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

[Micah Sweet]

4e designers assumed people would create their own narratives to explain the mechanics.

One of the strengths of 4e is, it is designed so that the narrative had little or no impact on the mechanics. It was easy to reflavor 4e in any way. This customizability of flavor allowed so many character concepts that are difficult or impossible in other editions.

Unfortunately, there were a few places where the default narrative was less satisfying. Many players had no interest in authoring their own flavor to explain the mechanics. They considered it the job of the designers to this. This dissatisfaction was corrosive to longterm of 4e.

Narrative matters.

It was a huge problem I had with 4e. The mechanics were more important than the narrative. It seems a lot of people here want the mythic martial to operate under the same philosophy.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Suspension of disbelief is the responsibility of the players at the table who..by the way..have gathered together to play a fantasy game where they descend into fantasy Dungeons to fight fantasy Dragons.

Suspension of disbelief is shared between the players at the table and the game materials, which tell you what the game is about and provide the default setting assumptions.

 

[Mistwell]

Errr, what?

This is from the OP:



In what way is this not a "mythic fighter" thread?

And, no, I do not think that a third of tables is a "small" minority. Good grief, I got absolutely raked over the coals for suggesting that 1 in 20 PC's being a halfling was a very small minority.

In any case, I do strongly disagree. This really IS the "mythic fighter" thread. That's what we keep trying to have a conversation about. Instead we have to constantly justify even having the conversation in the first place.

It's not a third of tables. By more of a margin than you quibbled with it not being a majority. A standard you established and, when given the opportunity to be more reasonable about, doubled and tripled down on it.

And mythic fighter is one proposed solution of many solutions, MOST of which (as established in the OP) was to tone down magic and not increase the mythic nature of fighters. It's literally IN THE THREAD TITLE, "Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level." And even more important, most posts in this thread are not about mythic fighters and you accusing me of being in the wrong thread for not posting about them, and then weirdly claiming I was opposing mythic fighters when I never mentioned them, is out of line.

Your entire line of attack at this point seems to be to find one minor thing to quibble about and ignore the point you're replying to in some sort of "win button" strategy (and I will predict it for your response - you will focus on mythic fighter, and again not the point you were responding to). My point had been a lot of people play non-casters and seem to like it and your response was to go after "a lot" and then change the topic to my not posting about mythic fighters and then claim that was evidence I opposed them - none of which addresses the point you were responding to in any way.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I want the Fighters to have magic.

Others want the Fighter to be strictly nonmagic and defacto low tiers.

This thread is about figuring out ways for the Fighter to function and even flourish at the high tiers.

It seems to me, the Fighter must have defacto magic at the highest tiers, in order to flourish. This is the magic of mythic warriors, superheroes, and wuxia. Perhaps it is the magic of a soul expressed thru a physical body, perhaps it is advanced technology, perhaps it is something else, but it is magic by whatever name.

At the same time, the narrative that describes this magic must satisfy 70% or more of all D&D players.

Sometimes supplying magic in ways that minimally antagonize the nonmagic advocates is threading the needle.

I know from 4e, that a failure to supply a satisfactory default narrative can factor into the failure of the game.

The default narrative must be coherent and plausible enough to provide a narrative premise and to allow for the suspension of disbelief.

Also generally. Here's what's happening.

1. Advocate of reducing magical reliance proposes mechanical change to wall of force (which is a fictional totally not real thing) to make it breakable by weapon damage.

2. You say "Woah woah woah.. despite there being no mechanical discussion of this, and no centrally defined setting definitions, "Force" is basically like gravity because I say so, and gravity is unbreakable in all settings despite evidence to the contrary... Therefore Wall of Force cannot be broken by weapon damage"

3. Advocates say..uh..you just made all that stuff up, we could just make up other or different stuff.

4. You say..There must be narrative justification for your abilities..

5. Advocates say.. why, what's the narrative justification for.stuff like wall of force.

6. You say.. Ah ha here's some more made up stuff..but now less specific.

7. Advocates say.. fine whatever..make up stuff that cuts your made-up stuff.

8. You say.. Ah ha, that made up stuff must be magic because I say so and people like the Advocates don't want fighters to have magic.

9. Advocates say.. or it could just not be..

10. You say.. but that narrative justification would either be insufficient or magic and so you can't do it because I say so..

And so it goes.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Those scifi narratives are using magic advanced technology to affect those force fields.

I'm sure I've seen in some of the older comics (silver generation I think) Superman hammering away at Greens Lantern's mental force shields and Hal Jordan saying something along the lines of that he won't be able to keep Superman at bay forever or something to that effect due to the immense mental might required to keep the superhuman punches from bursting through.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To produce an effect via "intention" is by definition magic. If manifesting the intention directly, it is Psionic magic.

And therefore all things are magic, so nothing is magic.

If the goal is to minimize Fighter magic, it might help to focus on the mage and the limitations of a magical effect that a mage produces.

The goal is to allow martials to perform feats beyond human limits. If you insist that can only be done by "magic" but are fine with magic being anything that is a type of physics that is beyond normal physics, then I don't care.

The point isn't "there can be no effect that can be supernaturally described as possibly being magical" it is "I don't want fighter's casting spells that then Wizards can write in their spellbooks" I want a spell-less fighter capable of extraordinary feats. That can be because of a dozen reasons that we have layed out. Special physics, mystical training to harness the soul, psychic emantions of intent, the narrative weight of legends warping the physical world. If you wan to call these things magic, feel free, but this insistence of anything that isn't E=MC^2 and F= MxA is magic just seems to cause confusion and debate, because many of us feel like if we say "yes you can do magic" then it becomes spells and wizards can do it too.

 

[Chaosmancer]

All of those things are more flavorful than "mysterious forces".

You are literally saying "old and mysterious forces" is more flavorful than "mysterious forces".

What? Young mysterious forces don't get to play around and offer powers to people? Is it like a legal drinking age? "Must be three centuries old to invest power in a mortal"?

 

[Micah Sweet]

that's weird, when I said 'this is a fantasy world where magic is part of everything and martials could use it to surpass 'natural' limits becoming super strong' i got told 'but where does it say they can do that in the books'

I don't particularly like the Weave explanation personally, but I also don't recall anywhere in the book where it says it effects people directly in any way beyond spellcasting.

 

[Pedantic]

If you wan to call these things magic, feel free, but this insistence of anything that isn't E=MC^2 and F= MxA is magic just seems to cause confusion and debate, because many of us feel like if we say "yes you can do magic" then it becomes spells and wizards can do it too.

This is a really old debate, but this is the actual problem. "Special physics=magic" vs. "magic is what wizards do" is the whole discussion. Between that and a "should Fighters do magic?" axis you can plot all the relative positions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's an even easier way. In a fantasy world, fantasy metals are a thing. Said fantasy metals could easily be said to be able to break through magical barriers, embodying the basic trope of the silvered weapon from yesteryear.

Said fantasy metals could also be reasonably dense, heavy, and difficult to handle, but would otherwise be mundane things relative to their universe.

Ergo, martials who specialize in swinging heavy things can take magic head on with nothing more than something slightly better than steel or iron. (And thats without getting into speculative metallurgy to see how your titaniums, tungstens, and even plutoniums would fit into those dynamics).

And the naysayers who say "but then martials NEEEEEED them", would be wrong, because in this context, anybody who looks to swing a sword would want them, for the same fundamental reason they'd want a steel sword instead of a rusty pig iron sword.

The addition of magical enchantment in this context would only be a further desirable trait, but not one that was strictly necessary. Id see such enchantments as being more focused on diversifying capabilities and acting as a force multiplier, but damage and baseline capability would all be driven by the metals own inherent, in-universe-mundane qualities.

(Ie, the stuff Im doing in LNO is the right way to do it huehuehuue)

I'm definitely down with more use of special materials.