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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9163075" data-attributes="member: 7635">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.</blockquote>

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