D&D 5E Being strong and skilled is a magic of its own or, how I learned to stop worrying and love anime fightin' magic

[Minigiant]

every hero has an origin... maybe they are cursed with awesome, or maybe they have a mystic daddy, or maybe they got dipped in a magic river... at the end of the day they are warriors that hit things and take hits in our cultural zeitgeist.

But for D&D the fandom enforces that all PCs are exceptional but not of secret origin (except for sorcerers). So you can't get Aragorn's King powers or Cap's super serum, or Inuyasha's demonblood or Perseus's godblood.

 

[Minigiant]

they shouldn't be but is there something a 17th level human fighter can do (you choose the subclass please not eldritch knight) that captian america or aragorn can not?

That's half the problem.

For rogue, fighter,, monk, paladin, and ranger their high level features are high level not due to power but to fill dead levels and prevent frontloading.

A 17th level fighter should have infinite opportunity attacks, and all of their opportunity attack trip on hit regardless of size, AND, get a free coupdegrace if they crit. Not the wimpy stuff we always see. The fighter should have the martial equal to Meteor Storm.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So as an example of what I'd like to see D&D allow the fighter to do:

In last night's playtest of my WoE system, the party was attacked by giant bats. The warrior, armed with a pair of tiger hooks jumps up, used Bring Them Down, and trips the thing out of the air be hooking its wing and using his body weight to slam it to the forest floor. His feat, Ground and Pound activates and he gets to punch the bat with the sword's guard for good measure.

Then another back dips down to attack the adjacent caster and the warrior's Bastion of Defense procs, meaning he got an AoO on an adjacent creature attacking an ally. He burned an action point to active his War Machine ability, which allows him to spend an action point to use a power on an AoO, using Bring them Down again, snatching that bat out of the air and punching it in the face too.

The other warrior did what this thread wants and used the power of magic to conjure a sword made of wind to do some classic air-cutting blades, which was also cool, but maybe a bit... 'cartoony', considering my placeholder name for it was kaze no kizu...

 

[Celebrim]

A 17th level fighter should have infinite opportunity attacks, and all of their opportunity attack trip on hit regardless of size, AND, get a free coupdegrace if they crit. Not the wimpy stuff we always see. The fighter should have the martial equal to Meteor Storm.

See, I read that and I just file that away as an example of not even getting the problem.

Likewise I read @Vaalingrade 's story regarding what he wants, and I realize that his real problem isn't remotely what my problem is.

So what this thread is really communicating to me is that most of the people in it have very different problems and very different things would fix those problems, and we're all lumping this together because people can feel the problem but not elucidate it well.

 

[Minigiant]

See, I read that and I just file that away as an example of not even getting the problem.

Likewise I read @Vaalingrade 's story regarding what he wants, and I realize that his real problem isn't remotely what my problem is.

So what this thread is really communicating to me is that most of the people in it have very different problems and very different things would fix those problems, and we're all lumping this together because people can feel the problem but not elucidate it well.

The problem is the community is split between "martials scale up via magic items" and "martials scale up via class features" and "martials scale up via Class Favoritism".

 

[payn]

The problem is the community is split between "martials scale up via magic items" and "martials scale up via class features" and "martials scale up via Class Favoritism".

That, and folks dont consider the other at all.

 

[Celebrim]

The problem is the community is split between "martials scale up via magic items" and "martials scale up via class features" and "martials scale up via Class Favoritism".

I think that there are a lot of bad takes on the problem that often show a lack of historical perspective, or a failure to understand what rules changes have really impacted how the game plays.

And I think that in a lot of ways, this discussion is resembling the fetishization of "realism" in the 1980s were faced with certain table difficulties there was reliably always someone who would suggest that whatever the problem is the answer was more "realism". People have these pet theories that they are currently nursing as "the answer" but I often get the impression they really haven't played tested the theories or done any math and theory crafting. We're stuck in a small set of paradigms about what is the answer based solely on what people have seen tried or what felt like it was working for them.

All of those answers are just wrong, or at best they are misleading because they are such a tiny portion of the problem.

And for someone like @Vaalingrade it's increasingly obvious that his real problem isn't mechanical balance but "cool balance". His complaints about how the system works and what he thinks would fix it are focused on players having "shining moments of awesome" regardless of whether in fact those moments are anything more than reskinning things that are largely already available to martial classes. What would make Vaalingrade happy I think more than anything is bigger grander cinematic moves that he can readily imagine and which give the character a moment of awesome he can concretely imagine. And really, I'm all for that, I just think he can get that without even touching the problem of balance. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that he needs to get that without touching the problem of balance, because it's not in fact a balance issue and if we up the damage output fighters or any other martial class is doing we'll negatively impact combat as challenge. But yes, I agree with him that the sort of things he describes ought to totally be the sort of thing that fighters can do.

But keep in mind that this in many ways means Vaalingrade isn't up against casters in some sort of balance tradeoff. The real thing that is attacking Vaalingrade's desired aesthetic of play is the desire to streamline and speed combat, which in turn takes away the simulationist process of play that builds up these concrete visual pictures of the awesome thing his character is doing.

 

[Celebrim]

But for D&D the fandom enforces that all PCs are exceptional but not of secret origin (except for sorcerers). So you can't get Aragorn's King powers or Cap's super serum, or Inuyasha's demonblood or Perseus's godblood.

A bigger problem with this is that you would have to enforce that martial characters all had special origin but that spellcasters didn't (otherwise what's to prevent Sorcerer Kings, Godblood Clerics, and Super Serum Wizards), and then on top of that you would have to insist that martial characters with the special origin didn't multiclass into spellcasting classes or if they did that somehow their origin would get balanced despite being Ftr1/Wiz19's. And really though, does everyone want to play a martial that has special background all the time? Doesn't someone want to play a background no bigger than, "Miller's second son out to seek his fortune?"

And then you get into problems that those things you list aren't really class based. They are more like 1e AD&D psionics where you get them frontloaded because you are special but they don't overall improve by leveling up. Aragon has his full "King Powers" as The Rightful King at first level. Cap's Super Serum turns him from 1st level to 10th level all in one go. Perseus never has to level up, he's just born that way. None of that fits with the "Zero to Hero" format of D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

A bigger problem with this is that you would have to enforce that martial characters all had special origin but that spellcasters didn't (otherwise what's to prevent Sorcerer Kings, Godblood Clerics, and Super Serum Wizards), and then on top of that you would have to insist that martial characters with the special origin didn't multiclass into spellcasting classes or if they did that somehow their origin would get balanced despite being Ftr1/Wiz19's. And really though, does everyone want to play a martial that has special background all the time? Doesn't someone want to play a background no bigger than, "Miller's second son out to seek his fortune?"

And then you get into problems that those things you list aren't really class based. They are more like 1e AD&D psionics where you get them frontloaded because you are special but they don't overall improve by leveling up. Aragon has his full "King Powers" as The Rightful King at first level. Cap's Super Serum turns him from 1st level to 10th level all in one go. Perseus never has to level up, he's just born that way. None of that fits with the "Zero to Hero" format of D&D.

Well Hercules when from Zero to Hero. There's even a song.. a good song.

Bless my soul
Herc was on a roll
Person of the week in every Greek opinion poll
What a pro
Herc could stop a show
Point him at a monster and you're talking SRO
He was a no one
A zero, zero
Now he's a honcho
He's a hero
Here was a kid with his act down pat
From zero to hero in no time flat
Zero to hero just like that (snaps)

Hercules just power-grinds to level 10 like most of the legendary heroes. Captain was leveling up on those first few missions against the NoNo people. That's why he had backup from Bucky and the rest. I'm sure Aragorn went through training years as an apprentice ranger

And casters are often specials as well. Casters are often of special bloodlines in some settings or needed to be born under certain conditions.

 

[Medic]

Hercules just power-grinds to level 10 like most of the legendary heroes.

You heard it here first, folks. Just hit the gym every day, and you too can be as strong as the son of Jupiter who grew strong by suckling the teat of Juno.