D&D 5E Just One More Thing: The Power of "No" in Design (aka, My Fun, Your Fun, and BadWrongFun)

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Garthanos]

What you say, about narrating how this town guard is really a great swordsman in disguise for some reason... sounds great once. But it doesn't sound long-term supportable.

Agreed wholeheartedly it is possible to shine over a bit. One can also shine over character successes as accidental, a phenomena also supported by certain styles of character in heroic fiction.

D&D doesn't support it very well.

Fate is kind of sort of one I was thinking of but I suspect others exist as well.

 

[Garthanos]

So ... you're saying that you can't be the best martial character ... without magic?

Oh no. Do you realize what you've done?

He went there, didnt he ... sigh

 

[Son of the Serpent]

So ... you're saying that you can't be the best martial character ... without magic?

Oh no. Do you realize what you've done? By incanting the words, "Magic > Martial in D&D" you have summoned the horses of the forum apocalypse, thereby causing the eventual disintegration of the thread.

Couldn't you just say something not controversial, like, oh, hit points are meat?

i edited my post. The edit could help explain what i mean.

If not then ill do so here concisely.

It is reasonable to say that a lower level swordsman could be the greatest. Depending on precise detail.

I was illustrating that one of those details that has a majority chance of being present is the simple fact that "the greatest swordsman" is likely to be a caster (though not necessarily primarily) because of the fact that there magic is an whole new section of realestate in which they can grow techniques to augment how good of a swordsman they are.

Realistically, the top swordsmen (most of them. In the thousands or more) would consider it a generally accepted fact in such a world that true mastery as a swordsman directly involves proper use of magic for the purpose of i proved sword techniques.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

So ... you're saying that you can't be the best martial character ... without magic?

Oh no. Do you realize what you've done? By incanting the words, "Magic > Martial in D&D" you have summoned the horses of the forum apocalypse, thereby causing the eventual disintegration of the thread.

Couldn't you just say something not controversial, like, oh, hit points are meat?

wrong also. No. Im saying that magic improves/augments sword play and that hardly any swordmaster in such a world would not be mixing select spells into their martial art. Unless they were a bonehead and not a martial arts master.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

He went there, didnt he ... sigh

No. You CAN but it would be statistically a tad bit absurd. It would be highly unlikely. In such a world, magic would have a tangeable effect on martial arts. Oh. And i actually didnt say that you would be unlikely to be the best MARTIAL character without magic (totally likely though. Ill confirm my support of that statement.) No no. Oh no...no. I said you would likely not be the "GREATEST SWORDSMAN" without magic. Really it applies strongly to any martial weapon or martial art user though.

 

[Umbran]

Fate is kind of sort of one I was thinking of but I suspect others exist as well.

Any system that is built around a core assumption of character power progression over time will tend to give you headaches on this. No starting character can be the best at pretty much anything.

Fate is more focused on character change over time, as opposed to power growth, so yes, it can manage it pretty well. In the Dresden Files game, while you may not start as the literal best, you can be pretty darned good. Fate Accelerated, especially, can support this kind of play.

I expect Cortex+ will also support it well, though I don't know of a solid generic fantasy variant.

 

[Oofta]

So ... you're saying that you can't be the best martial character ... without magic?

Oh no. Do you realize what you've done? By incanting the words, "Magic > Martial in D&D" you have summoned the horses of the forum apocalypse, thereby causing the eventual disintegration of the thread.

Couldn't you just say something not controversial, like, oh, hit points are meat?

You were thinking this thread wouldn't eventually disintegrate in any case?

As far as the whole silly "best swordsman" thing, I wouldn't even know where to start. A first level anything that thinks they're the best at what they do is delusional. Which is fine. But if a magic user is a better swordsman than a dedicated martial character, I'd say you simply aren't throwing enough encounters.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And 5e is also much more concrete than 4e in respect of magic. To me it is rather striking that you set out your thesis by reference to the best swordsman in the land rather than the best wizard in the land or the best planeswalker in the land.

Because the actual descriptor doesn't matter. It's whatever a character claims about themselves in the fiction. The whole "best swordsman in the world" thing was just a single example. By the same token, a wizard who is known as the greatest wizard known to man in a particular narrative I am running does not need to have better "game mechanics" than any other potential wizard in the game. Because up until those two characters actually start rolling dice at each other... those mechanics are meaningless. As a matter of fact, I don't even need to create game mechanics for that wizard and still let him be known in the narrative as the greatest wizard known to man. Because if it's known as such in the story... then it's known as such in the story. And I don't need to build this NPC mechanically to "prove" it. What a waste of time that would be. Build every single NPC mechanically just so we can categorize and compare who's the "good" blacksmith in the town or the "best" sage. Rather that just describe them as such.

If at some point down the road a PC wanted to get into a wizard's duel with that wizard? Then sure, I'll probably make the character up mechanically. But that doesn't mean I have to make him 20th level in order to define him as actually "the greatest" wizard either. I'll make him whatever mechanically would help benefit the drama of the story we are telling.

 

[Garthanos]

Any system that is built around a core assumption of character power progression over time will tend to give you headaches on this. No starting character can be the best at pretty much anything.

There arent huge amounts of fiction which are about that kind of progression... one of the reasons I pull up Cu Cuchulain aside from well that is one pile of awesome is that the character had large amounts of story about his being a prodigy and learning ahem feats of prowess and at extraordinary rates while exceeding his teachers etc etc.... glances sideways at D&D characters.

Fate is more focused on character change over time, as opposed to power growth, so yes, it can manage it pretty well. In the Dresden Files game, while you may not start as the literal best, you can be pretty darned good. Fate Accelerated, especially, can support this kind of play.

I expect Cortex+ will also support it well, though I don't know of a solid generic fantasy variant.

If 4e hadnt came out when it did Fateresden files might have been the first formal RPG I wold have introduced to my kids. Though my son had already played some freeforming D&D.