D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Maxperson]

You cut the rest of that paragraph. So I'll offer you a challenge.

Play a session of mid to high level play as a fighter without a single magical item. No +1 sword, no magic armor, no utility items. Further, refuse to be the target of any friendly magic either. None of your allies are under either prohibition. You are completely mundane in a world of magicals.

How well do you think you fair? Depending on the adventure, you could still pull your own weight. But you also could very easily fall behind. Monsters that are resistant or immune to your attacks. Obstacles that are difficult or impossible to overcome without mobility enhancement. Encumbrance enforced without extra dimensional storage. Etc. I wager you end up playing on the backhand, if not outright inefficient.

But sure, let's keep fighters totally mundane and remain in denial that everything special about them came from a treasure chest or a spellcaster's fingertips. Totally dependent on others, but convinced of their own independence.

Almost nothing is immune to weapons. Some are resistant, but since the game doesn't assume magic items, resistance is built into the challenge rating.

I guarantee you that I would do well. Would I do as well as others? Maybe or maybe not, depending on what we encounter, but there's nothing that they could do to stop me from enjoying myself or being a hero. In fact, I would be even more of a hero than the others, since I would be overcoming more adversity to get there. If it's easy for you and there's less or no danger, you aren't being a hero or are being less of one.

 

[Remathilis]

but is that not more a fault in their design rather than concept though? for what reason should the fighter not have been able to master weaponry and to know the techniques that let their blade peirce the dragon's scales like butter or rend a spirit's form? why can they not simply leap across the chasm like a roadside ditch, or that their flesh has become like iron from a thousand battles?

these things happening without magic would not be out of place in a thousand stories and legends and so too i say they should not be out of place in DnD.

The issue I always get stuck on in this debate is the how and why. Let's take one of your examples.

A fighter's skin becomes like iron after countless battles. It's thematic and appropriate. I mean, what are hit points if not the same concept. Additionally, most martial characters have some way to resist attacks or lessen blows (Monk AC/step of the wind, barbarian rage, rogue uncanny dodge). So let's say it is mechanically and thematically appropriate to give fighters some defensive options.

The question now is how and why.

The easy way is to look at rogues and use their answer. Agility, awareness and luck turn lethal blows to less lethal ones. However, it's limited to one attack per round and uses your reaction, which is less useful to fighters who want to make OAs. We have established what the mundane answer is, and if that's good enough, then we are done.

However, that doesn't evoke "skin like iron" in the more literal sense. Dodging a blade and having it crash against your skin doing no damage aren't exactly the same. So let's look at it barbarian who get resistance to b/p/s damage in rage. It's tied to a finite resource, but let's be honest, it might as well read "while in combat" especially in the upcoming 24 version. But rage is in that nebulous gray area between mundane and supernatural. Lots of people get angry, few people get controllably angry and bend swords with their solar plexus. I've always viewed rage as a supernatural effect more than a mundane one, and perhaps a little of 4e making barbarian a primal character influenced that. So we set the other boundary: effectively damage resistant at will, but with a supernatural effect explaining it.

So now we come to the choice: what best represents a fighter's iron skin. Do we stick with a mundane answer that has lots of caveats and prid pro quos, or a more broader supernatural answer. And then we answer the final question: why?

If we opt for the limited mundane answer, you can't get away with training as your reason, but if you want a supernatural effect, you need a supernatural reason. If he absorbed ambient magic from killing 1000 foes, that's still supernatural and not mundane. If he draws on some form of internal (ki/spirit/psionic) or external (arcane/divine/primal) source, it's still supernatural. And we have effectively pushed martial/training as far as you can go before you bleed into supernatural anyway. So it comes back to the choice: mundane and limited, supernatural and powerful. You can't get both without significantly limiting magic somehow.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Or not. Rogue =/= lockpick. That's only one thing a rogue can do. That and it's utterly stupid for the caster to try and be the rogue. The rogue can open 100 locks a day, and silently. The wizard rings a dungeon wide dinner bell each and every time. Wizard = sucky lockpicker.

I mean..maybe until the wizard gets 5th level spells and can choose "skill empowerment".

 

[Gammadoodler]

The issue I always get stuck on in this debate is the how and why. Let's take one of your examples.

A fighter's skin becomes like iron after countless battles. It's thematic and appropriate. I mean, what are hit points if not the same concept. Additionally, most martial characters have some way to resist attacks or lessen blows (Monk AC/step of the wind, barbarian rage, rogue uncanny dodge). So let's say it is mechanically and thematically appropriate to give fighters some defensive options.

The question now is how and why.

The easy way is to look at rogues and use their answer. Agility, awareness and luck turn lethal blows to less lethal ones. However, it's limited to one attack per round and uses your reaction, which is less useful to fighters who want to make OAs. We have established what the mundane answer is, and if that's good enough, then we are done.

However, that doesn't evoke "skin like iron" in the more literal sense. Dodging a blade and having it crash against your skin doing no damage aren't exactly the same. So let's look at it barbarian who get resistance to b/p/s damage in rage. It's tied to a finite resource, but let's be honest, it might as well read "while in combat" especially in the upcoming 24 version. But rage is in that nebulous gray area between mundane and supernatural. Lots of people get angry, few people get controllably angry and bend swords with their solar plexus. I've always viewed rage as a supernatural effect more than a mundane one, and perhaps a little of 4e making barbarian a primal character influenced that. So we set the other boundary: effectively damage resistant at will, but with a supernatural effect explaining it.

So now we come to the choice: what best represents a fighter's iron skin. Do we stick with a mundane answer that has lots of caveats and prid pro quos, or a more broader supernatural answer. And then we answer the final question: why?

If we opt for the limited mundane answer, you can't get away with training as your reason, but if you want a supernatural effect, you need a supernatural reason. If he absorbed ambient magic from killing 1000 foes, that's still supernatural and not mundane. If he draws on some form of internal (ki/spirit/psionic) or external (arcane/divine/primal) source, it's still supernatural. And we have effectively pushed martial/training as far as you can go before you bleed into supernatural anyway. So it comes back to the choice: mundane and limited, supernatural and powerful. You can't get both without significantly limiting magic somehow.

How could be something like the heavy armor master feat, just some flat damage reduction,which could scale over time (I'm not necessarily proposing this so much as pointing out that a precedent exists).

"Why" is a semantic exercise and open to debate.. You say absorbing the ambient magic from killing foes is a supernatural process. I call it a physiological process.
Maybe their internal source is "strength of will" or "pain tolerance" or "layers of toughened scar tissue". Maybe the external source is more skill with their armor, allowing them to better deploy it to blunt incoming damage.

At the end of the day most any ability can be fit into the madlib:

"Experience has made you _________. Now you can ________."

(And that would be more justification than a lot of D&D abilities get.)

 

[Krachek]

My favorite view of the Sorcerer-Wizard dilemma is certainly Jonathan Strange et Mr Norrell.
One is the scholar and the other is the gifted.

Even MCU show it well opposing Agatha Harkeness and Wanda in WandaVision. One scholar, with high knowledge, and the other a gifted free spirit.

The main problem is to find a niche for Sorcerer on both mechanical and Fantasy level.
Personally I never been a fan of the lore on the weave and magic in DnD, so I won’t care about take on that.
The only difference I care is the Scholar vs Gifted axis.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How could be something like the heavy armor master feat, just some flat damage reduction,which could scale over time (I'm not necessarily proposing this so much as pointing out that a precedent exists).

"Why" is a semantic exercise and open to debate.. You say absorbing the ambient magic from killing foes is a supernatural process. I call it a physiological process.
Maybe their internal source is "strength of will" or "pain tolerance" or "layers of toughened scar tissue". Maybe the external source is more skill with their armor, allowing them to better deploy it to blunt incoming damage.

At the end of the day most any ability can be fit into the madlib:

"Experience has made you _________. Now you can ________."

(And that would be more justification than a lot of D&D abilities get.)

I feel that is an entirely too flippant way to deal with the question. It basically says, "I don't care about why, I believe WotC doesn't care about why, so there's no good reason for anyone else to care about why.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I feel that is an entirely too flippant way to deal with the question. It basically says, "I don't care about why, I believe WotC doesn't care about why, so there's no good reason for anyone else to care about why.

And yet that is exactly how I feel about it. I realize you disagree.

Edit: though to be more precise, it's less that no one else should care, and more that those who care can handle it at the table. The game doesn't have to address it (and addressing it often does more harm than good).

 

[Remathilis]

How could be something like the heavy armor master feat, just some flat damage reduction,which could scale over time (I'm not necessarily proposing this so much as pointing out that a precedent exists).

"Why" is a semantic exercise and open to debate.. You say absorbing the ambient magic from killing foes is a supernatural process. I call it a physiological process.
Maybe their internal source is "strength of will" or "pain tolerance" or "layers of toughened scar tissue". Maybe the external source is more skill with their armor, allowing them to better deploy it to blunt incoming damage.

At the end of the day most any ability can be fit into the madlib:

"Experience has made you _________. Now you can ________."

(And that would be more justification than a lot of D&D abilities get.)

It can't be physiological since if it was, all biological creatures of the same type would do it. That can be true if we're willing to entertain fighter as having a specific origin (akin to how sorcerers get their spells) but the point is we're not. It has to come from something external (a supernatural effect) or it has to be something completely natural (and that gets us back to what mundane limits are).

Bear in mind, I don't have it out for just fighters. Rogues are equally guilty of having reality-bending powers and barbarians are barely squeaking in depending on how supernatural you view rage. I'd like to see all those classes be better defined or i'd like to see magic taken down a peg or three. But they tried the latter and it failed, so the only hope is to give martial's the toys needed to hang.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And yet that is exactly how I feel about it. I realize you disagree.

Edit: though to be more precise, it's less that no one else should care, and more that those who care can handle it at the table. The game doesn't have to address it (and addressing it often does more harm than good).

Fair enough. I just don't want other people's preferences denigrated (which your statement seemed to do) and prefer games to be clear with their intentions and playstyle rather than fuzzy fence-sitters like WotC 5e.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think it’s worth noting-
Level 1-5, I’ve never seen a martial struggle to keep up with a caster. If anything it’s often the other way around.