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

[Sacrosanct]

High level 1e named fighters had weapons and armor only they could wear.

Would you mind listing off all the weapons and armor that only the fighter class would wear/use? I suspect it's less than you're thinking. And how many of them were typically available to level 9 fighters?

 

[Minigiant]

Would you mind listing off all the weapons and armor that only the fighter class would wear/use? I suspect it's less than you're thinking. And how many of them were typically available to level 9 fighters?

Other way around.
In old school D&D...
Wizards and other arcanists couldn't use most armors and had limited weapons.
Clerics were limited to blunt weapons.

So when a flame tongue, +5 battle axe, vorpal long sword, or frost brand drops.

If you made mundane characters run like 1e, you'd have to ban most subclasses of the caster classes and return alignment limits to the half casters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

I don't know. Were 1e name level fighters annoying to DM or have in the party?

What both of these miss is that magic items were a class feature in 1e.

So 1e fighters were very magical - they were the class capable of using the most magical items (and 1e characters had a LOT of magic items!).

It'd be like if we worked vorpal swords and flametongues and armor of invulnerability into class features. After all, we did that for wizards (who no longer have to find spell scrolls to scribe in the wild or make checks to add spells to their books).

Which, for the record, would be very cool. I'm not against a fighter who can forge their own armor of invulnerability, and, in fact, it would be neat. But "mundane," it is not. It is mundane like Batman is mundane - a little bit of kit or tech to give them magical abilities (and enough money and influence to get it).

Or we go the other way and put more class features into magic items that you may or may not uncover.

But what we have today is "Wizards can always learn wish, but if you want a sword of sharpness, well, MAYBE!" And that's a bit of a gulf, if you ask me!

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Definitely supernatural, you can't be mundane and be expected to run into melee against giants, dragons or fiery demons, although I don't think you need an explicit power source, they can just train a lot and do impossible stuff like you see often in fiction (like Batman and other superheroes who supposedly have no powers).

 

[Scribe]

"Just pushups."

 

[Minigiant]

Definitely supernatural, you can't be mundane and be expected to run into melee against giants, dragons or fiery demons, although I don't think you need an explicit power source, they can just train a lot and do impossible stuff like you see often in fiction (like Batman and other superheroes who supposedly have no powers).

Well you could....

You would have to add kneecapping, hamstringing, throat slits, and decapitation mechanics to D&D and make them at will.

Either magic items on demand or a called shot system.

 

[Oofta]

A gargantuan dragon doesn't lose the ability to fly or belch fire just because it's in an anti-magic zone. However, at least by the standards of the real world, those things certainly seem magical.

I would be very much in support of all martials becoming increasingly more supernatural as they level, in a similar sense to dragons. Magical by the standards of the real world, but an accepted "that's just the way it works" element of the fantasy setting.

Anti magic zones cut off access to the weave (or its stand-in depending on campaign) so it stops spell casting and manufactured magical items that are created via spells. It has no effect on inherently supernatural beings whether dragon or ghost.

Or of course it's just how they happened to write the rules and we shouldn't worry too much about how it works. What we do know is that it blocks spells and magic items but doesn't affect supernatural abilities like ki or supernatural creatures of any kind.

Magic from spells and supernatural are different things. At least when it comes to anti magic zones.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They are "20th level Characters" by definition but not "20th level Characters" by concept.

Close. Very close. The numbers just needs to be a wee bit bigger at tier 4. That's why this conversation keeps cropping up.

It some thinks action movie heroes and no superpowers comics are the top mark, the mundane characters of D&D allows just miss the mark.

I don’t think bigger numbers is the answer. Just let them say no to failed rolls sometimes, and raise their numerical floor.

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.

Not really. The model you’re thinking of apperently would be, but there are plenty of ideas in this thread that keep the fighter mundane while allowing it to be a high level character that isn’t dissonant with the rest of the party.

Edit:
I mean go on YouTube and look up a fight scene from a major action movie character. Then realize what their actions would translate into D&D mechanics and turns. Then realize how many rolls that would be. Then realize because of the way D&D works they can do that every single turn.

Could do one roll, or an effect with saving throws.

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.

I think that “Olympic polymath + magic resistance, legendary actions, and legendary saves” stands just fine on the same field with the wizard. It doesn’t require that the class be supernatural in any sense that is useful in a discussion that separates mundane PCs and supernatural PCs.

This is the crux of this whole discussion and the thing that drives me bonkers. Why should the definition of mundane flex? What is the intrinsic value of a fighter that doesn't explain how it does things? "Mundane" is a hard place in enough people's minds, and I don't see what's lost by abandoning it.

It's so much cleaner and easier to design technique systems with phlebotinum, so we could just do that and not have to keep having this argument.

If for no other reason than I don't want to have to explain that no amount of +2 to damage or saving throw bonuses matter in the face of stoneshape or fly. I think people should be fighting at high levels, with weapons and everything, and that they should grow wings and balance on air and cut through space and time, because that's the sort of stuff that happens there.

I really don’t want that, on the other hand. Well. I’d love for you to have it, I just don’t want it to be the only way to be a fighter in D&D .

 

[Pedantic]

I really don’t want that, on the other hand. Well. I’d love for you to have it, I just don’t want it to be the only way to be a fighter in D&D .

You can have like 7 levels. We could maybe even do some rebalancing to get it up to 10. After that, something has to give.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You can have like 7 levels. We could maybe even do some rebalancing to get it up to 10. After that, something has to give.

No. The fighter can be mundane in the sense of not being magical or expressly supernatural for all 20 levels.