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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9176656" data-attributes="member: 8461">The thing to take notice of here is that, of the five bullet points you listed, only two of them speak (directly) to what magic can accomplish (i.e. the second and fourth entries). The others are control mechanisms which are introduced as balancing agents via how safe/quick/easy it is to use. In those cases, the potential for what magic-users can do still outstrips what non-magic users are capable of, in terms of having a wider variety of options at their disposal; it's just that exercising those options becomes harder, or riskier, or slower. Even for the two points that do actually place limits on magic's functionality ("power" being an aspect of functionality), they're not introducing reasons not to have them in favor of being non-powered (i.e. they're not outlining what options are lost to make up for the options that are gained).Which brings us back to the broader point (one which isn't about D&D specifically, I'll note), which is that in a TTRPG that doesn't place (a great deal of emphasis) on narrativist mechanics, it becomes harder to design scenarios where non-powered characters aren't overshadowed by their powered counterparts. Limits on what powered characters are capable of can make their available options unhelpful at various junctures, but even if we leave aside instances of continually "nerfing" their abilities (which often runs into issues of plausability, i.e. "another dungeon built in an anti-magic field?"), it has greater problems of justifying why anyone would choose not to be <s>a Jedi</s> a powered character, unless there's something else that they gain which powered characters don't have (and that it's worthwhile). Having only a few extra options, which only work in particular circumstances, still means that you have extra options which work in particular circumstances.D&D's answer to that is largely to make fighters better at fighting, and for a lot of people that's sufficient, hence the recent headlines about how the fighter is the most popular character class. But we see a lot of other people saying that's not enough, and being equally insistent that nerfing the wizard isn't the way to go (which mirrors the arc of D&D's history; nobody liked the limitations in AD&D 1E and 2E, so then they were gone in 3E, and it became "caster edition"). Leaving aside simply telling them "you're wrong to want that," the problems as of buffing fighters to match wizards without making fighters magical in-and-of themselves remains as-yet unsolved.I agree that the issue isn't one of verisimilitude...which was kind of my point. The part of my post that you quoted was meant to refute the idea that non-powered characters making a contribution in narrative media was relevant to the discussion at hand, because narrative media is scripted by nature, allowing for such justifications to be made in ways that don't work in any TTRPG which doesn't have strongly narrativist rules...something which was brought up in the first place in a charge that verisimilitude limiting such characters; but as you (correctly) noted, that's not due to verisimilitude in-and-of itself, but rather that there's an inherent disconnect where certain character types simply have more to work with than others (hence the axiom I alluded to before regarding Star Wars RPGs, i.e. "all Jedi or no Jedi").I'll refer you back to Part B of the OP; the only people who want all-verisimilitude-all-the-time are strawmen in arguments made by people who don't find verisimilitude to be important. Yes, hit points are an area where verisimilitude is lacking, and that's fine. No one is trying to make a perfect model of every detail of a fantastical reality, and there are always certain things that are glossed over for the purposes of play. Hit points are a notable example of that, and they don't invalidate verisimilitude as a concern, any more than dice rolls or randomly-drawn cards invalidate narrativism as a style of play.I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. What I was trying to say was that 4E had a lot of <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer" target="_blank">dissociated mechanics</a>, which is a shorthand for mechanics where there's no verisimilitude in what the game rules are modeling. As noted before, that's not necessarily a deal-breaker for a lot of people (re: hit points), and of course a lot of people have different thresholds for what's acceptable in that regard and what's not, but a lot of the pushback that 4E faced was from people for whom its diminished regard for verisimilitude went too far.The problem is that these principles aren't salient. Let's leave aside the self-evident truth that for the vast majority of the gaming population, hit points don't shatter verisimilitude (again, the idea of "verisimilitude uber alles" is a falsehood that only opponents of verisimilitude put forward). When Gygax says- "The “camel” of working magic, countless pantheons of gods and devils, monsters that turn people to stone or breath fire, and characters that are daily faced with Herculean challenges which they overcome by dint of swordplay and spell casting is gulped down without a qualm. It is the “gnat” of "unrealistic” combat, or “unrealistic” magic systems, or the particular abilities of a class of characters in the game which makes them gag."-he's speaking to the very issues that I raised in the OP, even if he's not using the same phrasing (which is understandable, since in the decades since we've still had a hard time coming up with a consensus definition for many of the most important areas of the hobby). Notice the first sentence in the above: people don't have a problem with fantastic elements in a fantasy game. They have a problem with how combat works, or magic systems, or certain character abilities. In other words, how things function rather than what is or is not present.As for your second point, yes, and for a lot of people want a non-magical fighter that can nevertheless make a substantive contribution alongside the wizard. And for a lot of people, this bar is already met. For those whom it isn't, they want the wizard nerfed. And among those who don't want the wizard nerfed, they want the fighter buffed, without magic. And that's fine, 4E gave them exactly that: but it did so in a way that broke from verisimilitude, and a significant segment of the gamer population found that unacceptable; so much so that it contributed to it being rejected by enough of the market that WotC quickly moved on to 5E.The major problem here is that "truth," "genuineness," and "authenticity" are terms that you're introducing into the conversation, and which are entirely undefined in this context. The salient feature of this discussion remains verisimilitude: that things have an internal coherence which is understandable from an in-character standpoint (albeit one which has areas where it is necessarily overlooked in order to facilitate play). Restricting magic can help with the balance issues that come up with powered versus non-powered individuals, but as you yourself noted, that's not an issue of verisimilitude in the first place (which is why the poster I was responding to was wrong to level that as a consequence of placing a premium on verisimilitude).Leaving aside the "ultra" part of it, different editions of D&D have had different degrees of emphasis on different modes of engagement. Verisimilitude, in my opinion, used to be a much stronger concern, but has been increasingly watered down over the years, with only 5E backing up somewhat in that regard. Certainly, there have been (and still are) more verisimilitudinous games over the years, but by that same token D&D moving away from verisimilitude to the degree that it did in its 4th edition strikes me as a major reason why it was so unpalatable to so many.I'll also note that my saying so isn't meant to be a critique of 4E, and if you feel that I was in any way bashing your preferred edition as being a worse/weaker/inferior game, then let me apologize; that wasn't my intent.No one said they were, but in my experience it's a fairly prevalent viewpoint that an instance of hit points being lost is the game rules representing a physical injury.</blockquote>

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