D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[James Gasik]

Heh, as a veteran of the psionic debates, I have to emphasize ...

"
A magic is a magic is a magic.
Lovely the power of the
Impossiblest of the impossiblest puissance.

"


4e spoke plainly about "Martial magic". I feel this is the most useful approach, to characterize the different flavors magic and eschew debates about "nonmagic" or what defines "magic".

At the highest tiers, Fighters shift from a low magic fantasy genre to a high magic genre, and are necessarily more like superheroes than soldiers or streetfighters.

Would you call yourself a Veteran of the Psychic Wars?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Percy is a single-classed fighter, ultimately level 20, gunslinger sub-class (home-brewed by Matt Mercer; inspired by the Pathfinder sub-class because CR started out as a Pathfinder campaign). Hex comes via the sub-class.

Gotcha. Had to look.it up since I didn't remember that being a gunslinger thing. It isn't but he apparently took Magic Initiate.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The funny, if sometimes frustrating, thing about how language evolves is that, like water, it tends to take the path of least resistance. Most everyone collectively understand the references being made by these phrases despite them being inaccurate. Thats an indicator that language is evolving, and comic books and anime are coming to be understood as a genre unto themselves in addition to their original definitions as artistic mediums.

And frankly, in the case of anime, this distinction is muddied because the Japanese don't see any distinction between anime and any western animation, and its use in western countries to distinguish is what contributes to it being seen as a genre; likewise with comic books, the "Golden Age" of superhero movies has lead to comic books being mined for adaptation material a lot more than they used to in the past, and as so many of these have turned out to be superheroes or superhero adjacent, that conflates the terms.

As you mentioned before, we're getting deep into side conversation. Ultimately, I will agree that some terminology is inaccurate and being conflated.

For my money, the cure for this is accurate terminology.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, let's wind this down before someone mentions Record of Lodoss War...oops.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

Yeah, let's wind this down before someone mentions Record of Lodoss War...oops.

you can't expect anime like that in D&D

 

[Gammadoodler]

An interesting thing that I've seen in this thread in a few places too is a resistance to a martial going from mundane to supernatural "just for leveling up" and I wanted to take a look at it.

What has a typical fighter had to go through to get to level... I don't know... 11?

Have they been breathed on or bitten by dragons? Basilisks? Owlbears? Chimera? How many of these creatures have they killed? How many cultists blades have bitten their flesh. How often have they been poisoned.

How many spells have been cast on them by that point? How many times have they been brought back from the dead?

How much magic food or drink have they ingested? How many wounds closed with magic potions? How many magic items have they held close to their bodies day in and day out. How many cursed ruins, blessed halls, and alternate planes of existence have they been in?

I think we greatly diminish what "leveling up" represents for these characters. It's not like they just went and worked out in the gym and got their reps up. They had to go through a lot of shi....stuff to get there. Stuff that is so far outside the normal human experience that it's hard to really picture it.

One radioactive spider bite was enough to make Spiderman. High level martials' experience, whatever it is, is enough to make supernatural high level martials.

 

[Asisreo]

a hexblade a bladesinger a sword bard and a warcleric can use the exact same magic items

At the very least, only the warcleric can actually use Martial ranged weapons with proficiency.

 

[Remathilis]

Hmm..do we? I feel like we say "Superhero movies". Maybe different perspectives.

Maybe you're right. That said, I'd just about wager the folks who say that don't know a lot about comic books in kinda the same way people describe "anime" as a genre don't know much about anime.

In my experience, this happens a lot with "nerd" stuff.

This was a thing for a while starting with phase 2 of the MCU: each movie was both a "comic book movie" and another genre (Winter Soldier was a political thriller, GotG was space opera, Thor was fantasy, Dr Strange was horror). It kept elements of comic-book/superhero movies and blended it with tropes of other types. It worked well for the most part.

 

[Remathilis]

An interesting thing that I've seen in this thread in a few places too is a resistance to a martial going from mundane to supernatural "just for leveling up" and I wanted to take a look at it.

What has a typical fighter had to go through to get to level... I don't know... 11?

Have they been breathed on or bitten by dragons? Basilisks? Owlbears? Chimera? How many of these creatures have they killed? How many cultists blades have bitten their flesh. How often have they been poisoned.

How many spells have been cast on them by that point? How many times have they been brought back from the dead?

How much magic food or drink have they ingested? How many wounds closed with magic potions? How many magic items have they held close to their bodies day in and day out. How many cursed ruins, blessed halls, and alternate planes of existence have they been in?

I think we greatly diminish what "leveling up" represents for these characters. It's not like they just went and worked out in the gym and got their reps up. They had to go through a lot of shi....stuff to get there. Stuff that is so far outside the normal human experience that it's hard to really picture it.

One radioactive spider bite was enough to make Spiderman. High level martials' experience, whatever it is, is enough to make supernatural high level martials.

Because all those things happen to other characters too. Let's take a cheap example: a fighter has been subject to so many magic potions that he gets an innate ability to regenerate. Ok but the rogue has chugged just as many, where's his regeneration? What about a wizard who drinks one daily? Is HE getting regeneration? How many magic potions do you need to regenerate? What if you never drank a magic potion, do you still regenerate?

I'm being cheeky of course, but D&D for the most part lays out what your character is going to do at levels 1-3, and then you improve on it for the remaining levels. Rangers have spells and wilderness abilities by level 4 and only improve in competency. A druid knows how to Wild shape by level 2. A barbarian isn't a mundane fighter for 10 levels and THEN learns rage, he's raging at level 1. A class needs its identity by level 3, and if Supernatural Hero is part of the Fighter's identify, he needs to be supernatural by level 3.

 

[Gammadoodler]

This was a thing for a while starting with phase 2 of the MCU: each movie was both a "comic book movie" and another genre (Winter Soldier was a political thriller, GotG was space opera, Thor was fantasy, Dr Strange was horror). It kept elements of comic-book/superhero movies and blended it with tropes of other types. It worked well for the most part.

Interesting. Was this in like Netflix or something?

I can see it being useful for categorization in the same way they might do "movies based on books" or "award winners"

Just doesn't tell you much about the movie itself.