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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5967126" data-attributes="member: 54877">Let me explore another slant. Assertion: The characterization of high power in D&amp;D has often been particularly badly named and characterized. For example, &quot;epic&quot; in the last two versions doesn't actually describe what it is. Epic can be relatively low-powered, even gritty in some stories. What they really meant was &quot;mythic&quot;. &nbsp;The confusion comes from the way D&amp;D tends to collapse growth of breadth in a character into levels, along with raw power. Even 4E, with its more conscious mimicry of the mythic source material, botches this somewhat. It's also that the &quot;farm boy to demigod&quot; path is a particular form of epic that sometimes gets thought of as &quot;the epic.&quot; (I blame Campbell's monomyth--or rather his rabid disciples of same.)&nbsp;&nbsp;What we would really like is some kind of character evolution on two distinct, independent tracts, something like:<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Power - starting at grit and ending at mythic</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Scope - starting at farm kid and ending at world (or plane) spanning epic</li>
</ul>Then you can still have a farm kid that ends up a (mythic) demi-god, but you can also have a farm-kid that goes on some epic adventure, learns a lot, but stays shy of demigod, or even firmly in grit. &nbsp;The closest D&amp;D has ever come to this is, surprise, the AD&amp;D wizard. He collects known spells in his book almost totally independent of his level. His level is his power; his spellbook is his scope. If you run one of those long-running, political campaigns with a miserly XP award variant, he hits about name level and mostly stays around there for ages, but his scope broaded constantly.&nbsp;Edit:&nbsp; Tentatively, this suggests to me that the fighter's &quot;mastery of arms&quot; should work more like the AD&amp;D wizard's known spells, rather than be based on levels, and should have a similar wide-ranging effect on ways that the fighter can operate--i.e. well outside straight fights into leadership of soldiers, politics, etc.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5967126, member: 54877"] Let me explore another slant. Assertion: The characterization of high power in D&D has often been particularly badly named and characterized. For example, "epic" in the last two versions doesn't actually describe what it is. Epic can be relatively low-powered, even gritty in some stories. What they really meant was "mythic". The confusion comes from the way D&D tends to collapse growth of breadth in a character into levels, along with raw power. Even 4E, with its more conscious mimicry of the mythic source material, botches this somewhat. It's also that the "farm boy to demigod" path is a particular form of epic that sometimes gets thought of as "the epic." (I blame Campbell's monomyth--or rather his rabid disciples of same.) What we would really like is some kind of character evolution on two distinct, independent tracts, something like: [LIST] [*]Power - starting at grit and ending at mythic [*]Scope - starting at farm kid and ending at world (or plane) spanning epic [/LIST]Then you can still have a farm kid that ends up a (mythic) demi-god, but you can also have a farm-kid that goes on some epic adventure, learns a lot, but stays shy of demigod, or even firmly in grit. The closest D&D has ever come to this is, surprise, the AD&D wizard. He collects known spells in his book almost totally independent of his level. His level is his power; his spellbook is his scope. If you run one of those long-running, political campaigns with a miserly XP award variant, he hits about name level and mostly stays around there for ages, but his scope broaded constantly. Edit: Tentatively, this suggests to me that the fighter's "mastery of arms" should work more like the AD&D wizard's known spells, rather than be based on levels, and should have a similar wide-ranging effect on ways that the fighter can operate--i.e. well outside straight fights into leadership of soldiers, politics, etc. [/QUOTE]

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