D&D General Insanely Epic Arrow Deflection

[Garthanos]

Protection from normal missiles can't do this. In 5e for example

Sure that is 5e and it has tamed some of the problems for some spells totally acknowledging that. (others it may have actually pumped in ways that I approve of )

AD&D
"The target cannot be harmed by ranged weapon attacks (projectiles such as arrows or thrown weapons such as javelins). It reduces the damage taken from magical attacks, or from siege equipment, by -1 per dice. "

As I said I would be implementing a much different non absolute thing for 4e too. ( a really good shot would get through so awesome bad guys doing more damaging arrow shots would definitely make it less impressive) however it would still make a rain of arrows from minor enemies innefectual.

Technically a battlerager as it was released would not be able to do it only because his special ability didnt work against ranged fire.

3e gave a form of damage resistance (limited duration like pumping up with a bunch of temp hit points)

 

[Umbran]

But it would be a martial ability in name only, because all you've really done is borrow some preexisting mechanics for simulating magical ability, and given them a thin veneer of being non-magical. What you really then have is a sort of "sword magic", which is martial by the rules, but operates in pretty much all ways just like magic.

Which takes us over to the other thread - what is magic?

With what you say here, apparently, the fact that a power was defined for a class as a "magic power", that really invalidates using the same mechanics as a non-magical power, as it is non-magic "in name only".

What is magic, if not a name?

It seems very strange that the order of operations in our real world (some game-writer wrote a spell before some other game writer wrote a martial class ability) decides what is and isnt' magic within the game world.

I mean, talk about meta-gaming.

 

[Celebrim]

That's a /LOT/ of assumptions about /people/, rather than thoughts on modeling this or that cool thing from genre or action movies or even RL.

There is a lot to break down here.

First, I'm speaking from experience. The sort of players that come to the table with the idea that they are going to be that cool powerful character that they saw in the movies and who aren't happy unless that is what the gameplay validates are the ones I'm talking about.

And secondly, not everything that exists in other narrative media is well suited to a social RPG. Narratives tend to be filled with a lot of things that happen with the power of plot. The actual ability of the character is usually not defined in any consistent way, but is defined according to the perceived needs of the story. So typically in a lot of media you see characters whose powers and abilities vary widely from scene to scene. This is one of the reasons that 'Supers' is such a difficult genre to run as a game. The internal physics of a comic book universe tend to be incoherent, and games that attempt to replicate a comic book often fail in a number of predictable ways.

Another very common narrative trope is 'the chosen one', where the protagonist is more special than anyone else in the story. So if you get a player bringing to the table a character that is inspired by a "chosen one" of literature, then watch out, because you potentially have a huge disconnect between the gameplay as it will exist and the player's emotional desires. WEG Star Wars does wonderful genre emulation with the fiction it's trying to represent, but Star Wars campaigns tend to be more like 'Rogue One' and less like being Luke Skywalker. And if you do get a jedi in a Star Wars campaign up to Luke Skywalker level, it tends to be campaign ending, so that if you intend to get there you need to either have everyone be Jedi or none of them.

We could as easily assume that the kinds of people who object to this sort of thing tend to want the spotlight to stay on magic spells and magic items, and keep martial options constrained to deciding who to make attack rolls against, without any concern for balance or playability, and even an active hostility to other players' fun.

Which I might note has already been assumed.

I don't see how "this sort of thing" would even be a ruling under the current rules. It'd have to be some sort of addition to the game, wouldn't it?

Yes, and that is critical to the point I'm trying to make.

And, while players need to have something like that offered, the DM can insert it to a monster or NPC at whim.

Sure, they could, but would it be fun?

 

[Tony Vargas]

First, I'm speaking from experience. The sort of players that come to the table with the idea that they are going to be that cool powerful character that they saw in the movies and who aren't happy unless that is what the gameplay validates are the ones I'm talking about.

So you are all-in when it comes to making this about players being bad people for having expectations of genre emulation from an RPG?

Surely, if someone were to sit down to an FRPG, be given the choice of playing a magician, read in the magician class that it's inspired by characters from legend and literature like Merlin and Gandalf, and then discover that all it can do is card tricks and, after a few levels, make fireworks, he might be disappointed. But, by the standard you're proposing, he would be wrong to want to play such a powerful character as he saw in the movies.

I think you're putting the blame in the wrong place. An RPG that purports to be of a given genre, and fails to deliver is just a bad RPG. Players aren't bad for expecting genre bits, and aren't unjustified in being disappointed at their absence.

And secondly, not everything that exists in other narrative media is well suited to a social RPG. Narratives tend to be filled with a lot of things that happen with the power of plot. The actual ability of the character is usually not defined in any consistent way, but is defined according to the perceived needs of the story. So typically in a lot of media you see characters whose powers and abilities vary widely from scene to scene.

You do, you often see characters that, by implication, probably have some abilities they're not displaying, or who display an ability in one scene that might've been handy in another, but, for some reason, was not used.
It makes some sense, in an RPG, to model that variability with a metagame mechanic that lets the player decide, in a game-player mode, when the PC will display some cool ability, and when he'll let it slide so the plot can progress or other characters show their stuff. D&D had de-facto done that with limited-uses quite a lot, though with a certain naiveté, being, as it was, the first TTRPG, that led to conflating meta-game & in-game.

This is one of the reasons that 'Supers' is such a difficult genre to run as a game. The internal physics of a comic book universe tend to be incoherent, and games that attempt to replicate a comic book often fail in a number of predictable ways.

IDK, I played a lotta Champions for about 20 years, and it was pretty fun, and hit a whole lot of comic-book superhero bits prettymuch on the nose.

Another very common narrative trope is 'the chosen one', where the protagonist is more special than anyone else in the story.

I an RPG, you might have a whole party full of "Chosen Ones," who, like, have attributes everyone else in the world doesn't - destinies, strange origins, divine favor, etc - and mechanics to back all that up. It'd be quite a stretch to just have /one/ such PC in a party of otherwise mundane helpers (though that's been pulled off here and there).

Sure, they could, but would it be fun?

To challenge the players with a villain doing some villainous bit from an action movie? Sure? To challenge the players with some villain doing some heroic bit from some action movie that they're enjoined from doing? Not s'much.

 

[Celebrim]

AD&D: "The target cannot be harmed by ranged weapon attacks (projectiles such as arrows or thrown weapons such as javelins). It reduces the damage taken from magical attacks, or from seige equipment, by -1 per dice. "

I'm well aware of the 1e AD&D version of the spell, and while it can do this, the cost of that power comes with a huge number of other drawbacks for a caster. Barring some weird rules abuse with illusions and/or some very generous rulings by the DM, fighter classed characters are pretty much far and away the most powerful 1e classes in practice and certainly the ones that have the most straight forward path to epic levels of power and ability. 1e M-U's have far more restrictions on their magic than comparable 3e and 5e spell-casting classes, and need this sort of thing just to keep up with fighters, rangers, paladins, cavaliers, and barbarians with their vastly superior hit points, potential for 18/** strength, and vastly superior saving throw progression at high levels, to say nothing of their likely edge in available magic items.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Which takes us over to the other thread - what is magic?
With what you say here, apparently, the fact that a power was defined for a class as a "magic power", that really invalidates using the same mechanics as a non-magical power, as it is non-magic "in name only".
What is magic, if not a name?

Where I think videos like these are more interesting than in settling or starting or confusing debates about what a character might hypothetically be able to do, is in establishing the nature of such stunts.

There's a hypothetical dividing line between the extraordinary and the supernatural (3e was nice enough to give them exactly those labels, EX vs SU) with martial stunts logically being on the EX side, and magic/psionics/etc way over on the clearly SU side.

So long as we're willing to stipulate that the supernatural does not exist IRL, then any stunt that can be pulled off IRL - however much practice, however controlled the conditions, or however many thousands of takes it may have required - can't very well be supernatural.

 

[Garthanos]

I should also note that in the context of traditional Chinese culture, what you are seeing is in fact "sword magic".

Qi life force ability to draw on your discipline raw energy and inner reserves sure. But to me that is martial by a slightly adjusted name and perceptual context.

 

[Garthanos]

If you on the other hand want to give the martial class a certain martial flair that is distinctive from magic, then you have to find some way to limit that ability in a way that makes sense thematically but limits the ability in some fashion different to but comparable to all the ways that D&D has historically found to put limits on magic so that it no longer has just the power of plot.

I am fine with players having some influence over the power of plot but I think the uber grade exertion angle kind of works fine also, for instance In 5e it might literally end with a level of exhaustion especially if exhaustion was levered to allowed a less steep slope of negatives. (con bonus worth of free levels before the bad effects maybe just an off the cuff thought)

 

[Celebrim]

Which takes us over to the other thread - what is magic?

For the purpose of D&D, it is not magic if the sort of limitations imposed on the access to the ability has some sort of relationship to the sort of things which limit access to an ability in real life. If the access to the ability is limited by some sort of arcane, narrative, or metagame control on the access which cannot be reasonably explained by what we know about normal ability, then it is magic.

This is true even if the ability in question is superhuman. So for example, if the most we could expect of a real human is say a 24 or 26 STR, but the character is capable of performing feats of strength that suggest 30 or 32 strength, the character may be superhuman but if the mechanical limits on the access to those feats of strength seem to correspond to what we'd expect of the limits of any physical activity, then it isn't magic.

So for example, suppose a character could perform a feat of strength of some sort, but the access to that ability had the sort of following limits:

a) Must make a Fortitude save or they've injured themselves from the strain of the action.
b) Afterwards is Fatigued for 10 minutes.
c) The DC of all further feats of strength is increased by 1 until the character can get a night's rest.

Then the ability is not magical because it's expressed in terms of mundane understanding of athletics, even if the particular example might be superhumanly beyond any plausible human ability.

But, if the access to the ability is limited in ways that are esoteric and arcane, so that access to the ability functionally works like magic, then it's probably magic.

Examples include:
a) Techniques that are forgotten on use.
b) Techniques that are available a limited number of times per day as a hard absolute rather than as a practical matter. For example, a character could do something 3 times per day but then can't again, despite suffering no penalties that suggest that they are discomforted.
c) Techniques that have to be readied by mediation, concentration or focus above and beyond the sort of focus that would be available to all gifted athletes.
d) Techniques that are only available to those that have entered into pacts with supernatural beings, who chant supernatural formula, or who have some sort of supernatural parentage that gives them access to the technique.
e) Any technique, even if it could plausibly be explained in a mundane fashion, if it is interchangable with a set of techniques which fall under categories 'a' through 'd'.

 

[Celebrim]

Qi life force ability to draw on your discipline raw energy and inner reserves sure. But to me that is martial by a slightly adjusted name and perceptual context.

Then so is a Burning Hands spell.