D&D 5E Martial Characters vs Real World Athletes

[N'raac]

The game says one thing isn't magic and one thing is. The standard of realism we're applying is the standard the game claims to hold to. Blame the game. If they don't want people to apply realistic expectations to something, then the game shouldn't claim those things are realistic.

Is it realistic when an action movie hero sails through a plate glass window with nary a scratch? Of course not - but neither is it "magic". Hero Games uses the term "cinematic realism" for its objective for the rules. It's not realistic. People do not outrun/outjump an explosion, but we see it all the time in the movies. We don't question it as "unrealistic" (any more than the rest of the movie, anyway) or suggest that the character must have magical powers. We accept the larger than life action movie hero. I see no reason a fantasy game should be held to a higher standard of "realism".

 

[Stalker0]

but maybe others want to play someone who doesn't have magic, like Hawkeye or Batman*.

A lot of people have pointed out Hawkeye as a mundane hero example. I just wanted to note that in dnd terms, Hawkeye would definately be magical.

He NEVER misses with his shots, no matter what he's facing. And the distance on his shots is unreal. Further, he can place explosives and other things on his arrows that in Dnd terms would be spell effects.

Now...you could flavor him as nonmagical. But in dnd terms you would stat him as a magical character....probably a ranger would get you closest.

 

[Hussar]

A lot of people have pointed out Hawkeye as a mundane hero example. I just wanted to note that in dnd terms, Hawkeye would definately be magical.

He NEVER misses with his shots, no matter what he's facing. And the distance on his shots is unreal. Further, he can place explosives and other things on his arrows that in Dnd terms would be spell effects.

Now...you could flavor him as nonmagical. But in dnd terms you would stat him as a magical character....probably a ranger would get you closest.

Of course this brings up the semantic debate over what is magical? Is, say, 3e barbarian rage magical? Is the flight capabilities of various monsters magical? So on and so forth.

Heck, even in the HP debate, we see similar things. Do PC's get healthier or do they get better at dodging attacks? If they get better at dodging, why does it take longer to heal? Shouldn't healing rates either be a flat amount of time (say, X% of HP/day) or based on the type of wounds you take? Which in turn would make combat a LOT more complex. If HP are a measure of luck, though, then why is healing so wonky? Luck has a recharge rate?

If my fighter can wade through 20 normal humans, is he magical or not? Depending on edition, I could wade through 20 normal humans in about 18 seconds. Seems pretty magical to me. Certainly cinematic. So, is Whirlwind attack, or the 1e feature where fighters gain bonus attacks equal to their level against less than 1HD opponents, magic or not? It's certainly beyond human capabilities.

Yes, I realise that a master swordsman might take on 20 normal humans. Let's see him do it three times in a row. Because my 20th level fighter certainly can.

Here's 3 olympic fencing masters vs 50 opponents. They do down 48 of them, but, they still lose.

[video=youtube_share;PgKg0Hc7YIA]http://youtu.be/PgKg0Hc7YIA[/video]

 

[Jishosan]

I had a D&D character once, but he died of smallpox at age 8.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

If anyone's interested, I started an attempt at a "mythic hero" fighter subclass over in the homebrew section. I wonder how well it could please fans of that style without being overpowered compared to other subclasses. I think I have a decent start.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Is it realistic when an action movie hero sails through a plate glass window with nary a scratch? Of course not - but neither is it "magic". Hero Games uses the term "cinematic realism" for its objective for the rules. It's not realistic. People do not outrun/outjump an explosion, but we see it all the time in the movies. We don't question it as "unrealistic" (any more than the rest of the movie, anyway) or suggest that the character must have magical powers. We accept the larger than life action movie hero. I see no reason a fantasy game should be held to a higher standard of "realism".

What you're describing is NOT what they are talking about. Neither of those is jumping 10 feet in the air or lifting a ton. People can and do go through plate glass and survive explosions in real life. They do not pick a ton up over their head and jump 10 feet in the air.

 

[Umbran]

But, HP wonkiness aside, the fighter at level 1 generally doesn't break any rules. Why, at level 20 can he suddenly cleave a mountain in half or divert a river?

How is it *suddenly*? They go across that span over the course of a year or more of play, and goodness only knows how long in-game time. There's nothing sudden about it!

 

[Jishosan]

What you're describing is NOT what they are talking about. Neither of those is jumping 10 feet in the air or lifting a ton. People can and do go through plate glass and survive explosions in real life. They do not pick a ton up over their head and jump 10 feet in the air.

Honestly, I fix this inherently from my campaign POV. In the world, there are likely plenty of adventurers. Small groups who clear out a haunted temple or two, help clear some goblins, and then essentially retire at 5th or 6th level with more money than most commoners in the D&D world will ever see. But the adventurers in any campaign I run are inherently different. They are drawn together by destiny or fate or divine intervention, subtly or overtly, and by nature of being the characters who the story is being TOLD about, are better than other adventurers. They will, time and player resilience willing, move past the standard adventurer and on to some challenge that will threaten the city, the nation, the world, and possibly the planes themselves. And so it is easy for me to say that these players have something unique, from a divine spark to a family blessing to stronger than normal ties to fantastical creature bloodlines. And so it never bothers me at all that they can lift more than any mortal, run faster, fight harder, take more damage. If you're a player in my campaign, and not an NPC, then your destiny is to become a legend, not to just "get to 20 and stuff".

So, none of my characters is ever mundane. Or they wouldn't be characters, they'd be background filler.

 

[pemerton]

mundane classes should rival magical classes in power WITHOUT needing any supernatural abilities.

There are many ways to achieve this. Give fighters AoEs (like 4e's close bursts). Let them inflict status conditions (maimed, blinded, dead, etc).

Gandalf judged Aragorn to be worth hundreds of ordinary knights. I think a 5e 20th level fighter is worth maybe two-dozen.

Hawkeye should be able to kill an "ordinary" dragon with one arrow to the eye.

in dnd terms, Hawkeye would definately be magical.

He NEVER misses with his shots, no matter what he's facing. And the distance on his shots is unreal.

the best balance I ever saw between mundane and supernatural was the Buffy RPG....because it balanced them in fundamentally different ways. Slayers got all the good stuff, stronger, faster, tougher, the works. No mundane (or scooby) was their equal. But scoobies got "drama points". They got to alter plot, change the scenes, etc.

In D&D terms Hawkeye doesn't have to be magical. 4e shows how you can go Buffy-style in D&D: give the martial character abilities like rerolls, AoEs, range-enhancing utilities, powers like Mighty Sprint, Hide in Plain Sight, etc.

The closest 5e comes to this is with Action Surge. Unfortunately it's not enough, especially as it doesn't extend the utility functions of the fighter in the way that an ability like Might Sprint does.

 

[WayneLigon]

Comparing game characters to fictional ones is usually an exercise in futility. Fictional characters have all sorts of advantages that game characters generally do not, first and foremost being 'whatever the writer wants to have happen'. Hawkeye, Cap, Batman, pretty much any modern corporate character varies tremendously on the scale of what they can and cannot do based on who is writing them at the time, within a set of very, very broad parameters. Game characters are much more consistent in what they can and cannot do, even across tables, unless a GM is running a wildly variable rules set or is, in fact, just pretending to use a ruleset at all.