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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7072941" data-attributes="member: 996">In 3e that was OK, once they'd cast the several encounter-changing spells they got each day even at 1st level.  In AD&D it was OK for them to /throw darts/ after they'd cast their /1 spell/.In 5e, as in 4e, though, they get to use cantrips and stay all magicky, all day.   It's the only archetype that even addresses the issue, however unsuccessfully... You don't need to be able to cast spells to be a wizard!  Look at Gandalf, he just went around telling people stuff and making fireworks.   You could say non-caster or non-supernatural, but martial flows a little more nicely, I think.  And no one is actually confused by it.   They /should/ be more broadly capable of superhuman feats, so as to have comparable power & versatility to other character options.  But, so far, in 5e, not so much. Meh.  It pushed problematic abilities to higher levels and/or to long-casting-time/component-outlay Rituals.  It did limit the scope and power of supernatural abilities, and it did greatly expand the scope and power of martial abilities. The result was relatively better class balance (though martial, lacking a controller, was still arguably behind, just not so far behind as to be non-viable in functional contributions  other than DPR), and play remaining workable through higher levels than before.5e un-did all that, not to become broken and 'return' to caster supremacy, but in shifting emphasis away from mechanically-supporting class balance, and towards DM Empowerment and traditional & mechanically-distinct class designs. Balanced them.  You're not alone, there was a lot of that. You don't understand that there is a distinction between magical and non-magical?  Or you don't understand how giving some classes primarily magical abilities, others only non-magical, and still others a significant combination of them would differentiate them? I think it's fairly obvious.  Everyone has non-magical abilities.  Displaying a non-magical ability - say, walking across a room - does not make you non-magical.  Displaying magical abilities - say teleporting across a room -  makes you magical.  I don't see how it could be a much clearer line. C&GI.  Inspiring Word.  Blinding Barrage.  Commander's Strike.  There are many, many more...However, you are half-right about certain exploits.  I call them the 'dancing' powers.  You shift, you attack, you move an enemy a little.  You often could do something like that in 1E, and can again in 5e, because movement rules were less detailed.  In 3.5 you'd need one of the more elaborate feat trees.  In 5e you might provoke now and then if you tried to do it /exactly/, so, really, you can't do it, but as long as you finish off each enemy before you move on, you can get the same visual. AD&D and 5e are pretty close, that way.  5e has AoOs that can slightly cramp your style.  What you're getting at, is that you could declare an action "I leap over his head and attack him from behind!" in any edition.  In AD&D or 5e, it's strictly DM's judgement what happens "you fall on his sword, make a save vs instant death -4" - in 4e, as you already admitted, there were some fairly clear guidelines for the hypothetical improvisations that you "couldn't do in 4e because you had powers."   You're mistaking the invalid edition war criticisms of 4e with it's design process.  H4ters would go off on something as being 'too supernatural,' then, when a perfectly natural visualization was offered, as 'dissociative mechanics.'   Not so much (and 'niche protection' isn't exactly what Roles were about, though they were decidedly limiting).  Classes had primary and secondary roles from the beginning.  They actually moved away from secondary roles, and, in Essentials, experimented with a sub-class having a different role than the main class, but, no, they never blurred the lines between roles much more than they already had in the PH1, with the Cleric having a nice selection of controller powers and the Paladin having some great leader toys. Heh.  And the flavor text of a power could be changed by the player.  So not really any 'limitation' at all.  You could describe your power how you liked, it just didn't change the mechanics.   That's the 5e design philosophy.  You start with the concept and build the mechanics to suit.  Flavor matters from the beginning of the process, it's not left to players to re-skin that casually, since it will permeate the resulting class. Actually 5e does necessarily require exact positioning, you can't state all ranges and movement in feet, and all areas in precise geometric shapes, and /not/ require exact positioning.  You can leave tracking (or hand-waving) that do the DM, by neglecting to give him any tools, of course.  ;P  That's empowerment. It's one of many martial exploits that did stuff prior-ed and 5e martial characters couldn't begin to do.  A very controversial one, for that reason. And we probably shouldn't take it any further than that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Edit: too late.</blockquote>

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