Erm...why? A 10th Level Fighter is fighting Greater Elementals, Giants, Hydras, and younger Dragons. If the Fighter is actually a threat to beings of that size and power, he's way way beyond Jet Li or Chuck Norris and much much closer to Beowulf and Hercules.
All the creatures you mention here can be fought by a low powered fighter (or one with few options) as well as by a high powered fighter (or a more complex one). I don't really see your point.
My point however is that without any explanation of how the fighter became a demigod that he should be considered mortal and treated as such. I can even concede that some people dislike the "mortal" fighter and want a superman (be he Captain America super or Superman super). But without an explanation of HOW he is super (such as being from krypton) I see the whole process of making him that much stronger as stretching disbelief.
However, this brings me to an equally important point - if the Fighter can't ever be equal to a demigod (and keep in mind, virtually all the mythological heroes of Greece were demigods of some sort or another), how is the Fighter a viable class from levels 1-20? How are they balanced against Wizards, Clerics, and Druids?
Being a demigod has nothing to do with being viable. I am in no way saying fighters should be impotent weaklings. I would just expect to see their limits to be something nearer what a mortal can achieve instead of being compared (power-wise) to Greek gods.
You're getting hung-up on the terminology of Trip - if we called it knock-down instead, would it matter if the damn thing didn't have legs?
If "trip", called by any name, causes the creature to go from its normal state to being on the ground and prone then we will still have the same issue. Or at least I will. It has nothing to do with the terminology, it has to do with limitations or what the creature would do.
It isn't a "trip" when a bird is plucked from the air and thrown to the ground, training in a "trip" isn't going to help you there.
It isn't a trip when say a floating creature is "knocked-down" either.
How is the giant centipeed "knocked down" and forced to take a turn to stand up from prone?
These are bad examples, sorry about that, but my point still remains that it has nothing to do with the terminology of the issue. I retain that certain creatures should be immune from certain attacks. Even later when KM mentions alternate forms of "disarming" HOW is that affecting creatures which don't possess weapons?
This is problematic when said maneuvers are how martial classes are supposed to keep up with spellcasting classes - if it's a sometimes thing and spells aren't, you're back to the problem of casting Planar Summoning vs. "I full attack."
I've never seen martial maneuvers as being responsible for keeping fighters aligned with wizards. To be fair, I've never really seen this issue at all but I still wouldn't say it is the duty of "trip" or "disarm" to do that.
I say that those maneuvers are responsible for a bit of battlefield control or niche action. For my money I would make them able to be used as such. Allowing them to be used for no reason once per encounter doesn't suit this anymore than having them spammed or failed at every attempt. I think I said earlier on this thread that I've seen several elegant and simple solutions to how they can be used in niche circumstances without it getting out of hand, or without "forcing" the fighter to use them all the time.
Even so that really doesn't have anything to do with the power of fighters, the power of fighters relative to wizards, or the complexity of fighters. So I'm going to drop any further attempts about this.
A few conceptual points I want to emphasize:
- Mythic != Magical (at least not that kind of magical). Many mythical heroes have superhuman abilities and powers that are unrelated to the actual casting of spells. Roland cleaves mountains with his sword, Chu Chulainn gets so mad that his body boils entire cauldrons of water, etc. Hercules completes his labors BEFORE he ascends to divinity. These mythical heroes are super-human, but not superheroes; their power doesn't come from coming from another planet or getting bitten by a radioactive spider or wearing a mechanical suit. But they are still mythic heroes.
- Superhuman martial heroes are implicitly already in the game. Consider the following: how can a Fighter be physically tough enough to absorb a blow from a dragon and not be turned into paste or strong enough to chop through an Elemental or Golem made of stone/etc. and not be superhumanly strong - given that the base class is potentially capable of doing these things sans magic weapons? The answer is that they must be super-humanly strong and tough. If those implicit levels of super-human ability exist in regards to taking and giving damage, why shouldn't they be applied to other feats of prowess like Grappling or Bull Rushing?
- Super-human martial heroes are inherently necessary for the Fighter class to exist from 1-20. If the existing Fighter class was truly bound by normal human physical standards, then realistically Fighter levels should cap at 5 (a baleen whale, some 30-60 feet long is CR6 after all, and an ordinary human probably couldn't go toe-to-toe with a whale); the same would probably apply to non-spellcasting Rangers, Rogues, Barbarians, etc. If the Fighter (to say nothing of other martial classes) is to be a viable class that is a physical, martial class from 1-20, then it follows necessarily that they be capable of fighting and defeating monsters (or at least surviving) from 1-20, most of whom are beyond the physical capacity of normal humans.
To the first point, they are super-human - exactly. They are getting their power from something. Perhaps they are getting it from just being that awesome or epic. But it really has nothing to do with their class.
Besides that, all these acts are poorly re-enacted in DnD and don't belong to any class, least of all fighter.
What if instead of trying to compare fighters to greek gods we just gave them abilities in line with what they should have in a DnD RPG game. Don't force them to be one way or another but give them abilities to do what they want. While all the time recognizing that they are human, not necessarily super-human.
To the second point, all the points you make here have more to do with the errors or loopholes in HP, very little to do with what the fighter is capable of doing. Instead the fighter could get powers to bullrush giant dragons and kill them in a single blow, or they could get abilities to jump off cliffs without dying. But done in a way that is intentional instead of loopholes or errors in the system. Even more so doing it in a way that makes sense, with the consequences and outcomes derived from a source or through narrative explanation instead of just "because I got a good build/the system says I can". If there is a reason, like previously discussed about Excalibur, then that opens up much more narrative control and gets ride of those nagging questions of why a character can do something beyond the ilk of regular people. Excalibur can be the fighter's "magic" if you like but at least then we have something to wave away.
(This is especially bad when you have to wait for the outcome BEFORE describing whats going on or explaining it.)
The third point, omg the third point. People, not even fighters but regular joes on a boat, CAN AND HAVE KILLED WHALES. It has nothing to do with the fighter's ability. Nor should it. We have, as a people/society, cleared mountains and redirected rivers. It is just something that requires labour and numbers and time. MAGIC gives an alternative to these methods. The problem is that it makes all three irrelevant. If magic were reduced (by any number of methods) while still allowing us to cut say one or (with great skill) two of these requirements then that is fine. We get into troubles when it cuts all three. That is where we get abuses.
By itself create water is fine, but when used to fill force cages and drown people it becomes an abuse. What if the rules were changed on the wizards so that these situations were eliminated while allowing fighters to remain the wholesome and decent combatants they are. Invisibility by itself isn't a problem, neither is flight. The abuse comes in when the fighter can't see or catch the wizard. It is a problem when we let magic get out of hand, not that the fighters are weak.
And once again there are a number of solutions to this. There have been solutions presented here and elsewhere but they are ignored and presented as "fighters are only good until level 5".
I'm doing a game right now where my fighter is kicking all kinds of butt, and my wizard is annoyed he can't keep up. They are level 10 and while the wizard could go nova and kill the BBEG in a single hit he doesn't. We are using a modified version that allows the wizard a lot more flexibility but he also falls like a sack of bricks if eh isn't careful. With the BBEG, he knows that his tactics would be much better used on the minions or blocking the doors against reinforcements. He could focus just on the BBEG but let the fighter do clean up, but the fighter won't let him. It all has to do with giving the wizards limitations that they can't easily ignore, the SAME as fighters. Instead of making the fighters the same as wizards and allowing them the same kinds of powers.
Sorry, went a bit off tangent here. My point is that fighter are and should be relevant at levels 1-20, the problem is the other side of the equation. It makes much more sense to reduce the amazingness that is wizards instead of vastly increasing all fighters, or insisting that they all should be Hercules.
I doubt many fans would accept reigning in magic to the degree that it would be balanced with something like the 5e playtest fighter or early-D&D fighter or even 3.x fighter. 4e only brought the wizard down a notch or so and that brought howls of derision.
I think a lot of fans of wizards prior to 4e would say they were brought down MORE than a notch. The problem wasn't that wizard were reduced, well the problem wasn't Just that.. it was that they were now in toe with fighters. That all the classes were balanced and "same-y" was the major complain I saw over and over when talking about 4e classes.
I suppose part of the appeal of D&D has always been a bit of 'power fantasy,' getting to do the impossible.
My point is that this can still be there. Even if you reduce the wizards you can still give everyone the power to do impossible things. It just has to do with re-examining how the casters should work when compared to the martial characters and then giving an outlet where BOTH can become creatures of legend - with the chopping off mountain tops.
But the key is making it that both groups start low and can rise high, instead of imposing a default high setting and then forcing people to scale down to get the game they want.
I think this comes from the conflating of fantasy & science-fiction in recent decades. In sci-fi, the writer asks the reader to accept some outlandish assumption (like aliens or time travel or some improbable technological advance) and then explore with him the ramifications of that outlandish idea in an otherwise normal, scientifically plausible world. The fantasy genre can be looked at as a science-fiction setting in which the outlandish assumption is "there is magic." So, you hold anything that's "not magic" to realistic standards. That's not fantasy. In fantasy, the whole thing is outlandish. There is magic, faeries, dragons, unicorns, demi-gods, there is true love conquering all, bards singing the dead back to life, lands falling to famine because their king is depressed, and impossibly brave heroes doing impossible things. There isn't one 'assumption' to be explored in a scientifically-consistent world, there's a whole world that's fantastic.
Here's the thing about Scifi. GOOD scifi has a fundamental premise where somethings is extraordinary but then relies on normal or "mundane" assumptions everywhere else. You see this all the time. In good scifi they'll give you a piece of nonsense about how technology A works but then tell you that steam power can still run locomotives. BAD scifi does the opposite. It gives basic premises which people can accept and then becomes outlandish with the consequences that follow. Having steam run engines is fine, we did it for a period of history, but when you have steam computers and steam brains and steam this and steam that then you venture into bad scifi territory.
I didn't say all that for no reason either. I said it because fantasy works the same way. Having a basic premise that magic is real, and that fairies and dragons and homunculi exist is fine. But you had better have those creatures work the way that makes sense. Having dragons with scales that are the consistency of pudding will start to stretch disbelief. Having vampires who can exist and even sparkle in sunlight - the same.
The assumption here is that, although magic exists and there are magical creatures roaming the countryside doesn't mean that a warm meal won't make you feel better. It doesn't mean that (without magic) you can suddenly start heaving cinder blocks 30 yards. DnD too often falls into this trap, having fighters or other creatures and people who lack magical essence able to do things that they would normally be unable to do, just because magic exists.
Once again, I am reminded that some people LIKE that. They like to have assumptions that everyone in a DnD world isn't a person, they are a class. That all gods, and monsters and nobles and everyone will have class levels instead of being "just a guy" or just a prince or whatever. I can understand if someone wants this to be true instead of what I understand as the basic assumptions of DnD. I don't understand when people insist DnD has always been this way or that it always should START at this premise. That is where I disagree and draw the line.
My solution would be to present a balanced game. If the balanced fighter is so unacceptable to such a broad swath of the fanbase that only underpowered fighters can be used (which, you, for instance, absolutely insist upon), then they shouldn't be used as a PC class.
Once again, it has nothing to do with being balanced or not. It has to do with stretching or breaking the belief of the game. It has to do with making fighters obey the same rules (and strictly so) as wizards. It has to do with fighters needing a "martial power source" with wizards needing an arcane one. Balance isn't the thing most of us complain about. It really isn't. It IS the assumptions that went along with balance.
I'm going to remind you that I don't want an underpowered fighter. I don't think there are many who do. I think it does have to do with those of us who do want this "underpowered" fighter (as you seem to think) don't want them to be the same as the wizard. We want fighters to be martial, not be limited by a source, we understand and expect wizards to be magical and to obey the rules of magic. The issue arises when magic seems to have no rules or limitations - which is what
I propose we remedy.
