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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6555915" data-attributes="member: 996">No, not hardly.&nbsp; He was skillful, preternaturally talented/lucky when it came to exploiting situations, damn near superhumanly strong, fast, and charismatic, had senses, reactions, instincts, and vitality more in keeping with the animal kingdom than civilization, and had a determination and iron will that no magic ever bent for long.Prettymuch impossible to do him justice in any version of D&amp;D.&nbsp; &nbsp;If you wanted to model him in a game, the player would need something beyond high stats and a good attack matrix to do it, yes.&nbsp; (Your snide misrepresentation of balanced/interesting character abilities granting player agency as 'kewl powerz' notwithstanding.)&nbsp;[]Yes, magic is interesting. I like Eldritch Knights better than Champions for the same reason I like Connecticut Yankee more than Conan.</blockquote>It's funny how, in arguing against the idea that martial characters should get more varied abilities and more player agency, you are continually unable to fathom that doing so doesn't require magic.&nbsp; That, indeed, magical powers would defeat the purpose.&nbsp; In that sense you offer an apt illustration of the problem.&nbsp; The unshakeable - and absolutely false - assumption that no player who wants to use a martial archetype would want any sort of agency.&nbsp;Except it doesn't.&nbsp; It forces you to play a simplistic, optionless, DPR machine, that, at best, you can append a background to for a couple of proficiencies and some fluff.&nbsp; &nbsp;No, being deprived of agency because you make a reasonable choice of concept is not an exercise of agency.&nbsp;You don't even need to /replicate/ effects you just need to present a comparable breadth of meaningful options.&nbsp; It's one thing to give an archer a 1/day&nbsp; 'black arrow technique' that happens to work exactly like magic missle, and set it down as 'cast magic missle 1/day, using your bow&nbsp; as a focus, but it's not magic.'&nbsp; It's better to give him a unique ability that's both explicitly (not merely arbitrarily) not magical, /and/ comparable in usefulness and power - an auto-hit that bypasses resistance, to build on the same example.Mechanically and conceptually D&amp;D has room for that kind of thing - as you pointed out, 4e went further than other eds in that direction.&nbsp; 5e could have gone further - or at least not backed up as dramatically.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6555915, member: 996"] No, not hardly. He was skillful, preternaturally talented/lucky when it came to exploiting situations, damn near superhumanly strong, fast, and charismatic, had senses, reactions, instincts, and vitality more in keeping with the animal kingdom than civilization, and had a determination and iron will that no magic ever bent for long. Prettymuch impossible to do him justice in any version of D&D. If you wanted to model him in a game, the player would need something beyond high stats and a good attack matrix to do it, yes. (Your snide misrepresentation of balanced/interesting character abilities granting player agency as 'kewl powerz' notwithstanding.) []Yes, magic is interesting. I like Eldritch Knights better than Champions for the same reason I like Connecticut Yankee more than Conan. [/quote]It's funny how, in arguing against the idea that martial characters should get more varied abilities and more player agency, you are continually unable to fathom that doing so doesn't require magic. That, indeed, magical powers would defeat the purpose. In that sense you offer an apt illustration of the problem. The unshakeable - and absolutely false - assumption that no player who wants to use a martial archetype would want any sort of agency. Except it doesn't. It forces you to play a simplistic, optionless, DPR machine, that, at best, you can append a background to for a couple of proficiencies and some fluff. No, being deprived of agency because you make a reasonable choice of concept is not an exercise of agency. You don't even need to /replicate/ effects you just need to present a comparable breadth of meaningful options. It's one thing to give an archer a 1/day 'black arrow technique' that happens to work exactly like magic missle, and set it down as 'cast magic missle 1/day, using your bow as a focus, but it's not magic.' It's better to give him a unique ability that's both explicitly (not merely arbitrarily) not magical, /and/ comparable in usefulness and power - an auto-hit that bypasses resistance, to build on the same example. Mechanically and conceptually D&D has room for that kind of thing - as you pointed out, 4e went further than other eds in that direction. 5e could have gone further - or at least not backed up as dramatically. [/QUOTE]

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