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

And to be a guy who isn't all talk here are mundane martial stuff the martials should be able to do.
Italics ins in D&D
Underlined is mundane actions becoming supernatural in future via barbarian or monk

  • Action movie actions
    • Arm/leg/wrist lock takedowns
    • Explosion dodge
    • Instant reload
    • Missile dodge
    • Neck snaps
    • Perfect dodge
    • Pistol whip takeouts
    • Rapid Fire
    • Sniping
  • Battlefield Communication
    • Demoralize
    • Feint
    • Rally
    • Point out
    • Risk/Wager
    • Trick
  • Count as Large
  • Count as Small
  • Deadly Critical
    • Trigger Critical hits
    • Critical hits are save or die
    • Enhance critical damage
    • Extend Critical Range
  • Enhance items
    • Strengthen Acid
    • Strengthen Alchemist Fire
    • Strengthen Poison
    • Strengthen Potions
  • Extend Range
    • Make nonreach melee weapons reach
    • Throw nonthrow weapons
    • Extend ranged attack ranges
  • Finishing Moves
  • Ground Pounds
  • Olympic Actions
    • Basketball
    • High Jump
    • Hurdles
    • Long jump
    • Marathon Run
    • Marathon Swim
    • Sprinting
    • Wrestling
  • Ricochet Shots
  • Signature Moves
  • Waterfall Attacks
  • Whirlwind Attacks
  • Wuxia actions
  • Volleys
Like I said before. It's not a matter of magic or supernatural, D&D is missing a lot of mundane actions
 

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And to be a guy who isn't all talk here are mundane martial stuff the martials should be able to do.
Italics ins in D&D
Underlined is mundane actions becoming supernatural in future via barbarian or monk

  • Action movie actions
    • Arm/leg/wrist lock takedowns
    • Explosion dodge
    • Instant reload
    • Missile dodge
    • Neck snaps
    • Perfect dodge
    • Pistol whip takeouts
    • Rapid Fire
    • Sniping
  • Battlefield Communication
    • Demoralize
    • Feint
    • Rally
    • Point out
    • Risk/Wager
    • Trick
  • Count as Large
  • Count as Small
  • Deadly Critical
    • Trigger Critical hits
    • Critical hits are save or die
    • Enhance critical damage
    • Extend Critical Range
  • Enhance items
    • Strengthen Acid
    • Strengthen Alchemist Fire
    • Strengthen Poison
    • Strengthen Potions
  • Extend Range
    • Make nonreach melee weapons reach
    • Throw nonthrow weapons
    • Extend ranged attack ranges
  • Finishing Moves
  • Ground Pounds
  • Olympic Actions
    • Basketball
    • High Jump
    • Hurdles
    • Long jump
    • Marathon Run
    • Marathon Swim
    • Sprinting
    • Wrestling
  • Ricochet Shots
  • Signature Moves
  • Waterfall Attacks
  • Whirlwind Attacks
  • Wuxia actions
  • Volleys
Like I said before. It's not a matter of magic or supernatural, D&D is missing a lot of mundane actions
I'm going to borrow some of these for my martial ability thread which I'm writing right now.
 

yeah, high level gonzo supernatural abilities like jumping good or climbing speeds, actually decent throwing weapons, reliable enemy taunting and AoE basic weapon attacks like a 'whirlwind' spin, except all those things already exist in the game they're just weak or restricted to specific subclasses.

you could very easily make a decent high level mundane fighter, you'd just need to bring together and maybe tune up some of the abilities to scale that are scattered piecemeal across a dozen different classes and feats and builds.
None of that will solve the problem some people have of mundanes having no answer for kewl magic stuff casters can do, or having little to do outside of combat that isn't available to every class, both of which are features of WotC 5e.
 

And to be a guy who isn't all talk here are mundane martial stuff the martials should be able to do.
Italics ins in D&D
Underlined is mundane actions becoming supernatural in future via barbarian or monk

  • Action movie actions
    • Arm/leg/wrist lock takedowns
    • Explosion dodge
    • Instant reload
    • Missile dodge
    • Neck snaps
    • Perfect dodge
    • Pistol whip takeouts
    • Rapid Fire
    • Sniping
  • Battlefield Communication
    • Demoralize
    • Feint
    • Rally
    • Point out
    • Risk/Wager
    • Trick
  • Count as Large
  • Count as Small
  • Deadly Critical
    • Trigger Critical hits
    • Critical hits are save or die
    • Enhance critical damage
    • Extend Critical Range
  • Enhance items
    • Strengthen Acid
    • Strengthen Alchemist Fire
    • Strengthen Poison
    • Strengthen Potions
  • Extend Range
    • Make nonreach melee weapons reach
    • Throw nonthrow weapons
    • Extend ranged attack ranges
  • Finishing Moves
  • Ground Pounds
  • Olympic Actions
    • Basketball
    • High Jump
    • Hurdles
    • Long jump
    • Marathon Run
    • Marathon Swim
    • Sprinting
    • Wrestling
  • Ricochet Shots
  • Signature Moves
  • Waterfall Attacks
  • Whirlwind Attacks
  • Wuxia actions
  • Volleys
Like I said before. It's not a matter of magic or supernatural, D&D is missing a lot of mundane actions
Some of these are also part of Rogue (Uncanny Dodge, Evasion) or parts of specific subclasses (assassinate, Know Your Enemy) or feats (Sharpshooter, Crossobw Expert/Gunner) or even just renames of specific features (how is rapid fire different than extra attacks with a missile weapon?)
 

Some of these are also part of Rogue (Uncanny Dodge, Evasion) or parts of specific subclasses (assassinate, Know Your Enemy) or feats (Sharpshooter, Crossobw Expert/Gunner) or even just renames of specific features (how is rapid fire different than extra attacks with a missile weapon?)

I italicized the stuff that's in the game already

I forgot manyshot
 

And to be a guy who isn't all talk here are mundane martial stuff the martials should be able to do.
Italics ins in D&D
Underlined is mundane actions becoming supernatural in future via barbarian or monk

  • Action movie actions
    • Arm/leg/wrist lock takedowns
    • Explosion dodge
    • Instant reload
    • Missile dodge
    • Neck snaps
    • Perfect dodge
    • Pistol whip takeouts
    • Rapid Fire
    • Sniping
  • Battlefield Communication
    • Demoralize
    • Feint
    • Rally
    • Point out
    • Risk/Wager
    • Trick
  • Count as Large
  • Count as Small
  • Deadly Critical
    • Trigger Critical hits
    • Critical hits are save or die
    • Enhance critical damage
    • Extend Critical Range
  • Enhance items
    • Strengthen Acid
    • Strengthen Alchemist Fire
    • Strengthen Poison
    • Strengthen Potions
  • Extend Range
    • Make nonreach melee weapons reach
    • Throw nonthrow weapons
    • Extend ranged attack ranges
  • Finishing Moves
  • Ground Pounds
  • Olympic Actions
    • Basketball
    • High Jump
    • Hurdles
    • Long jump
    • Marathon Run
    • Marathon Swim
    • Sprinting
    • Wrestling
  • Ricochet Shots
  • Signature Moves
  • Waterfall Attacks
  • Whirlwind Attacks
  • Wuxia actions
  • Volleys
Like I said before. It's not a matter of magic or supernatural, D&D is missing a lot of mundane actions
All I can say is that I don't want a game with that kind of complexity. Other than strength based PCs should have better ranged attacks which is easy to fix with a simple house rule or two.
 

All I can say is that I don't want a game with that kind of complexity. Other than strength based PCs should have better ranged attacks which is easy to fix with a simple house rule or two.
sure

But without mundane complexity all martials become supernatural.
Even the Battlemster is more complex than my less.

That's the rub. Simple D&D Martials is magic flooded martials or weak martials.
 

yeah, high level gonzo supernatural abilities like jumping good or climbing speeds, actually decent throwing weapons, reliable enemy taunting and AoE basic weapon attacks like a 'whirlwind' spin, except all those things already exist in the game they're just weak or restricted to specific subclasses.

you could very easily make a decent high level mundane fighter, you'd just need to bring together and maybe tune up some of the abilities to scale that are scattered piecemeal across a dozen different classes and feats and builds.
And how does any of that match what a wizard or cleric can do? For the most part you're just talking damage there, which fighters already have. I thought you wanted cool abilities that could match a spellcaster.

Fast climbing isn't a generic fighter type ability. It's a rogue or ranger type ability.

What do you mean by reliable taunting? Making the enemy angry? Taunting might be able to do that. Making the enemy rush and attack you? That would take supernatural mind control. Words can't make people attack stupidly on a reliable basis without being some sort of mind control.

At the end of the day if you move that list of stuff to the general fighter, you still have a fighter who isn't close to a spellcaster for utility and who can't reliably fight things at range unless specialized that way with feats. All the same complaints we are seeing would still be there.
 

And to be a guy who isn't all talk here are mundane martial stuff the martials should be able to do.
Italics ins in D&D
Underlined is mundane actions becoming supernatural in future via barbarian or monk

All martials can do most of these already:
  • Action movie actions
    • Arm/leg/wrist lock takedowns - already doable through grapple and shove
    • Explosion dodge- Dodge is already doable, not sure what explosion means
    • Instant reload - already doable on everything except crossbows, Blowguns and Firearms. Available on Crossbows and firearms through feats and subclasses martials have access to. This is an easy houserule, just eliminate the loading property and this is complete.
    • Missile dodge - already doable
    • Neck snaps - already doable through unarmed strike
    • Perfect dodge - again dodge is already doable, not sure what perfect means.
    • Pistol whip takeouts - already doable
    • Rapid Fire - already provided to martials through extra attack
    • Sniping - Available through a feat
  • Battlefield Communication
    • Demoralize - Ok the first example that is not explicitly available in the rules, although I would argue this is still doable depending on exactly what you are talking about
    • Feint - Already available to fighters through fighting style or subclass, available to others (including fighters) through a feat.
    • Rally - Already available to fighters through fighting style or subclass, available to other (including fighters) through a feat
    • Point out - Not sure what this means
    • Risk/Wager - Not sure what this means
    • Trick - Already doable
Almost all these things under actions and battlefield communications are already doable in 5E with RAW. Out of the whole list above I have 3 you can't do on a current martial in 5E and even on those I am not sure what exactly you mean and could probably come up with rules that cover it if I did.
 

And how does any of that match what a wizard or cleric can do? For the most part you're just talking damage there, which fighters already have. I thought you wanted cool abilities that could match a spellcaster.
I find this the hardest part of keeping up with this debate. Even if we accept that martials are not pulling their weight against magic (lets treat that as given for this example) there is no real consensus on a.) in what capacities and b.) what should be done to correct the imbalance.

So, martials aren't pulling their weight compared to magic. Fine. How? Is it that fighters don't have enough levers to pull during play? They don't kill things fast/reliably enough? They can't match magic's "I win" cards? Are they too dependent on outside forces like magical items and DM fiat? Ask twenty people on this board and you'll get twenty different answers. And that's the problem. We don't agree on what the fighter's weaknesses are, just that they are there. Since we don't agree, we can't even remotely begin to fix them.

Which leads to the second problem. The fighter should be able to match the wizard's reality-bending abilities but do so in a way that doesn't appear to bend reality itself. That is, we can't use "magic" to fight magic. For example, if the problem is that a caster can cast passwall to bypass a trap by walking through the wall but the fighter cannot, the obvious answer would be to give the fighter some supernatural ability to bypass the trap too. But that would be "magic" so we create weird contrivances (like the fighter having the reality altering ability to "discover" there was really a secret door that bypasses the trap by playing some type of metacurrency that overrides the DM's map) or superhuman, but not supernatural, abilities (a fighter's fists are so hard that he can punch a hole in the wall and walk through it. No, we're not explaining how. No, it's not magic.)

And so, we dance in this twilight realm of plausible deniability where the fighter gets to do cool magical things completely nonmagically. We never can define why or how it works, because it's all a metagame concept used to spackle over the idea that casters get cool reality-affecting toys and noncasters don't. We tie ourselves in knots to use "action movie logic" or "superhero tech" to avoid Asimov's conclusion about "sufficiently advanced technology" all to avoid using the "M" word.

Rip the bandaid off. Give all the classes "magic".

Let them all gain the ability to fly. To Heal. To teleport in shadows. To channel primal spirits into rage. To deliver a half-dozen attacks in a round. To breathe fire. To charm with a gaze. To summon weapons to their hands. To pick a lock from 50 ft away. To freeze an enemy in place. To toss boulders like basketballs. To be Mighty. Give them magic, supernatural abilities, and supernatural origins.

Or accept the mightiest warrior is second-rate to his magical equal.
 

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