D&D 5E A simple houserule for martial/caster balance.

[Mordhau]

The thing is that you don't have to assume that they need magic to do whatever extraordinary, supernatural things they do.

"They just are that strong/fast/skilled" is just as valid a reason as "they have magic." Each statement provides just as much information to answer the "how" question.

No they don't. I just explained how. And I gave an example of how you can give an explanation of how Fighters can do extraordinary things that involves more than just "because".

Why should they be treated differently?

Indeed. Why should they? You're arguing that the Fighter's abilities need less explanation than the wizards.

From a narrative perspective, how they get to be so strong/fast/skillful matters to the character but it really doesn't have anything to do with the abilities they "should" have.

Perhaps not, but it tells us something about the world those abilities exist in.

At the end of the day, it's all fantasy.

Obvious reduction ad absurdam. My fighter can fly if he flaps his arms enough. After all it's fantasy.

 

[Mordhau]

I'd also argue that simply being able to do ordinary athletics feats but superhuman (but for some bizarre reason refusing to ackowledge that explicilty) is probably not really sufficient anyway.

If the fighter can't fly by flapping his arms really hard (because it turns out there are limits to what we'll accept without some kind of explanation) then we probably need another way for him to fly at the highest levels, or accept that he'll need to rely on magic items or the wizard.)

But if we say for example, that high level Fighters are slowly turning into gods whether willingly or unwillingly, and that their sheer skill has warped the world around them giving them some access to outer planar power, then it works perfectly well that the Fighter can summon a flying mount or can cut a gateway to another plane in the air with his sword.

And that's the kind of thing they really need to be able to do to keep up with endgame casters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The thing is that you don't have to assume that they need magic to do whatever extraordinary, supernatural things they do.

"They just are that strong/fast/skilled" is just as valid a reason as "they have magic." Each statement provides just as much information to answer the "how" question.

Why should they be treated differently?

From a narrative perspective, how they get to be so strong/fast/skillful matters to the character but it really doesn't have anything to do with the abilities they "should" have.

At the end of the day, it's all fantasy.

By this point, I think it is clear that not enough people are buying that non-explanation for it to get any traction. It would work in your own game or in 3pp, but WotC ain't doing it.

 

[Fifth Element]

Obvious reduction ad absurdam. My fighter can fly if he flaps his arms enough. After all it's fantasy.

The great irony in this post is that your argument here is in fact a reductio ad absurdum, while the post you responded to is not.

No one's talking about fighters flying by flapping their wings. But your argument presents this in order to make the other argument seem absurd, by reducing it to an absurd misrepresentation - that's what reductio ad absurdum means.

We're talking about superhuman feats, but ones already represented in fantasy and folklore. Not ones you make up to paint the argument as absurd.

 

[Mordhau]

The great irony in this post is that your argument here is in fact a reductio ad absurdum, while the post you responded to is not.

No one's talking about fighters flying by flapping their wings. But your argument presents this in order to make the other argument seem absurd, by reducing it to an absurd misrepresentation - that's what reductio ad absurdum means.

We're talking about superhuman feats, but ones already represented in fantasy and folklore. Not ones you make up to paint the argument as absurd.

Oh for god's sake. If you're going to patronise me at least be clear about the particular argument that I was showing leads to absurd results, otherwise you just come off as pompus and foolish.

 

[Gammadoodler]

No they don't. I just explained how. And I gave an example of how you can give an explanation of how Fighters can do extraordinary things that involves more than just "because".

You didn't really though. What you did was describe things the PCs may have done to get their power. But at the end of the day, the character has the ability because the game says they do. It's the same with martials. So we could bicker about the "how can they jump so far" kinds of questions or we could assume that whatever was necessary is what they did. Spirit power, training, demigodhood, born under a luck star, or just eating their Wheaties. Whatever it was was enough

Fighter's abilities need less explanation than the wizards.

None of it really needs any explanation. It's all 100% flavor. You can build a dumb wizard, and that wizard still gets spells.

Perhaps not, but it tells us something about the world those abilities exist in

So we agree. Cool.

Obvious reduction ad absurdam. My fighter can fly if he flaps his arms enough. After all it's fantasy.

Here's the thing..Reductio ad absurdam is not a logical fallacy when the content you are describing is absurd by its very nature. Does it really make more logical sense that a wizard can fly by waving their arms around and mumbling for 6 seconds? Is that really less absurd?

Yes, there are more convincing ways to frame it, striding on water vapor, pulled by spirits, latent telekinesis, whatever..but it is, again, 100% flavor. Whatever the character needs to do to perform it, they have already done.

The hoops you are setting up are for the player not the character. You don't make caster players jump through them. Why should martial players have to?

 

[Fifth Element]

be clear about the particular argument that I was showing leads to absurd results

You did not show that an argument leads to absurd results, which was the point. You took the argument to an absurd length which misrepresents the argument by stretching it far beyond the actual context of the discussion, which is textbook reductio ad absurdum.

 

[Gammadoodler]

By this point, I think it is clear that not enough people are buying that non-explanation for it to get any traction. It would work in your own game or in 3pp, but WotC ain't doing it.

I don't really know who the people are that you think need to buy it? WOTC? DMs? Players? And yeah, other systems do provide more abilities to do more fantastical things with martial characters without requiring the players to kiss some particular thematic ring.

And in those other systems, it's more fun to be a martial player.

 

[James Gasik]

The following explanations can provide mere mortals with superhuman abilities: being born on a special day, being the seventh son of a seventh son, being two thirds God and one third man, training from hell, being the chosen ones of prophecy, divine intervention or patronage, being the child of a mighty hero, being exposed to strange energies from another plane of existence, being transported to the D&D world from Earth, being the reincarnation of a legendary figure, drawing a sword from a tree or stone, having harnessed the latent powers of the mind and body, higher point buy, and because the DM says so.

This list is not complete nor exhaustive.

 

[FrogReaver]

The following explanations can provide mere mortals with superhuman abilities: being born on a special day, being the seventh son of a seventh son, being two thirds God and one third man, training from hell, being the chosen ones of prophecy, divine intervention or patronage, being the child of a mighty hero, being exposed to strange energies from another plane of existence, being transported to the D&D world from Earth, being the reincarnation of a legendary figure, drawing a sword from a tree or stone, having harnessed the latent powers of the mind and body, higher point buy, and because the DM says so.

This list is not complete nor exhaustive.

In D&D all that would be magic. Maybe not spellcasting, but certainly supernatural/magical. People that want to play martials, at least many of them, specifically don't want they kind of fluff tied to their character.