D&D 3E/3.5 Storybook characters and the 3.5 rules

[Edena_of_Neith]

To the Moderators: I put this here. I wasn't sure which forum to put it in, so I made my best guess as to where to put it. My apologies if this was the wrong forum.

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Ok, I think I'm going to get nuked for this (and go ahead and nuke me, I don't mind. Really! Tis just a hypothesis. ) ...

But ...

I think you CAN create storybook and film characters with the 3.5 rules.

Just a gut feeling. Here's why I think this:

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I am seeing that, within the normal rules - no gestalt, no flaws, no feat master, no optional stuff - you can obtain ACs of 50, without any magic whatsoever. You can do it even without any armor or magic or psionics, or anything of the sort!
WITH armor, magic, psionics, incarnum, and the other stuff, I'm seeing ACs of 85.

Now, I may be wrong, but to me AC 85 is the equivalent of being encased in solid steel one foot thick.
That is, think of the HUGE I-Beams used to support enormous bridges. Now, imagine yourself encased in what is, in effect, one giant I-Beam. That's AC 85.

Smaug the Dragon boasted: My armor is like ten-fold shields. I laid low the warriors of old, and their like is not in the world today! And I was then but young and tender. Now I am strong, strong, STRONG.
Ok ...
Smaug is a great wyrm red dragon. He has - what? - an AC of around 40 or 50?
An AC of 85 is 25 to 35 points better than Smaug's AC.
As I said, it's like being encased in solid steel a foot thick. Quite literally, only a direct hit from a nuke would hurt you (unless, of course, that nuke got a ranged touch attack! )

Well, simply put, if - within the STANDARD 3.5 rules - you can create a character whose AC puts Smaug to shame, then ...

I am guessing that you can create any and all of the storybook and film characters within the 3.5 rules.

That's my hypothesis.

Yours Sincerely
Edena_of_Neith

 

[ForceUser]

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I'm saying, ForceUser, that in 3.5 you can create a character whose AC exceeds the AC of nearly all of the storybook and film characters out there.
If your character can beat the storybook characters on AC, then I'm guessing (just guessing) that he or she can beat them or at least equal them in the other heroic traits they possess in said books and films.

Some people are saying the 3.5 rules make it impossible for a 3.5 character to equal a storybook or film character of great note. (You know, like Aragorn, Galadriel, or even Dumbledore.) I'm saying that my gut instinct is that 3.5 characters could match up to them.
If only, now, I could figure out how to do it ...

 

[Aus_Snow]

Soooo....... you mean in terms of power then?

OK. Can't see that you'd be wrong there.

After all, there's even epic rules in the 3.5 DMG! No problem with power levels (being too low), methinks.

 

[shilsen]

Some people are saying the 3.5 rules make it impossible for a 3.5 character to equal a storybook or film character of great note. (You know, like Aragorn, Galadriel, or even Dumbledore.) I'm saying that my gut instinct is that 3.5 characters could match up to them.
If only, now, I could figure out how to do it ...

Really? I've seen many more discussions about problems with modelling the flavor of storybook characters in D&D than ones about modelling the power. In fact, many people on these boards will tell you that the LotR book (since you refer to Aragorn and Galadriel) above is a low-magic setting and most characters from there wouldn't be of too high a level.

Personally, I've never thought a comparison (especially one of power level) between a character in a D&D game and one in a novel is particularly productive. The playing fields, so to say, are so completely different that a meaningful comparison becomes difficult. The characters in the books don't have powers because they hit a certain number of levels or because they have certain stats, but simply because the author viewed them a certain way. Gandalf is chased up a tree by wolves in The Hobbit and kills a Balrog single-handed in LotR. Did he level up? No. Tolkien simply viewed and presented the character somewhat differently in two very different books. Bard doesn't shoot Smaug because he beat his AC. He shoots Smaug because Tolkien gives him an Arrow of Climactic Plot-Device

So, in my estimation, any correlation between D&D characters and fictional ones will be very arbitrary and purely dependent on the designer's perspective. That being said, powerwise D&D characters can pull off most things that you will find in fiction, esp. if you consider epic levels.