Tony Vargas
Legend
Nope, no need to make it personal.I get that this issue is your bugbear
The qualitative difference is their source. Heracles and Conan are both strong. One is strong because his dad is Zeus, the other because he's a genetically-superior specimen descended from Atlanteans, raised in a life of constant struggle and hardship in a fantastic antediluvian world imagined by a early-20th century Texan with some singular ideas about history and barbarism vs civilization. The quantitative difference is how strong.but I don't think it's material here. What matters is that players have qualitatively different expectations of Conan's capabilities and Heracles' capabilities, not their source.
Seemed like it came up. Also, that was only an aside, to the main point, that not-supernatural does not need to imply mechanical inferiority. Indeed, if a supernatural and not-supernatural alternative are weighted equally, they're rather obligated, by basic non-sucky game design, to be of comparable utility.Well, yeah, but that's not what we're talking about here, either. Conan isn't low level.
All classes are pretty good with weapons - they all get the same bonus to hit with proficient weapons, for instance. A number get extra attack and a few get Combat Styles to choose from. I'm afraid that a class that were hypothetically /just/ Good With Weapons Guy would already be obviated. And, no, it's not that a concept is asking too much, it's that the class doesn't deliver.I think it's exactly what it needs to be to be the Good With Weapons Guy. There's no need to change or obviate that. But you're right that if you try to make Heracles with it you're asking too much of it.
If you ask Wizard to deliver on Gandalf, it's able to mimic everything he actually displayed in LotR by level 5 (fighting the Balrog being conveniently off screen), and gone on to exceed it, substantially - same is true with most mages of legend, they don't display a fraction of the breadth D&D casters routinely do. But fighters and the like run up against limits in D&D long before fully emulating their sources of inspiration - and those sources aren't even always fantasy/myth/legend, they can even come up short trying to emulate historical figures.
For classes that are, by definition, equally weighted player choices, that's an issue.
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