D&D 5E (2014) The Fighter Extra Feat Fallacy

[Satyrn]

We all want the fighter to be more than a common man right? We want all PCs to be heroic and not ordinary, right? So whether you call it magic, or supernatural, or extraordinary, or whatever, we want them to do things ordinary people don't do - like slaying multiple foes in a single sweep of their sword, or holding off hordes as the party escapes down a tunnel, or surviving a hail of arrows, right?

In a way yes. but it does sort of matter to me that it isn't necessarily magic or supernatural.

As far as extraordinary goes, I want it to be only as extraordinary as the genre in use allows a normal human protagonist to perform. And the line where this is drawn is the kind of thing that's being nitpicked here with the falling rules discussion and the like.

I'm just gonna give a couple examples from movies of what I consider normal human protagonists, to illustrate where I think the line ought to be drawn:

Lancelot from Excalibur
John MacClane from Die Hard
Frank Castle from the Punisher.
The Russian, also from the Punisher (the Tom Jane/John Travolta Punisher , to clarify)

And I bring up the Russian becaue the line is probably drawn right under his feet (but I really know nothing about his character's origin. I have no idea if he's actually a mutant in the comics, or what, I'm just going by his portrayal in that movie) .

 

[Mistwell]

In a way yes. but it does sort of matter to me that it isn't necessarily magic or supernatural. As far as extraordinary goes, I want it to be only as extraordinary as the genre in use allows a normal human protagonist to perform. And the line where this is drawn is the kind of thing that's being nitpicked here with the falling rules discussion and the like.

I'm just gonna give a couple examples from movies of what I consider normal human protagonists, to illustrate where I think the line ought to be drawn:

Lancelot from Excalibur
John MacClane from Die Hard
Frank Castle from the Punisher.
The Russian, also from the Punisher (the Tom Jane/John Travolta Punisher , to clarify)

And I bring up the Russian becaue the line is probably drawn right under his feet (but I really know nothing about his character's origin. I have no idea if he's actually a mutant in the comics, or what, I'm just going by his portrayal in that movie) .

So...not Baahubali 2?

[video=youtube;-Nj5n9u2fEU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nj5n9u2fEU[/video]

 

[Imaro]

Mostly the same ones as every other high level characters, as artifacts of the abstract mostly-non-physical-'damage' hp system.

Sorry not seeing much of a difference here. Pulp and sword and sorcery heroes rarely if ever suffer any impediments from wounds, fatigue or anything else in the regular course of combat. If anything I'd say HP's are a very close (perhaps inadvertently) model to how the pulp and S&S genres handle those things.

Sub-class abilities would be fine. A whole 'nuther class would be even better, as the fighter's design space is pretty heavily locked into the DPR 'tank' mode and "must be simple" mandate.

Well people seem to be focused on the fighter and changing it. I rarely see posters calling for a new class with these superhuman/supernatural abilities.

Yep, that's the double-standard, again. Wave the 'it's magic' wand, and *poof* all objections to the prodigious leap disappear.

If you say so...

Because leaping over a battlement because you're an incredibly strong/skilled/determined hero in a fantastic world has nothing to do with memorizing spells and mutilating grasshoppers.

Why not... that's a double standard. More seriously, in D&D that's just not true... it in fact does have a lot to do with that.

Because the game /does/ draw that very stark line between spellcasting and other abilities, building the 'fluff' of casting into mechanics, themselves. 5e, in particular, goes out of its way to mechanically model how you do things, as well as just resolving what you can do. It wasn't one of the drums Mearls was beating the loudest in talking up Next/5e, but one of the mandates it had was to make magic "feel really magical" again (not coincidentally, that meant conforming to the community's double-standard more closely than it had in the prior edition), in service to that, casting was returned to a more mechanically distinct (though, ironically, even less exclusive - every class uses spells and almost every class actually casts them) sub-system.
There are other games out there that re-skin much more readily. If you were playing Fantasy Hero, for instance, you could give your 'fighter' the ability to leap a prodigious distance by paying the points for it, and another player could give their 'wizard' a spell that consumes materials, takes time, concentration, incantations & gestures to cast, and gives you a comparable ability for a few jumps, just like the D&D spell. D&D has rarely gotten to close to that kind of design - even at it's closest, you couldn't re-skin away 'source' keywords, for instance...

Spells and magic are not the same thing... Ki, Invocations, Bardic Inspiration are all magic but not spells. Bringing this back around to the fighter and the EK specifically though... and so what. it's giving you the ability to create a fighter who does the things you say you want the fighter to do, why does it matter if it takes magic to achieve it? Or even the casting of spells? That's the way you do it in the meta-genre that is D&D. That's what you aren't answering. IMO, there is no double standard, you've admitted yourself that non-magical classes can already do stuff that's superhuman in nature, all D&D has done is separate it and say this superhuman stuff is the realm of magic, this is in psionics, and this stuff is for really skilled and determined heroes... you just don't like their arbitrary categorization as much as you like your own. As for fantasy hero... does it have a default setting? Because as much as we want to claim D&D is generic and should do all fantasy it's not. It is it's own meta-genre and on top of that for the past 3 editions at least it's had a default setting with built in conceits implicitly called out... 3e/3.5 = Greyhawk, 4e = Nentir Vale, and 5e = Forgotten Realms... so no it's not a general system and it does have it's own conceits within the rules. But again they are no more a double standard than the categorization anyone else chooses.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well people seem to be focused on the fighter and changing it.

In this thread that'd be more nearly on topic (it seems to be more an 'acknowledging the issue' than a 'brainstorming a solution' thread.

I rarely see posters calling for a new class with these superhuman/supernatural abilities.

No, you wouldn't, because we have plenty of classes with abilities that are both superhuman and supernatural.

What we saw so much of that it was exiled to a separate forum, was demand for a class that would have had, at least at it's core, extraordinary, even superhuman, but /not/ magical or otherwise supernatural abilities.

But the community's pervasive double-standard fuels an overwhelming, knee-jerk, virulent reaction to the perfectly reasonable request for the reprisal of a class featured in a past edition's PH. It really is very hard to miss or understate either the desire for the game to emulate more such archetypes from genre, or the double-standard's resistance to accepting such a thing.

Spells and magic are not the same thing...

All spells are magic, not all magic is in the form of spells, yes. The EK is a fighter who casts spells. The Champion and BM are fighters who do not possess magical abilities from their class, at all. There are other forms of magic, but they don't enter into the comparison.

If you say so...

You said so. You came right and said the fighter shouldn't be able to leap a battlement unless he was an EK casting a jump spell. That's exactly the double-standard I'm talking about.

non-magical classes can already do stuff that's superhuman in nature

Yep, a bit, like I said, their side of the standard applies realism /unevenly/. Can you survive a fall from a great height every time without a broken bone that would slow you down? Well, thanks to hp abstraction, yes. Is that super-human, well, yeah, it's hard to avoid seeing it that way. You could lean hard on the 'luck' aspect of hps to argue against it, but falling damage is a part of the rules that frays quite easily, that way. Is there any corresponding ability to leap to a great height? Nope.

all D&D has done is separate it and say this superhuman stuff is the realm of magic

And that's the double-standard.

As for fantasy hero... does it have a default setting?

In theory, some lame thing at some point, IIRC, but, no it's a generic system. That involves very different design choices than a genre-specific or even multi-genre system, let alone a licensed one. That was the point, D&D is /not/ that kind of system, that's why you can't just blithely re-skin a spell as a superhuman ability.

Because as much as we want to claim D&D is generic and should do all fantasy it's not. It is it's own meta-genre

Yeah, that's a whole 'nuther double-standard. OK, more of a tautology, really: "D&D models the fantasy genre perfectly! ...because, erm, it defines it's own fantasy sub-genre in which everything just works the way it always has in D&D... yeah."

 

[Satyrn]

You said so. You came right and said the fighter shouldn't be able to leap a battlement unless he was an EK casting a jump spell. That's exactly the double-standard I'm talking about.

oh. Now I get what you're getting at with this double standard thing.

That's a horrible example of it, though.

Giving the fighter an ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound isn't genre appropriate for the fighter's flavor. To borrow my example from above, adding such a feature to tbe Punisher would drag him across that line under the Russian's feet, and turn him into a character with the flavor of Captain America.

 

[Imaro]

You said so. You came right and said the fighter shouldn't be able to leap a battlement unless he was an EK casting a jump spell. That's exactly the double-standard I'm talking about.

Where did I say this? I said we have a fighter who can do that and he uses magic... I didn't say anything about what the fighter shouldn't be able to do , but if you feel I'm mistaken show me where I said this....

 

[Imaro]

oh. Now I get what you're getting at with this double standard thing.

That's a horrible example of it, though.

Giving the fighter an ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound isn't genre appropriate for the fighter's flavor. To borrow my example from above, adding such a feature to tbe Punisher would drag him across that line under the Russian's feet, and turn him into a character with the flavor of Captain America.

Well the thing is we have a fighter subclass who can already do this...

 

[Satyrn]

Well the thing is we have a fighter subclass who can already do this...

Aye. I meant specifically the core class.

I'm truly just pounding the "the game needs the option to play John MacClane" drum.

2 fighter subclasses and 2 rogue subclasses are the only options for that (with maybe the berserker and open hand monk depending on where your line gets drawn). Adding such features to the core fighter removes half of those options, and that's what I'm arguing against.

I'm absolutely cool with the eldritch knight existing, and I won't ever be arguing against the inclusion of more subclasses like that.

 

[Satyrn]

Well, I think the Punisher is a better example than John MacClane, since he lives in a world of paladins (Captain America) and wizards (Dr Strange) and all manner of superhumans (XMen).

The game just needs to give him features that fit the theme and let him participate effectively in an XMen crossover.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Serious question... lWhat feats can higher level D&D fighters achieve that Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Moonglum and other warriors of sword and sorcery can't?

Nose dive off a 1000' structure and stick the landing.

Routinely jump 20' at will. Further, depending on how the DM lets athletics interact with jumping.

Stand against 200 orcs and kill them all. (sword and board, no magic, duelist weapon style, no use of action surge, no use of second wind, level 17 average hitpoints).

Stand in the center of a ancient red dragon's breath. Three times if you make the save on 2 and second wind.

This isn't considering any use of feats or subclasses and are off the top of my head.

But where is that line drawn and why should these be the base abilities of the fighter class as opposed to a subclass that you can opt into? Already we have the argument that there's nothing supernatural about a warrior who can leap over battlements and to the moon because everybody can jump. We even have a fighter who can do this via the jump spell or levitate spell or fly spell if he wanted to... the Eldritch Knight... but because his abilities stem from spells he doesn't count?? Why not?

The line is drawn somewhere between the two extremes. That it should be more than now and less than jumping over castle walls (although there's an argument there for wuxia themed games) isn't an argument that it cannot be drawn at all.

Personally, I'd love to see a fighter that chooses from abilities at certain levels that are like feats, but more inherent. Things like:

Iron Skin: DR 1/2/3
Implacable: cannot have speed reduced below half
Sever Magic: on a successful hit, concentration checks by the target are made with disadvantage
Leap of the Mighty: if you take the dash action, jumping distance is doubled
Whirlwind of Blades: as a bonus action, you deal STR/DEX damage to all enemies within melee range
Deadeye: once per turn, when you hit with a ranged attack, add your proficiency bonus to damage dealt
From Hell's Heart: once per long rest, as a reaction when you are reduced to 0 hitpoints by a melee attack, make a melee attack against the creature that hit you.

Etc. A bunch of flavorful abilities that you can customize as you level to hit your theme. Wuxia, Conan, whatever.