thing like climbing in order to keep up, why not flying? Why not give them the ability to phase through walls?

I don't wonder why they don't keep up because of flying. That's your Strawman of my argument. My argument is that you can give them things that allow them to keep up, but it ain't gonna be climbing and jumping. It's going to be supernatural things or they aren't keeping up. They're just getting a little bit better and all the same complaints are going to happen.

CreamCloud0 said:

i wasn't getting at anything about matching the utility of a wizard or a cleric per-se, just the point you claimed that any high level abilities of the fighter would inherently become supernatural, i was getting at that the fighter doesn't need magic razor wind to match a fireball when they can launch an entire volley of arrows or throwing axes by themselves, personally i see combat as the main point of a fighter so maybe i was focusing a little more on damage then utility, because i expect a fighter to outclass casters in combat.

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So no fighter is accurately shooting arrows at every creature in a 20 foot radius in under 6 seconds without it being supernatural, let alone throwing axes. Aaaaand, that's not going to come close to matching a fireball. 8d6 to every creature in a 20 foot radius > than 1d8(maybe) to every creature in a 20 foot radius.

So your idea of a high level fighter ability is a far weaker ability than a 3rd level wizard spell. And it's going to be supernatural in origin even at that. You might as well embrace the supernatural aspect and go greater than 1d8(maybe, since you have to roll to hit).

CreamCloud0 said:

people don't consider goading strike supernatural at all, marking an opponent, but it's basically a taunt for all intents, mechanics and purposes, just give them more capability to do that, and against multiple opponents at once, goading strike is the 1st level spell of a martial's capabilities, only they never get higher level spell slots to 'cast it with' they're stuck with that 1st level spell capabilities their entire campaign, sure the BM maneuvre die goes up but that's only really comparable to a caster increasing their casting stat, what does the 5th level casting of goading strike look like, what does the 9th level casting of it look like?

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Wow. Breaking something that long up into multiple sentences will help a lot in understanding what you are saying.

Goading Strike is clearly supernatural since it you have to make a wisdom save or have your willpower overcome and be forced against your will to attack the fighter or suffer disadvantage on attacks. If it wasn't supernatural, it wouldn't be anywhere close to reliable.

CreamCloud0 said:

if it was charm person a 9th level goading strike would be able to target 9 enemies, inflicting all with disadvantage when targeting other players if they failed their saves.

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Or not. Ignoring your Strawman that I claimed it was Charm Person and your subsequent response to the fictional argument, I said it would have to be some sort of mind control to be able to be performed reliably. There are no mundane words that could ever cause me to attack someone OR suffer disadvantage if I try to punch someone else. That applies to the vast majority of people, especially strangers for whom the fighter has no known personal information.

CreamCloud0 said:

i think alot of the failings of martial abilities are tied to the fact that well, they need more access to the middleground abilities between the rules for the basic capabilities of adventurers and the 'magic solution', take jumping, the jumping rules are naff, but the only alternatives are the Jump spell, magic items or abilities specific to certain classes/creatures, if you gave all the martials the inherent properties of Jump they'd still feel pretty mundane, cause even if they#re leaping 20ft into the air jumping is mundane and in these kinds of fantasy world we expect some exaggeration of capabilities, then all the other classes have the standard jumping rules but the Jump spell also exists for them, which is the point of it, to make the characters who aren't good at jumping good at it.

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I don't know what "naff" is with regard to jumping. There are other alternatives, though, that fighter could get within the rules. The skill for jumping already allows people to jump farther than their base strength in distance, but it doesn't clearly specify how. Fighters could get a bonus to those rules and therefore jump farther, and potentially much farther. However, jumping 20 feet into the air isn't mundane, no matter how mundane normal jumping is.

The world record standing high jump is 5'7". The running high jump world record is 8'0.46". Jumping 20 feet into the air 20 feet is quasi-magical.

Not only that, but jumping 20 feet or even 100 feet isn't going to solve the issue. The issue with martials is utility and jumping isn't anywhere close enough to being the kind of utility required.

CreamCloud0 said:

Amazingly a fighter doesn't have to punch through solid stone with their bare hands, there are these magical things called, no wait hang on...There are these entirely NON-magical things called pickaxes, hammers and chisels that they can use to punch through solid stone.

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Sure, in a matter of hours. If you want to match the wizard who can do it in under 6 seconds, you will need supernatural ability, even with pickaxes, hammers and chisels.

CreamCloud0 said:

a fighter doesn't NEED to be magic to bend the reality around them given the apropriate tools.

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Correct, but the wizard can also take the same tools and hours of time to get through the wall in the mundane way. If the fighter wants to get through a stone wall in seconds, it's going to be supernatural no matter how you slice it.

Maxperson said:

So no fighter is accurately shooting arrows at every creature in a 20 foot radius in under 6 seconds without it being supernatural, let alone throwing axes. Aaaaand, that's not going to come close to matching a fireball. 8d6 to every creature in a 20 foot radius > than 1d8(maybe) to every creature in a 20 foot radius.

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It doesn't need to be just one arrow into each creature.

CreamCloud0 said:

okay, so the base argument was about the capabilities of fighters and how they don't keep up at high levels without relying on supernatural workarounds right? but then you immediately deny the fighter the mere capability to reliably climb things? wow! i wonder why they're not keeping up?

i wasn't getting at anything about matching the utility of a wizard or a cleric per-se, just the point you claimed that any high level abilities of the fighter would inherently become supernatural, i was getting at that the fighter doesn't need magic razor wind to match a fireball when they can launch an entire volley of arrows or throwing axes by themselves, personally i see combat as the main point of a fighter so maybe i was focusing a little more on damage then utility, because i expect a fighter to outclass casters in combat.

people don't consider goading strike supernatural at all, marking an opponent, but it's basically a taunt for all intents, mechanics and purposes, just give them more capability to do that, and against multiple opponents at once, goading strike is the 1st level spell of a martial's capabilities, only they never get higher level spell slots to 'cast it with' they're stuck with that 1st level spell capabilities their entire campaign, sure the BM maneuvre die goes up but that's only really comparable to a caster increasing their casting stat, what does the 5th level casting of goading strike look like, what does the 9th level casting of it look like? if it was charm person a 9th level goading strike would be able to target 9 enemies, inflicting all with disadvantage when targeting other players if they failed their saves.

i think alot of the failings of martial abilities are tied to the fact that well, they need more access to the middleground abilities between the rules for the basic capabilities of adventurers and the 'magic solution', take jumping, the jumping rules are naff, but the only alternatives are the Jump spell, magic items or abilities specific to certain classes/creatures, if you gave all the martials the inherent properties of Jump they'd still feel pretty mundane, cause even if they#re leaping 20ft into the air jumping is mundane and in these kinds of fantasy world we expect some exaggeration of capabilities, then all the other classes have the standard jumping rules but the Jump spell also exists for them, which is the point of it, to make the characters who aren't good at jumping good at it.

like i said before, the components for reliable and capable high teir mundane martials exist in the game, you just need to stop all this niche protection and bring them all together so all the martials can be competent, having the same mechanics but in different quantities and manifestations to let them still feel like their respective themes.

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On the other hand, you know who jumps like you're describing? Jedi. And nobody thinks of them as mundane.

CreamCloud0 said:

Amazingly a fighter doesn't have to punch through solid stone with their bare hands, there are these magical things called, no wait hang on...There are these entirely NON-magical things called pickaxes, hammers and chisels that they can use to punch through solid stone.

a fighter doesn't NEED to be magic to bend the reality around them given the apropriate tools.

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The argument will then shift to: why can't the wizard use that pickaxe?

CreamCloud0 said:

Amazingly a fighter doesn't have to punch through solid stone with their bare hands, there are these magical things called, no wait hang on...There are these entirely NON-magical things called pickaxes, hammers and chisels that they can use to punch through solid stone.

a fighter doesn't NEED to be magic to bend the reality around them given the appropriate tools.

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Sure. A Miner's pick is an item in the PHB. No rules attached to it, but lets assume that against a stone wall, it has the stats of a war pick (1d8 piercing). We can also assume that since its built to chip through stone, it will deal its full damage to the wall. (Unlike trying to chip through the wall with a dagger or spear). Already, we've relied on the DM to make two judgement calls (the damage of a miner's pick and its usefulness against stone) and it is extremely possible the DM rules any number of ways against us (1d4 damage, wall has resistance against piercing, non-proficiency to hit due to it being an improvised weapon, etc).

Now lets look at the attacking an object rules: Stone is AC 17. Reasonable, but it does mean that a fighter will miss (or more appropriately, fail to do damage) at least a few times. Object hp is based on Size and fragility, and I think in this case a stone wall is resilient and will have 5d10 (ave 27) hp. Technically, a huge item can have a threshold (minimum damage needed to actually harm it) but we're assuming a pickaxe is built to smash stone and we can ignore threshold for now.

Now, we haven't addressed the fighter's level yet, but since the wizard just cast Passwall (a 5th level spell) lets assume the fighter is 9th level (the minimum to cast 5th level magic). He has two attacks per round. If our DM is using the generous interpretation, we do 1d8+Str per hit. Let's assume that come 9th level, our fighter has a 20 Str (not unreasonable) so he has +9 to hit and does 10 damage (average per hit). He has a 65% chance per hit toof dealingamage. Lets say he missed one out of every four attacks (actually better odds, but I like easy math). So round 1, he deals 20 damage, round 2 10 damage, round 3 20 damage, etc.

(It should be worth noting that the rules for attacking objects are barely guidelines, and they don't match up with similar rules, such as in Wall of Stone. Because of this, we've had to rely heavily on DM fiat to even get this far).

So if our DM is nice and giving us all the best case scenarios, we get through the wall in two rounds. Three if we assume it takes a round to pull the pickaxe from your pack. If the DM is less than kind (lower damage, no prof to hit, high HP rolls on the stone) it takes more.

Is all of that equal to a 5th level spell?

Micah Sweet said:

The argument will then shift to: why can't the wizard use that pickaxe?

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the wizard can use it, but the wizard probably doesn't have a half decent STR score or proficiency in the tool or athletics, so they're going to be much, much less efficient using it, it's basically thieves tools for a stone wall, when your wizard has knock do they invest in DEX, slight of hand and thieves tools?.

Remathilis said:

Sure. A Miner's pick is an item in the PHB. No rules attached to it, but lets assume that against a stone wall, it has the stats of a war pick (1d8 piercing). We can also assume that since its built to chip through stone, it will deal its full damage to the wall. (Unlike trying to chip through the wall with a dagger or spear). Already, we've relied on the DM to make two judgement calls (the damage of a miner's pick and its usefulness against stone) and it is extremely possible the DM rules any number of ways against us (1d4 damage, wall has resistance against piercing, non-proficiency to hit due to it being an improvised weapon, etc).

Now lets look at the attacking an object rules: Stone is AC 17. Reasonable, but it does mean that a fighter will miss (or more appropriately, fail to do damage) at least a few times. Object hp is based on Size and fragility, and I think in this case a stone wall is resilient and will have 5d10 (ave 27) hp. Technically, a huge item can have a threshold (minimum damage needed to actually harm it) but we're assuming a pickaxe is built to smash stone and we can ignore threshold for now.

Now, we haven't addressed the fighter's level yet, but since the wizard just cast Passwall (a 5th level spell) lets assume the fighter is 9th level (the minimum to cast 5th level magic). He has two attacks per round. If our DM is using the generous interpretation, we do 1d8+Str per hit. Let's assume that come 9th level, our fighter has a 20 Str (not unreasonable) so he has +9 to hit and does 10 damage (average per hit). He has a 65% chance per hit toof dealingamage. Lets say he missed one out of every four attacks (actually better odds, but I like easy math). So round 1, he deals 20 damage, round 2 10 damage, round 3 20 damage, etc.

(It should be worth noting that the rules for attacking objects are barely guidelines, and they don't match up with similar rules, such as in Wall of Stone. Because of this, we've had to rely heavily on DM fiat to even get this far).

So if our DM is nice and giving us all the best case scenarios, we get through the wall in two rounds. Three if we assume it takes a round to pull the pickaxe from your pack. If the DM is less than kind (lower damage, no prof to hit, high HP rolls on the stone) it takes more.

Is all of that equal to a 5th level spell?

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okay yes, there aren't explicit rules for mining through stone in the current game and using the existing gear would be hideiously inefficient, but weren't talking rules we were talking concepts, the concept of a warrior taking a pick to a wall and burrowing tunnels through stone by the sweat on their brow is a perfectly fitting one for the kind of worlds DnD presents us.

Martials can already take twice their level in arrows to the chest.

The line of mundane, extraordinary, or supernatural is on us.

A human with the strength of an ogre might be able to break stone walls with a warpick.

Minigiant said:

Martials can already take twice their level in arrows to the chest.

The line of mundane, extraordinary, or supernatural is on us.

A human with the strength of an ogre might be able to break stone walls with a warpick.

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Actually those arrows go straight to the hit points, not the chest.

Lousy abstract system...