D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[Cadence]

I think it comes down to the suspension of disbelief. And, in D&D, we accept a lot. A dragon the size of a small mansion breaths a gout of flame hot enough to melt a castle wall that is up to 90 feet wide and a rogue is standing in the center of it, without cover, and without any protection. And takes no damage after making that Evasion . B.) That isn't what the fighter does. However, I had a fighter solo an Ancient Red. 550 damage before the beast ever did anything. I agree the fighter could use some non-combat abilities to flesh them out better. However, they do what they do quite well.

What did your fighter do to drop 550 on them before the dragon got an action? (Surprise round and then one initiative, or...?)

 

[Remathilis]

Agreed but only after the characters get to high levels.

Before that, they ARE those mundane people at the core, just with increasingly more going for them as their levels advance.

Otherwise you're playing supers; and that ain't what I want form D&D.

The local village priest isn't trained in armor and mace, is granted divine magic or the ability to hold back the dread. The highwayman can't move triple his speed, dodge fireballs and disappear with ease. The scribe doesn't throw fire and lightning from his fingers and the town guard can't recover stamina and complete two actions in the time most take for one. They ARE superheroes; starting out as a Young Avenger/Teen Titan before moving up to the Avengers/JLA is part of the leveling process. The idea that D&D characters are at all mundane people hasn't been part of the design theory since the mid 90s.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There are people here who argue that the martial classes must remain strictly "realistic" even at absurd levels of play. While I strongly disagree with their arguments, I agree with one particular thing: The future "potential" of a class colours the play experience.

I believe this is why the tier argument does not work. That is: A martial class cannot transcend from being "mundane" to "mythic", because future mythic potential colours the mundane experience, unless the mythic element is entirely optional.
Clarification: Someone proposes a martial that transcends from being fairly realistic at levels 1-10 and then gains blatantly unrealistic abilities at higher levels. This is a good solution to the balance problem, but it is an example of what I mean with the "tier argument" above.

An ability you will get, even at a level you will never reach, affects the current play experience. You know that at some point you WILL have a particular ability. An ability in potentia. This is why it always feels amazing to play a caster, because you know that only GM fiat can prevent you from learning a particular spell at a particular level. Want Simulacrum? Pick it. Want Wish? Pick it. Yeah sure you might not actually survive that far in the game, but that's not really important. You know that you absolutely will be amazing at high levels.

It is also why it can feel bad to play a martial: You know that at level 20 you will have pretty much nothing that you didn't already have. Sure some numbers might be higher, you might have a few more attacks, but there is nothing "concrete" about these improvements. A wizard with Wall of Force knows what he can do with his magic. You might have a cool magic item, but emphasis on might. You never know what magic items you will get. Shrödinger's special ability.
So we have two different groups of people:

1: One group does not care that martials don't get anything cool, because if they got something cool it would make their play experience worse

2: Another group feels like the fact that martials don't get anything cool makes their gameplay experience worse, because there is nothing to look forward to as you level up.

The way the system currently works is that casters are allowed to have impactful abilities while martials are not, and that even the addition of abilities at higher levels is not OK (according to some people), because it colours the player experience of the people who want fighters to remain "mundane".

I believe that for this reason the only reasonable solution to the balance problem is to have an entirely separate martial class that is essentially an "unchained" fighter, one that is properly balanced against the the stronger classes.

As a proponent of "tier system" I boviously have issues with this. First, I don't think the objections you cite are that common to begin with. Second, I am not at all convinced your whole expectation hypothesis. Thirdly, most people seem to be fine with high level martials becoming Captain America style super athletes that have "heightened mundane" capabilities but don't do anything blatantly magical.

Thus it is relatively easy to design high level martials so that they have an option to choose these "heightened mundane" capabilities or perhaps warlord-like leadership capabilities instead of more blatantly supernatural ones, so that people who are allergic to magic have that option.

To me this seems way more implementable solution than designing several new classes from scratch and demoting current martials into sidekicks or whatever. The latter will absolutely never happen, the former at least in theory could.

 

[DEFCON 1]

But that way—and I am not at all being facetious—lies 4e.

That's literally what a third of the complaints about 4e's design center on. That Wizards weren't allowed to be magic anymore...even though they only lost the absolute highest and most broken spells (like wish), with most utility magic becoming rituals which cost time and money and skill rolls rather than fire and forget spell slots instantly regained with a good night's sleep.

When you force Wizards to have to actually care about time constraints and costs, when you make it so they actually have to be picky about which utility spells they acquire and can only deploy a few a day without sinking actual gold into their power...they riot.

This is a claim that several people tend to make, but I do not recall this ever actually being the case. You make it seem like it was Wizard players that sounded the clarion call to people not accepting 4E-- like the game's failure was their fault because they didn't like the "balanced comparison" between the Wizard class and the Martial power source. But I don't think that is true at all.

ALL types of players did not like 4E. Not because the Martial and Arcane power sources were now more balanced to each other... but because the 4E game play itself and the focus of the grid-based combat game play was different than what players expected or wanted. There were plenty of people who LOVED playing Fighters who HATED playing 4E because of the way the game of 4E played. And the loss of so-called "Wizard power" had nothing to do with it.

Quite frankly... over the past 20 years I have heard MANY MORE "Wizard haters" constantly complaining about the power of Wizards than I ever heard of Wizard players "rioting" or even merely complaining that in 4E they were "less powerful". And to be honest... if all of (general) you Wizard haters haven't rioted yourselves yet about Wizards being supposedly overpowered... it is quite a leap to state that is was the Wizard lovers are the ones who did.

Maybe all of (general) you should try rioting yourselves to get what you want, if you really think it went so well for the Wizards fans to regain what they had lost.

 

[Staffan]

I get wanting martials to have cool stuff. In fact, I'm all for it. But what was wrong with any of the other dozen threads we've had on the topic recently?

 

[Oofta]

Do we really need yet another thread about how terrible fighters are? I get it. You don't like the way D&D works. Because that's what it really comes down to - you don't like the way the game that this forum is dedicated to is designed.

Perhaps core D&D simply isn't the game for you. There's only so much you can tweak and adjust before your mythical or "cool" fighter simply won't fit the game any more. Want a supernatural PC? You have a ton of options, we don't need yet another.

I like fighters as they are, and have and will likely play them again. We don't need yet another implicitly supernatural class.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I get wanting martials to have cool stuff. In fact, I'm all for it. But what was wrong with any of the other dozen threads we've had on the topic recently?

WotC did not read them and produce an immediate balanced martial in response yet. So the conversation must continue! Just like how it worked for the Warlord and Psion fans!

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

As a proponent of "tier system" I boviously have issues with this. First, I don't think the objections you cite are that common to begin with. Second, I am not a t all convinced your whole expectation hypothesis. Thirdly, most people seem to be fine with high level martials becoming Captain America style super athletes that have "heightened mundane" capabilities but don't do anything blatantly magical.

That's fine. I'm not sure I'm convinced of it myself.

The idea came to me after some group talk while playing PF2. We were discussing what things we'd get at higher levels, and I realised the whole "feel" of knowing that things will be available in the future wasn't there in the rather minimalist 5e martial design.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I get wanting martials to have cool stuff. In fact, I'm all for it. But what was wrong with any of the other dozen threads we've had on the topic recently?

I made it a separate thread because I wanted to focus on the underlying idea rather than as a discussion of balance itself.

It's not so much about balance but whether or not a big part of the conflict is based on the idea that how people experience a particular class or character is a result of things that have yet to happen and which they can know will happen.

 

[Oofta]

I made it a separate thread because I wanted to focus on the underlying idea rather than as a discussion of balance itself.

It's not so much about balance but whether or not a big part of the conflict is based on the idea that how people experience a particular class or character is a result of things that have yet to happen and which they can know will happen.

I'll keep my answer simple then. I have played, hopefully will play again fighters up to 20th level. I don't care about so-called balance (at least in part because I've never seen a major issue), I care about whether or not people enjoy playing their chosen class. Every campaign I've run to 20th level included at least 1 fighter. We enjoyed the game.

No game can be for everyone. No game can cover every genre while maintaining a coherent base style. I don't want a "mythical" warrior and, no, I don't think it's a good fit for D&D.