D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

If I wanted to play a character similar to the mundane heroes of fiction, I would expect to see my character to begin with that hero's humble beginnings and work my way up to being legendary and a master of magical equipment. And I would have to be good enough to earn the latter. The DM just doesn't dole them out on a whim.
 

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It's a hard question to answer without understanding an individual's (either the OP's or anyone who wishes to answer) paradigm around the balance between magic and "mundane" (martial) characters. Kinda gets back to what @Umbran was saying.

It depends where your understanding & concern lies. For example, you might have at the forefront of your mind – Fireball is way more powerful of an area effect than martial characters lacking magic can muster, and that creates narrative dissonance around my fantasy of Conan cleaving through hordes of monsters. – And that will send you down certain directions of design tweaking, whether it's downgrading certain spells, reintroducing AD&D-style multiple attacks against weaker foes, introducing 4e-style Minions, etc, etc.

Alternately, you might have at the forefront of your mind – The problem is that certain magic abilities empowering exploration, like Teleporting or Flight, have no equivalent for martial characters lacking magic. One can reach the flying dragon or the flying citadel, and the other cannot and must rely on their friend. – And you can tackle that issue in multiple ways depending on where your focus is:

(A) Give the martial character an ability to shoot dragons out of the sky (like "Heroes" in OD&D/Chainmail could). A "Taunt" would fulfill a similar idea of bringing the unreachable enemy to you.

(B) Give the martial character an ability to do Super Jumps, modeling a more mythic or anime style of game.

(C) Give the martial character broad-reaching Plot Points that allow for reasonable explanations of how they get there – addressing a multitude of potential concerns with one abstract mechanic like @Stalker0 suggested from the Buffy RPG.

(D) Let the disparity remain, but ensure there are OTHER disparities that requires the Magic characters to rely on the Martial characters instead. So they mutually rely on each other.

Then there's points of contention, where maybe one person thinks that (D) mutual reliance is already present in the game, whereas another thinks it absolutely isn't, and another who thinks it is imbalanced but revels in the imbalance.

I think the deceptively simple one-liner presentation of the question is unintentionally obscuring a more complicated conversation. Which honestly has tended to devolve into circular arguments, so I understand wanting to skirt around that.
 

If I wanted to play a character similar to the mundane heroes of fiction, I would expect to see my character to begin with that hero's humble beginnings and work my way up to being legendary and a master of magical equipment. And I would have to be good enough to earn the latter. The DM just doesn't dole them out on a whim.
The 'humble beginnings' that we're rarely subjected to in the actual stories and the magical equipment they rarely need more than one piece of to be effective?
 

If I wanted to play a character similar to the mundane heroes of fiction, I would expect to see my character to begin with that hero's humble beginnings and work my way up to being legendary and a master of magical equipment. And I would have to be good enough to earn the latter. The DM just doesn't dole them out on a whim.
That would be fine if casters had to earn their spells the same way. Although I don't particularly like this solution because it assumes the DM will include both spells and martial items in treasure to an equivalent degree. If, for example, you have a DM who rewards plenty of martial magic items but rarely awards spells (maybe the campaign rarely features spellcasting enemies), then the game will be unbalanced (favoring martials).

Alternately, it could work if fighters weren't reliant on magical gear to be competitive at high levels. Which would be my preferred solution, because it works irrespective of whether the DM chooses to run Monty Haul or a campaign with few/no magical treasures.
 

I disagree. I like fighters, as do the most of the people I actually play with. They're the most popular class by quite a bit. Not a lot else to say. 🤷‍♂️
You are not refuting anything I've said though.

"Fighters are fun" does not refute "Fighters can't be Captain America without the DM being forced to load them up with magic items."

People like hamburgers but hamburgers are not steak.
 

You are not refuting anything I've said though.

"Fighters are fun" does not refute "Fighters can't be Captain America without the DM being forced to load them up with magic items."

People like hamburgers but hamburgers are not steak.
Or having them multiclass into classes that possess something supernatural about them. Captain America isn't a straight-up fighter anymore than Batman is. Character builds in D&D as far as I have seen require more than one class.
 

Or having them multiclass into classes that possess something supernatural about them. Captain America isn't a straight-up fighter anymore than Batman is. Character builds in D&D as far as I have seen require more than one class.
Multiclassing rules in every edition usually makes it worse.

A5E is probably the only game that gets close. However it has core maneuvers.
 

Magical. Explicitly so. They should have the blood of gods, the power of shadow, the lineage of ancient Kings. They should be able to call upon these abilities to fly, shrug off death, teleport though darkness and breathe fire like a dragon. They should be as far beyond guardsmen and cut purses as wizards are above common scribes.
 

You are not refuting anything I've said though.

"Fighters are fun" does not refute "Fighters can't be Captain America without the DM being forced to load them up with magic items."

People like hamburgers but hamburgers are not steak.
Captain America does effectively have a magic shield. He can't do the throw/return with anything else. Take away his shield and he's just a champion fighter.
 

Magical. Explicitly so. They should have the blood of gods, the power of shadow, the lineage of ancient Kings. They should be able to call upon these abilities to fly, shrug off death, teleport though darkness and breathe fire like a dragon. They should be as far beyond guardsmen and cut purses as wizards are above common scribes.
In other words, the martial equivalent of a Sorcerer and PF1's Bloodrager.
 

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