D&D 5E Levels of literary heroes (and inflation thereof)

[delericho]

I don't know Elric or the Leiber characters, but if you read REH's Conan you can see that he is extremely strong compared to an ordinary person.

He is the strongest person who appears in the stories. He is incredibly quick. He has near-preternatural senses. He survives crucifixion.

We've been round this a few times. It remains my opinion that a high-level Fighter (or Rogue, or Barbarian, or whatever combination), in a game where the high-level Wizards are throwing around polymorphs and time stops and wishes, should be capable of all these feats.

Whether that's because those classes grant features that allow those feats, or because those classes give the character significant stat-boosts, is open to debate.

 

[pemerton]

It remains my opinion that a high-level Fighter (or Rogue, or Barbarian, or whatever combination), in a game where the high-level Wizards are throwing around polymorphs and time stops and wishes, should be capable of all these feats.

Whether that's because those classes grant features that allow those feats, or because those classes give the character significant stat-boosts, is open to debate.

Sure. But what version of D&D do you have in mind that actually delivers on this?

I think stat boosts as a primary source of ability for "martial" PCs could be quite a good system, but I haven't seen it. (LotFP comes within coo-ee of it in its base attack bonus rules, I think.)

There's also the problem that Conan is extremely capable even in Tower of the Elephant, which is (in D&D terms) a relatively low-level adventure.

I don't think D&D makes it that easy to build characters, especially non-caster characters, who are broadly competent - especially at low levels.

 

[delericho]

Sure. But what version of D&D do you have in mind that actually delivers on this?

Yeah, fair point.

Edit to make an only-partially-serious statement: IMO, adding the Thief class, way back in the Greyhawk supplement was a mistake. Everything that class does (and the Barbarian, and the Paladin, Cavalier, Ranger, etc etc) should be optional features that the single Fighter (or, better, Hero) class can choose to do - the same way that we have a single Wizard class with lots of different spell choices. Given that Greyhawk was also responsible for the magic missile spell, I'm now going to claim that that was the point where it All Went Wrong.

 

[jayoungr]

I would think generalship would come from WIS and/or CHA, rather than INT, anyway.

 

[MostlyDm]

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would be trivially easy to make in 5e. Or any edition of D&D, really, though 3.X and beyond will do it better due to more flexible multi classing and backgrounds.

Conan mostly has issues because he achieves consistent successes due to being a literary hero. It's been mentioned before, but it's not a cop out to chalk some of that up to him rolling well most of the time. He's the protagonist.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I didn't meant to be that boring!

Is there an allusion here that I'm missing?

Nothing so sophisticated as an allusion, no, just a pun on 'minion' and a bit of a stretch, at that.

Part of it is also a reaction against the excessive reverence paid to these characters.

Sounds like the same thing, to me.

although D&D isn't "The Conan RPG", Gygax does note that he, Elric, Fafhrd, and the Grey Mouser were especially strong influences on the game. IMO, they too should be suitable for PC use.)

I think Elric (Moorcock's works in general, that is) was more an influence on cosmology and aligment than Elric himself was a suitable PC. [sblock] (Moorcock conceived of Elric in a fit of youthful rebellion as a sort of anti-Conan after some of his REH pastiche was panned by critics. Conan is a barbaric warrior, Elric an effete prince of a decadent civilization, Conan is strong in every sense, Elric a feeble albino, Conan distrusts magic and goes around murdering evil Sorcerers, Elric is an evil Sorcerer, though he sometimes uses his power for something akin to good, Conan is an ubermench, an ideal of humanity and masculinity taken to extremes, Elric isn't human, his race didn't even evolve from primates.)[/sblock]

But, I suppose he is almost playable, anyway. He could certainly be represented by an arch-mage with an artifact weapon that feeds him hitpoints who casts Tenser's Transformation and Gate and little else. Early D&D sword-weilding would have been an issue, unless we translate Melniboneans as decadent elves (Drow would be closest, really, just light-skinned, above-ground drow). The big sticking point is that unless you put all his magical abilities in items, his Gating in Grahluks and Elementals and Arioch himself, would make him an archmage, and then why is he never casting anything else, right? ;P Like 5th-level-Magic-user Gandalf, the classes meant to model him offer more abilities than he ever displayed.

Fafhrd is too good at non-fightery things and the Mouser too good at fighting for D&D to have ever done them well, but the basic concepts have been available for a long time. The Mouser is arguably the inspiration for the Thief class (without the niche-protection of which, as you pointed out, it might be a bit easier to model characters from genre). But, while the basic concepts have class (and multi-classes, and kits/feats/backgrounds/themes/archetypes) boxes they're clearly meant to go in, the characters often do more than the classes are credited with.

(But, perhaps more to the point, there seems a determination that because a fictional character pulls off a trick once that character therefore must have some special ability to do it all the time.)

That's not entirely unreasonable. Maybe not all the time, but consistently enough that the player can count on the character pulling off a critical action when it counts.

In fiction, the protagonist can pull off a 1-in-a-million shot now and then, when it's critical to the plot (and fail a routine task when it moves the plot along), because it's all under the control of the author. In a diceless collective storytelling exercise, the same probably still holds true. In an RPG where dice are required to resolve otherwise unlimited-use abilities, there's a gulf between the 'realistic' probability of success of a genre-appropriate heroic attempt, the 'fair game' chance of a high-impact action succeeding, and the certainty of it needing to succeed (or fail forward, I suppose) for the sake of establishing the character and supporting the flow of the story.

So, yeah, if a hero goes around breaking the laws of physicals with his feats of athleticism and consistently beating the odds critical moments, a game needs to give the player & GM tools to model that. Whether it's the character having special abilities that let him escape prosecution for violating physical laws, or whether it's a free pass to do so a limited number of times, or just a really good physical-law attorney on retainer....