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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9608432" data-attributes="member: 4937">My point is that your example of what is typical is one of the least typical settings of all time and one of the ones that is most removed from typical fantasy literature in how it is described in its game books.Not so much among experts in Tolkien lore.  The author is calling out people for assuming that perforce if the character in the story is the most powerful one in the setting that they must be the most powerful possible in D&D.  This isn't true.  The author of the essay argues quite correctly that if much of what is possible in high level D&D was possible in the setting that much of the story wouldn't make sense, and rather we should judge the power of a character in a story based on what they actually can do.  Yes, but at the time of the essay that wasn't true, and the essays criticism still stands.  More importantly, 40 years ago when the essay was written, D&D was closer to its roots in fantasy literature than it is now.  D&D has evolved in its assumptions away from the assumption that it was simulating the worlds of fantasy literature and become increasingly self-referential.  Leaving aside that the D&D wizard is as a historical fact originally inspired by Gandalf and is a very poor take on Gandalf, and that as an historical fact the D&D ranger was originally inspired by Aragorn and is itself a very poor take on Aragorn, and the D&D Balor was originally inspired by the Balrog, as time has past, D&D has become more and more unhitched from its roots in fantasy literature and settings and become a history unto itself where the current version of D&D is based on nothing more than D&D.Which doesn't prove the point you think it does.  It just proves that D&D is increasingly poorly suited for simulating the world of Tolkien using the stand-ins as direct translations.  The modern Balor is less and less like the Balrog that inspired it.  The modern Ranger is less and less like the fiction that inspired it.  I mean the translation to a game was never very accurate to begin with, but it's not even something being attempted right now.And this is generally true of any fantasy fiction that isn't itself novelized D&D (and novelized D&D itself has relatively low verisimilitude with the game as played).  But the thing is that Faerun isn't even typical for D&D settings, and is itself by being influential, particular is a big part of the history of D&D as a game system and how power inflation and creep became more and more written into the rules.  It's a big part of the reason that Balors (originally the name of one Type XI demon, where the types were non-hierarchical) went from being the equivalent of CR 8 in 1e AD&D to CR 15 and eventually CR 19 while all the numbers associated with those things like hit points kept increasing.  It's the reason you needed more Type XI demons and the Types sort of went away and became a hierarchy of power rather than a recording of some of the diverse types of demons that existed in no hierarchical order.   It's hard to pick out what a "typical" fantasy setting would be, but there is a vast vast difference between what is upper end power in a world like Middle Earth or Tortall and what is upper in power in a world like Midkemia (inspired by Middle Earth but definitely not Middle EArth) or "Randland" and a typical D&D setting and Faerun.  Characters in Faerun are about twice the level normal for characters in my homebrew or play and world-shaking magic far rarer and less commonplace on my world than Faerun - which may explain why world-shattering cataclysms on my world are separated by millennia and not decades.</blockquote>

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