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

[Tony Vargas]

The current direction is extremely alienating for people who want to play in lower magic settings or with entirely mundane characters. Sometimes Bob the human fighter is just Bob the human fighter, and not some legendary hero fated to slay gods and save the multiverse.

That's just a matter of setting campaign limits. An apprentice Tier, human only campaign, restricted to Champion, Thief, & Berserker, for instance, would cover that. It would require radical changes to challenges and pacing, but it might be done.

Conversely, doing the same in 1e would mean restricting classes to Fighter and Thief, and to very low level so you're not, like, able to jump off high towers or cliffs and just dust yourself off or whatever.

OK, "conversely" may not have been the best word choice.

 

[Composer99]

I'm inclined to say that martial characters can be both, in the sense that a low-level martial might be not especially distinguishable in kind from ordinary folk (even if they are distinguishable from them in skill - think your Conans, Gimlis, Fafhrds, and so on), while a high-level martial should be obviously mythic; supernatural in nature if not necessarily outright magical.

To a certain extent, martials already fit this bill with their unnatural endurance and killing power. Where they tend to fall short is in enabling the fantasy of high-level mythic characters being able to do stuff other than killling things. (IMO.)

 

[Fanaelialae]

This is something I dislike about modern dnd. Everyone is insanely high magic compared to what it used to be. In earlier editions there was no question about the basic fighter or thief being mundane rather than magical, and some people enjoy that.

The current direction is extremely alienating for people who want to play in lower magic settings or with entirely mundane characters. Sometimes Bob the human fighter is just Bob the human fighter, and not some legendary hero fated to slay gods and save the multiverse.

Which would be fine if Joe the human wizard was just doing the equivalent of card tricks and pulling rabbits out of a hat.

On the other hand, if Joe can cast Wish or True Polymorph, then Bob needs something to be able to stand on same field. He can't simply be Bob the better-than-average mall cop.

 

[Tonguez]

Bullet Time
Your Legendary Awesomeness seems to distort the flow of time around you so that you are able to make more Heroic Actions

• You gain an extra action and an extra bonus action to use as you choose
• your speed is doubled
• Your movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks
• All attack rolls you make have advantage
• Attack rolls against you are made with disadvantage
• You have advantage on Perception checks and Dexterity saving throws

 

[Tony Vargas]

Which would be fine if Joe the human wizard was just doing the equivalent of card tricks and pulling rabbits out of a hat.

TBF, a 1e MU might start (randomly, according the the DMG) with the spells Read Magic, Friends, Ventriloquism, and Find Familiar.

Which, now that I think of it, means no card tricks. But the makings of a stage magic act, at least.

 

[Stalker0]

Conan has beaten gods, demons, and archwizards. What more does it take?

Beating those things when they are rated CR20

In seriousness the problem is, a "god" in one medium does not equal a god in dnd. So yeah conan knocks down some demons, but are they dnd equivalents that are like CR 15s.....or are they more like your CR 5-10 fare.

 

[DragonBelow]

That may be true but that's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is that an actual Tier 4 mundane character...

An actual character with no superpowers and no supernatural abilities that is of the quality of what D&D says Tier 4 is...

would be annoying to DM for and annoying to be in a party with.

That's an opinion, I respect it, but I don't share it.

Also, do they get magical treasure or not? seems like you're ignoring this part of the equation.

 

[Cadence]

That's an opinion, I respect it, but I don't share it.

Also, do they get magical treasure or not? seems like you're ignoring this part of the equation.

With all of the martials complaining, I'm wondering if at some point in some world all the magic items makers would ever just decide to crank out more armors and weapons.

 

[Stalker0]

So there is a way for mundane fighters at 20th level to work with supernatural ones....but I bet most players would balk at.

Its what Buffy the Vampire Slayer uses in that system. Effectively the mundane fighters get "plot points" or something that lets them adjust the narrative of the story.

Oh we are facing Ultranoth and 3 of this hencemen, well... (spends a plot point), the 3 henchman fall into a trap that I had set ahead of time!


So basically, on paper the supernatural guy is way stronger than the mundane one. But....behind the scenes the mundane guy gets to shift things in his favor, so they are both contributing "relatively equally". Its how in Buffy you can have a slayer in the same party with a bunch of regular people and still have decent balance.

 

[Minigiant]

That's an opinion, I respect it, but I don't share it.

Also, do they get magical treasure or not? seems like you're ignoring this part of the equation.

That's what I meant.

If you ran on the descriptions of old D&D, a DM would be forced to give mundane characters a lot of magical items and ban nonmundane characters from being able to use them.

If you run on the descriptions of modern D&D,, a mundane character would have a turn of 10 to 20 minutes because of the vast amount of options they would be able to use every turn.