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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5828446" data-attributes="member: 32164">Anybody here read comic books? Okay, stupid question, of course you do. Characters in the comics have varying levels of "power" - as an example, Superman and Thor are way more powerful than Batman and Captain America.We have this nice metric for measuring "power" in D&D - it's called LEVEL.Early on, fighters should be confined to what's "realistic." Like a street level superhero, these characters are mostly bound by real-world physics. At this level, their magical compatriots are like the weakest of comic book heroes with powers outside the norm. If they have telekinesis, it's limited - maybe to what they could physically lift themselves. If they can project force blasts, those maybe do the damage of a punch. If they can block damage, it's maybe the equivalent of a single attack. Sure, magic can do anything, but at these levels, the magicians are very limited.As the characters get higher in level, the telekinetic can move heavier weights with her mind. Maybe she learns to fly. Maybe the character who can blast things can do the damage equivalent of a cannon. But the fighter character also becomes faster, stronger, and tougher. His punches no longer do the damage of a punch - getting hit by him is like getting shot with a cannon.In a level-based game, this is simply HOW IT WORKS. Gandalf can face the Balrog because of his phenomenal magical power - in other words, he's higher-level than the rest of the Fellowship. Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli and Legolas are valiant enough fighters, but against a Balrog? They'd be screwed.That's not to say that Aragorn and the rest are 1st-level characters - they're not. They're warriors of surpassing skill and ability who are easily worth "50 or 100 normal men" (direct quote from The Two Towers as they prepare for the battle of Helm's Deep). But their abilities still seem to be reasonably well grounded to mortal levels. In D&D terms, you might peg them at around 10th-level.The question really is: how much above that do your power levels need to go? There's a high-level fighter in the Avengers comics - Thor. He can fly and do a couple neat tricks with the weather because of his hammer (and because he's a god, but I digress), but Thor is basically a strong, tough fighter who can take on any opponent with his strength and skill at arms. The mage casts disintegrate? It simply doesn't work on Thor - he's too tough. The guy tries to fly? Thor knocks him out of the sky with a thrown hammer. He blasts him with fire? Thor doesn't get burned. Hold person? Don't make me laugh. The wizard turns into a dragon? Let's dance. And so on.Now, Thor can lift over 100 TONS. He can shake the ground with a stomp and probably survive getting a castle dropped on him. Do we really need D&D to scale to that level? Personally, I don't think so. But if we're going to limit the level of the fighters (and other characters), we should limit the mages to about the same level of world-influencing power.You want mages who can teleport, fly, and do all kinds of beyond Harry Potter level stuff? Then the fighters should probably be equivalent to Hercules, or the experienced characters from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Their leaps take them over buildings and their blows knock down trees.Think that power level is too high? Then ratchet it back.With most magic, the degree of influence is important. Teleporting around the battlefield is a decent power, but hardly game breaking. Like Nightcrawler in the X-Men, this character simply has an unusual method of movement. On the other hand, long-distance teleporting has major influences on the setting - and is a spell that should be set at whatever level is appropriate for the campaign. Flight's another one.Magic in fiction is always limited. Gandalf's limitation appears to be situational - he can only pull out the big guns against the big foes. That's why he's got the magic mojo to take on 4 Nazgul or the Balrog, but has to use a sword and staff and some minor fire magic to fight orcs. Similarly, Tolkien's world simply DOES NOT HAVE flight or teleportation magic.By contrast, in the Harry Potter series, those things are normal. And it's fine, because everyone's a wizard.Don't make the mistake of thinking that a first-level wizard needs to be able to fundamentally alter reality - he's only 1st-level, after all. Similarly, don't make the mistake of thinking that a 20th-level fighter is in anyway confined by what is "realistic" according to the physics of our world.My two cents.</blockquote>

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