D&D 5E (2014) The Magical Martial

[Vaalingrade]

You keep forgetting how LOW the bar is. Mastering a weapon style is a low-level feat. A 5th level fighter who took the fighting style feat twice, and went battlemaster is a BETTER fighter than hawkeye, who has mastered MORE weapons than Hawkeye.

Even assuming 'know how to not stab yourself with a club' is 'mastery' of a weapon, that guy still can't do stunts half as cool as Hawkeye because the rules actively fight cinematic action, and that's the problem.

 

[Ancalagon]

We have a game where dragons the size of passenger liners can fly, without it being considered magical in nature.

Give the martial a little room to be able to do a bit of the fantastic without having a meltdown about it being a spell. Let them beat the Olympic record for a long jump without having to use a jump spell to do it. Let him one-shot the BBEG's sub-boss.

It doesn't have to be something they can do every. single. time. They can be per short rest, long rest or longer-to-recharge abilities.

I mean, we already have the likes of Second Wind and Action Surge as templates to frame the wording, why not give them some higher-level oomph?

A very good argument.

It might be a way to balance it. A martial can do X "great deed" per level. The great hit (doing a ridiculous amount of damage in one blow). The taming of the monster. The impossible jump. The great run (think of Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn covering 135 miles in 72 hours). etc etc etc.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There is a possibility that I'm being misquoted/misremembered/misunderstood.

I've been trying to point out that full casters' real power is not the damage they can do or the foes they can trap with a well place control spells. It's the impact they can have on the story, the plot, the world. The evil warlord resides on a fortress on top of a cliff? Fine we'll fly to the top (or something similar), thus bypassing several encounters and traps and fighting the big boss fresh. And this is a petty, facile example. It can be a lot more profound than that.

This is something that needs a lot of thought and care. But it would be cool if martials had supernatural "martiallish" powers that could also impact the plot, perhaps in different ways. But I do agree that this should be limited - they aren't wizards, after all.
But perhaps things like diverting a river, or causing a great heard of buffalos to stampede over an enemy army ... that could be interesting no?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but given the premise of this thread... are you suggesting scaring herd animals should be considered supernatural?

I mean if so, I wouldn't be surprised at this point considering how many, many normal Earth humans are beyond the scope of D&D's understanding of human physical prowess, but it also implies that some of my family members attained the power of the gods at 5 years old.

 

[GrimCo]

We had "magical" martials. Or at least supernatural ones. 3.5 ed, Bo9s, Warblade. Hands down best fighter of any edition. 5e Battlemaster is gimped poor man's version of Warblade.

Class based games are horrible for horizontal growth. To be master in multiple stuff you need to go high level. With that you get more hp and stronger saves, which gives you more "meat" to absorb copious amounts of punishment dealt by enemies.

Tbh Batman is poor example of mundaine martial. He is master in couple of skills that require years if not decades of single minded focus and training to just master one.

 

[Minigiant]

Tbh Batman is poor example of mundaine martial. He is master in couple of skills that require years if not decades of single minded focus and training to just master one

But wouldn't that be typically of high level character who aren't spending most of their day researching strange arcane formula or communing with powerful outsiders and gods?

If you cheapen sciences and lores to a single skill and feat but magic to a major character absorbing concept with various subsystems...

A high level character without magic would have time and mental space to know a half dozen specialties and be an expert at all of them.

If being a high level spellcaster is a 10 point aspect, a high level martial should have space for five 2 point mundane martial aspects. Or a 6 point supernatural martial aspect and two 2 point mundane martial aspects.

 

[GrimCo]

Don't know about aspects,sorry.

High level martials are supernatural just by being super durable ( high hp and saves). While fireball outright kills commoners and low lv pcs, high level martials can eat up couple of those and fight on like it's nothing. Lv 10 fighter with good con can take Adult Dragons fire breath in the face, Second wind it and be at 60% of hp. Same fighter which is lv 7 or lower is killed by the same breath. So yeah, they have at least supernatural durability.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

That's why everyone jumps straight into magic and supernatural. Because the limitations are off or lower. And you get more customizable slots if you go magic.

No, it seems to me like you are not listening to what people are saying. Most of the discussion here hasn’t even been about rules or rule limitations. It has been about the limitations of is realistically possible

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Very much this and although it isnt a perfect comparison if you think of Spells as "Feats of Magic" then a level 16 Wizard gets 22 Spell slots with which to do cool stuff, compared to the Fighters measly 6 feats. Its quite ridiculous really, doubling the number of feats a fighter could get (even if constrained by Fighting style or Manouveres) would be something...

This isn’t a discussion of martial vs caster balance or ability to do cool things. No need to turn it into that again, that is a different discussion

 

[Minigiant]

No, it seems to me like you are not listening to what people are saying. Most of the discussion here hasn’t even been about rules or rule limitations. It has been about the limitations of is realistically possible

My point is we aren't reaching what is mundanely Possibly so how can we draw the line of the supernatural martial except for the wildly overly supernatural martial.

I mean people are saying Batman and Hawkeye are supernatural just to validate a trick shot

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Even assuming 'know how to not stab yourself with a club' is 'mastery' of a weapon, that guy still can't do stunts half as cool as Hawkeye because the rules actively fight cinematic action, and that's the problem.

How? How do the rules fight cinematic play? Our group is mostly martial and I feel our characters perform cinematic actions on the regular. I can’t think of a rule that prevents us from doing that.