D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Remathilis]

For characters of radically different power levels, this is done through the literary equivalents of GM fiat and metacurrency.

When Batman fights Joker, he wears his batsuit. When he fights Superman, he wears literal kryptonite plot armor. He becomes supernatural himself. Part of the problem of course is D&D offers no meta currency except magic items and XP, and both are available to caster and non caster alike.

 

[Minigiant]

Ideally I like the base class martials being mundane in tiers 1-2, while being supernatural in tiers 3 and 4.

Like what I said many times before.

Many people like the idea of Tier 3&4 martials.

But they'd hate them in practice

 

[Shardstone]

Most play happens during the first ten levels, so if the character can work as mundane there, that covers a lot of actual play. Also, a mundane farm boy slowly evolving to become a mythic hero with superhuman powers better fits D&D's levelling parading than just starting out as a mythic hero.

But the game isn't designed just for those 10 levels, even if pay requests otherwise. On top of that, you have the sidekick classes of Warrior and Expert if you want to be a mundane for all 10 levels and have no magic whatsoever. Or a few other subclasses.

Regardless, I don't think this line of conversation has anything to do with Sorcerer. Anyone who wants a less magical D&D should not be bringing up their gripes in a thread on Sorcerers unless they have a cool idea for a non-spell reliant Sorcerer (which I WOULD be interested in).

 

[CreamCloud0]

To me it does matter. Is there an in-universe reason why the girl is strong enough to benchpress what I assume to be an approximately 800-or so pound creature? I want that reason or I won't accept it.

she trained to do it, increasing her strength by lifting incremental weights in a regimen to train her muscles, as is the normal way one typically gets stronger.

or in another way to answer you question 'how is she that strong without magic?': well, it's the same way that massive ancient dragon manages to fly on it's wings without magic too

 

[MoonSong]

how would borrowed-powered warrior even work?

A power ranger/henshin hero?

 

[Remathilis]

Most play happens during the first ten levels, so if the character can work as mundane there, that covers a lot of actual play. Also, a mundane farm boy slowly evolving to become a mythic hero with superhuman powers better fits D&D's levelling parading than just starting out as a mythic hero.

The issue I have is why the supposedly mundane farmboy evolves into a Supernatural being. Every supernatural hero has a reason they are cut above the normal folk: alien species, demigod birth, mutation, raisin, heir to a powerful family of Force users, etc. They don't just wake up after killing their 100th orc and sprout wings. They have a lineage or reason.

So we go back to our fighter and ask why he now has abilities that he couldn't do as a regular person. And then ask two questions:

Why can he do them now?
Why couldn't he do them sooner?

I'm not asking in terms of power level: a wizard can throw fire at level 1 so getting access to bigger and more dangerous balls of fire is the purpose of leveling. I'm asking why the absolutely mundane farmboy can fly, survive blasts of dragon breath point blank, or bench press ogres. And why he should wait 10+ levels to do so when his wizard, paladin and barbarian friends are doing that at a far lower level.

As a final note: I want the farmboy/mundane combatant to disappear. D&D is about epic heroes, and your common soldier is an NPC, not a fighter. Your village priest isn't a cleric, the local apothecary isn't a wizard, the bandit outside town isn't a rogue. Leave mundane stuff for NPCs and let PCs be Big Damn Heroes.

 

[RainOnTheSun]

A power ranger/henshin hero?

Man, wouldn't that be an amazing paladin/warlock multiclass?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To be fair, at level 20 you're going toe to toe with gods. I can't think of much media where mundane characters are doing things on that scale.

Myth and folklore, for one. For two, Conan the Barbarian goes up against plenty of divine avatars and the like. For three, Charles Atlas Superpowers, particularly in other pulp-era stories like Doc Savage get that concept at least started.

And, finally, as I noted above, we're already talking about a world where even the so-called "mundane" character, even at something like level 10, can just shrug off dragon fire and then decide to chokeslam the oversized lizard that tried to barbecue him. "Mundane" already doesn't mean what it means to us. These people may look superficially human, but they aren't. Limiting them even to only what olympic athletes could achieve IRL is already out of the question--but so many folks demanding feeble martials expect limits even below that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Man, wouldn't that be an amazing paladin/warlock multiclass?

With the playtest 7 warlock, it doesn't even need to be a multiclass, pure Warlock with Celestial patron works just fine! Perhaps you could persuade a DM to let you draft a homebrew invocation that lets you don a suit of plate as though you were proficient with it. It's almost definitionally less cheesy than an actual multiclass Paladin/Warlock would be.

But yeah Celestial Warlock with a Blade Pact works out really quite well, gives enough of a Paladin feel while still being really flexible.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Even Batman is a superhero, maybe in the tier of 9 thru 12. He might even be multiclass, Fighter, Rogue, maybe some Monk, plus levels in a tech-flavor Artificer.

A funny line in the Spiderman movies is Peter asking Batman what his superpower is. He answers, "Im rich." But this tracks with 5e too, with the total character level corresponding with wealth.

The real irony, of course, is that Batman's true superpower being "I'm rich" is about as accurate as saying that Superman's true superpower is "I'm really strong." It completely misses the actual superpower each possesses, which is far more important to who they are as people than the size of their pocketbook (something many Batman stories take away without losing even one drop of his Batman-ness) or the dumbbell they can lift (something Superman loses many times but never loses his greatest strength.)