D&D 5E The Door, Player Expectations, and why 5e can't unify the fanbase.

[Neonchameleon]

Sure. Not everyone is good at everything. There are three columns: Combat, Exploration, Interaction. Fighters rank high in the Combat column, but lower in the other two. A high level fighter could get some social and buffs, and that's in addition to his "Kill you 11 ways to Sunday" abilities. Meanwhile the Bard is a Master of the Interaction column doing things with words and guile few fighters could dream of. He also can't fight his way out of a paper bag.

We call that "Balance Across Columns". Unless your Mythic Fighter is supposed to excel at all three. If so, there is another word for it that begins with "M" but it ain't Mythic.

The biggest problem is that the above is simply not true at high levels unless you allow mythic fighters or take the 2e gatling-dart-weaponmasters as working as intended. If you can't get to the enemy you are poor in the combat column and historically fighters are the slowest people on the battlefield - and have no way of preventing physical obstructions neutralising them. A fighter is poor at the Social and Exploration tiers - which is one problem. But the pressing problem with fighters is that as magic gets more potent and ubiquitous, they get overtaken at the combat column as well. Kill You 11 Ways To Sunday doesn't work if the fighter can't see what he's trying to kill or catch up with them.

Edit: I was being a little hyperbolic with the Dragon in the Anti Magic Field. The point is that dragons make no sense without magic. Neither do giants. Nor, as pmerton pointed out, do trolls. The idea that fighters have to stick to the laws of real world physics when common monsters do not and in ways that common monsters do not is something I just don't get. Especially when short of being a complete one-shot killer this makes the class non-viable at high level.

 

[pemerton]

Who are you asking? Your question is addressed to me, but it was Neonchameleon who suggested the ambient magic theory. If you're asking me, I agree with you but IIRC it was he suggested that anti-magic should kill the dragon dead.

<snip>

Nothing fictional needs an explanation in an absolute sense. It's want people want to have explained to some extent. You can't deny there are various elements in fantasy that various authors attempt to explain or justify in various ways, and many elements in D&D that designers and players attempt to justify. Explain nothing or try anything with no explicit or intuitive suspension of disbelief and your fantasy story crosses over to the absurd and/or surreal. So given that, what exactly what are you arguing please, because I don't understand our disconnect.

Tolkien doesn't explain how it is that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer". He relies on the reader's general familiarity with the mediaeval tradition of divine right and saint kings. This doesn't make the story surreal.

Similarly, D&D has never explained how trolls regenerate or giants walk. AD&D didn't explain how elves and halflings hide. My point about Dragonomicon is that in this respect it is an exception, and in my view an unwelcome one. Are you saying that you can't suspend your disbelief in trolls and giants, and that you couldn't do so for dragons until you read the Dragonomicon?

So why are high-level fighter's tough? I don't think we need to know, any more than we know about those other ubiquitous elements of the game's fiction. All we need is the game mechanical realisation (whatever that is is up for grabs at this point) plus the flavour text of their toughness, just as with wizads we have the game mechanical realisation (which is also somewhat up for grabs) and the flavour text of their learned spell knowledge.

 

[Underman]

Tolkien doesn't explain how it is that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer". He relies on the reader's general familiarity with the mediaeval tradition of divine right and saint kings. This doesn't make the story surreal.

It's not surreal to me because I intuit without needing an explicit explanation for that one line that the king is specially gifted. I assume there is an explanation. As a king he learns the art of healing from his maesters, or divine healing is in royal blood. Also, is it mundane herbal healing or divine healing or both, I don't know, it's left vague. Also, it's not in-your-face like D&D powers. It's not like the phrase is "the legs of the king are the legs of a superfrog". That would be less subtle if the king jumped out of his tower every morning and landed outside the city walls.

Do you not make the same differentiation that different elements in fantasy are different in quality and elicit different perspectives from the reader or audience?

Also, like much of Tolkein's fantasy, the king's healing ability is written subtlely, and I don't delve too much because it is subtle and off-camera (whatever the literary equivalent of off-camera is). However, if I had to roleplay the king, get inside his mind and do his shtick, it would be helpful to know more about his healing source. Don't you differentiate between a subtle rumour in a novel vs actually roleplaying the king and don't have any curiousity or desire to understand the character further and what makes him tick and how he fits into his world?

Are you saying that you can't suspend your disbelief in trolls and giants, and that you couldn't do so for dragons until you read the Dragonomicon?

No not saying that.

 

[pemerton]

if I had to roleplay the king, get inside his mind and do his shtick, it would be helpful to know more about his healing source. Don't you differentiate between a subtle rumour in a novel vs actually roleplaying the king and don't have any curiousity or desire to understand the character further and what makes him tick and how he fits into his world?

When I think about understanding a character and what makes him/her tick, I tend to think about it in thematic/emotional terms rather than "power source" terms.

 

[Imaro]

When I think about understanding a character and what makes him/her tick, I tend to think about it in thematic/emotional terms rather than "power source" terms.

But that distinction can get kind of blurry... As an outside the fantasy genre example, let's take Superman. I'm sure being able to fly, being one of (if not the strongest, fastest, etc. beings on earth), being able to shoot heat rays and freeze things with his breath, being invulnerable to most weapons, being vulnerable to kryptonite, and so on all tie into understanding how and why Superman thinks and acts the way he does.

Furthermore I think the fact that these things come from his heritage as a Kryptonian which is contrasted with his human upbringing (by people who can never truly understand what it is actually like to be him, in no small part because of his powers and heritage) certainly matters thematically to the character. The fact that Superman's power source is Kryptonian has mattered extensively to the thematic and emotional makeup of many of the various versions of the character, so I'm not sure there's such a hard divide as you paint here.

 

[Remathilis]

I think this thread has proven the OP's point.

 

[Umbran]

I think this thread has proven the OP's point.

No, it hasn't. Because I return to the point - the game doesn't have to unify different playstyles at the same table, but at the cash register. If both sides of the dichotomy (any dichotomy, be it old school vs new school, 3e/4e, magic vs mundane fighter) are buying the same core rule set, then WotC has achieved its most basic goal.

And, at least in principle, there's no reason why the "rules module" format cannot do that. Execution remains to be seen, of course.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

They can't unify an audience that will not be unified. To the extent that part of the audience says, "that other guys' stuff cannot be in the rules," then, no, they are not subject to unification.

Everyone else can, theoretically at least, be unified as Umbran stated above.

 

[pemerton]

As an outside the fantasy genre example, let's take Superman.

<snip>

The fact that Superman's power source is Kryptonian has mattered extensively to the thematic and emotional makeup of many of the various versions of the character, so I'm not sure there's such a hard divide as you paint here.

It's a nice example, and maybe it can actually illustrate some of the differences of opinion.

Because Superman's power source, in the causal sense, is "light gravity and yellow sun". And I think that's irrelevant to his character. Whereas, as you say, his heritage as a Kryptonian is pretty central.

In the fighter PC context, having a heritage of demigod (or any other other paragon paths and epic destinies in 4e) of course is pretty important. But that can vary from PC to PC, and doesn't necessarily have to be cashed out with mechanical differences (in 4e it is, but I assume that those PC build aspects of 4e can't going to make it into 5e, at least not anywhere near the core). I certainly don't think it matters whether the power is SU, SP or EX. And in 4e, we don't need to ask whether a demigod's power source is Divine or Martial (though nothing would stop any given player forming a view about that, should s/he want to).

 

[Imaro]

It's a nice example, and maybe it can actually illustrate some of the differences of opinion.

Because Superman's power source, in the causal sense, is "light gravity and yellow sun". And I think that's irrelevant to his character. Whereas, as you say, his heritage as a Kryptonian is pretty central.

No I would disagree with this, as it is way to specific and it is his kryptonian heritage which causes yellow sunlight to effect him (not sure about the light gravity thing in more modern incarnations). It also doesn't define many of the limitations to his power... such as the effect of different colored kyrptonite or magic on him. In a causal sense I'm pretty sure his power source would be the broad category of alien heritage since this is where everything stems from.

In the fighter PC context, having a heritage of demigod (or any other other paragon paths and epic destinies in 4e) of course is pretty important. But that can vary from PC to PC, and doesn't necessarily have to be cashed out with mechanical differences (in 4e it is, but I assume that those PC build aspects of 4e can't going to make it into 5e, at least not anywhere near the core). I certainly don't think it matters whether the power is SU, SP or EX. And in 4e, we don't need to ask whether a demigod's power source is Divine or Martial (though nothing would stop any given player forming a view about that, should s/he want to).

I think this misses the point that these categories have actual rules, limitations, etc. attached to them (admittedly minimal in 4e but that doesn't have to be the case in 5e) in the game and thus I think it is pretty important that the fighter's power source be defined in a mechanical sense... just like other classes powers are. Why shouldn't my "demigod" fighter get the benefits and limitations of the divine and martial power sources... while my high level "enlightened" fighter might have the psionic and martial power sources? These mechanical differences give weight to the fiction.