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D&D 5E The Magical Martial

dave2008

Legend
I believe he did mean that, considering this section



By full game, I assume he means going to level 20. IF by full game he means going to level 9, then that is a completely different story.
No, @Micah Sweet is correct. I was not talking about a the same level. Sorry for the confusion I was writing at 3am on 1.5 hrs of sleep (dog woke me up). Castle and Lobo would be the same class at different levels.

My point is: what ever level the Castle character tops out at (10, 20, 30)- that is a "full game." You can go beyond that, extra levels if you will, and play Lobo.
 

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ezo

I cast invisibility
I'm throwing this out to get different POVs:

Which of the following creatures do you feel a 20th-level Fighter or Rogue should be able to defeat solo without the aid of magical items?

TO BE CLEAR:
I am not asking what you think they could defeat using current RAW classes, but what YOU FEEL THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEFEAT?

Beholder (CR 13)
Storm Giant (CR 13)
Vampire (CR 13)
Adult Black Dragon (CR 14)
Ice Devil (CR 14)
Retreiver (CR 14)
Purple Worm (CR 15)
Iron Golem (CR 16)
Death Knight (CR 17)
Demilich (CR 18)
Balor (CR 19)
Pit Fiend (CR 20)
 


Clint_L

Hero
This is an argument about taste. It's subjective. It comes down to verisimilitude: what feels believable to people in their stories.

Let's go with the example of the 100' leap that was proffered earlier as an example of what a fighter should eventually be able to do baseline. I'll add another: being able to lift a car, or weight equal to a car, over their heads.

For me, those are firmly in superhero territory. If I see that in a movie, I need some kind of explanation. I'm not just buying it as something people can do. If Conan suddenly leaps over a 100' gap, verisimilitude is out the window. Although it's a fantasy setting, that does not mean that anything goes.

Or take the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. We have Peter Quill hanging out with a bunch of superheroes. When Drax can crumple a robot in his hands like it is tissue, I'm fine with it, because we've established that he's a super strong alien. If Quill did it, I would need a reason or I'm not buying in. When Peter jumps long distances, it's fine because we see his little jet boots go off, or whatever. I don't need the schematics for them, I just need to know that they are there, so that I'm not taken out of the story.

However, the film finishes with a bit of a mystery - it seems like Peter is able to handle an infinity stone just through the power of friendship. And thus the second film establishes that there is a reason for this: he's not as mundane as we thought.

Batman is generally presented as a regular human capable of super heroic feats through intense training and mechanical contraptions. Again, if we look hard at this, it seems very unlikely that an actual human could achieve some of his feats. But the writers and artists generally try to maintain that conceit. If Batman just randomly picked up a car and threw it at someone, we would assume that he had added a powered exoskeleton to the bat suit, or had otherwise acquired extra-human powers. If he jumps a 100' chasm, we see the batwings unfurl so he can glide. If he did it in his underwear, we would be puzzled, and verisimilitude would be lost - we would have fallen out of the story. In The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller goes to great lengths to show how this mundane person could possibly fight Superman.

For me, and evidently for a lot of folks, it is important that D&D keep room for characters who are mundane people. Who can keep up, right to level 20, while not needing obviously supernatural powers. Quibbling about what feats or abilities, etc. logically have to be superhuman, and implying that therefore our taste is subjective and wrong, is missing the point entirely. Everyone's taste is subjective and wrong, much of the time, to everyone else. In a game targeted to mass appeal, like 5e, the priority is to make it work for the majority.

The 5e fighter patently does that. It is, by a wide margin, the most popular class in the game. It is widely considered a strong class, as demonstrated by its popularity and persistent placement towards the middle and upper placements in class tier rankings. Many of us have pointed out that we see it working well in our games, and in actual play shows. It scratches the itch it was designed to scratch, not for everyone, but for a whole lot of people.

And the thing I find most curious is that this discussion keeps ignoring the fact that there are plenty of options for those who want to play a fighter and have supernatural abilities. You can be a pure fighter and blink across a 100' chasm all day long as an Echo Knight. You can be a Psi Warrior and lift ridiculously huge things over your head and make giant leaps and such. It's already in the rules.

What this argument comes down to is folks claiming that their subjective taste is not well reflected in the rules, fair enough, but also then spending dozens and dozens of pages explaining, often very condescendingly, why their subjective taste is actually objectively correct.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I'm throwing this out to get different POVs:

Which of the following creatures do you feel a 20th-level Fighter or Rogue should be able to defeat solo without the aid of magical items?

TO BE CLEAR:
I am not asking what you think they could defeat using current RAW classes, but what YOU FEEL THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEFEAT?

Beholder (CR 13)
Storm Giant (CR 13)
Vampire (CR 13)
Adult Black Dragon (CR 14)
Ice Devil (CR 14)
Retreiver (CR 14)
Purple Worm (CR 15)
Iron Golem (CR 16)
Death Knight (CR 17)
Demilich (CR 18)
Balor (CR 19)
Pit Fiend (CR 20)
By themselves? I know you mentioned magic items, but what about supernatural abilities?
 

Fantasy does not necessarily mean, "no rules, do whatever you think is cool for no other reason". Your persistence in insisting it is is why we are at an impasse.

Fantasy is not everything. I honestly do not understand your perspective.
The parts of fantasy that make it fantasy are the 'cool' parts.

If you want "coherent" grounded worldbuilding, you don't need elves or dragons or magic swords or rings of power or undead gods or white walkers, skinchangers, demigods, enchanted woods, sorcerer kings, talking trees or any of the that.

And in point of fact, most all of those things actively interfere with the kind of worldbuilding you seem to prefer.

So what's the point?

You say cool stuff can't exist 'simply' because it is cool, it must have some other reason to be there.

So what's your reason?

You regularly engage in pretending to participate in a fantasy world with fantasy stuff in it. Why do you need that fantasy world or that fantasy stuff?
 
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nevin

Hero
This is an argument about taste. It's subjective. It comes down to verisimilitude: what feels believable to people in their stories.

Let's go with the example of the 100' leap that was proffered earlier as an example of what a fighter should eventually be able to do baseline. I'll add another: being able to lift a car, or weight equal to a car, over their heads.

For me, those are firmly in superhero territory. If I see that in a movie, I need some kind of explanation. I'm not just buying it as something people can do. If Conan suddenly leaps over a 100' gap, verisimilitude is out the window. Although it's a fantasy setting, that does not mean that anything goes.

Or take the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. We have Peter Quill hanging out with a bunch of superheroes. When Drax can crumple a robot in his hands like it is tissue, I'm fine with it, because we've established that he's a super strong alien. If Quill did it, I would need a reason or I'm not buying in. When Peter jumps long distances, it's fine because we see his little jet boots go off, or whatever. I don't need the schematics for them, I just need to know that they are there, so that I'm not taken out of the story.

However, the film finishes with a bit of a mystery - it seems like Peter is able to handle an infinity stone just through the power of friendship. And thus the second film establishes that there is a reason for this: he's not as mundane as we thought.

Batman is generally presented as a regular human capable of super heroic feats through intense training and mechanical contraptions. Again, if we look hard at this, it seems very unlikely that an actual human could achieve some of his feats. But the writers and artists generally try to maintain that conceit. If Batman just randomly picked up a car and threw it at someone, we would assume that he had added a powered exoskeleton to the bat suit, or had otherwise acquired extra-human powers. If he jumps a 100' chasm, we see the batwings unfurl so he can glide. If he did it in his underwear, we would be puzzled, and verisimilitude would be lost - we would have fallen out of the story. In The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller goes to great lengths to show how this mundane person could possibly fight Superman.

For me, and evidently for a lot of folks, it is important that D&D keep room for characters who are mundane people. Who can keep up, right to level 20, while not needing obviously supernatural powers. Quibbling about what feats or abilities, etc. logically have to be superhuman, and implying that therefore our taste is subjective and wrong, is missing the point entirely. Everyone's taste is subjective and wrong, much of the time, to everyone else. In a game targeted to mass appeal, like 5e, the priority is to make it work for the majority.

The 5e fighter patently does that. It is, by a wide margin, the most popular class in the game. It is widely considered a strong class, as demonstrated by its popularity and persistent placement towards the middle and upper placements in class tier rankings. Many of us have pointed out that we see it working well in our games, and in actual play shows. It scratches the itch it was designed to scratch, not for everyone, but for a whole lot of people.

And the thing I find most curious is that this discussion keeps ignoring the fact that there are plenty of options for those who want to play a fighter and have supernatural abilities. You can be a pure fighter and blink across a 100' chasm all day long as an Echo Knight. You can be a Psi Warrior and lift ridiculously huge things over your head and make giant leaps and such. It's already in the rules.

What this argument comes down to is folks claiming that their subjective taste is not well reflected in the rules, fair enough, but also then spending dozens and dozens of pages explaining, often very condescendingly, why their subjective taste is actually objectively correct.
Batman also has unlimited supertech effectively but as I write that I wonder how much of this is driven by the magic items is bad crowd that want thier fighters to do all the stuff they took away with magic items?
 



ezo

I cast invisibility
In The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller goes to great lengths to show how this mundane person could possibly fight Superman.
Wasn't that in Batman vs. Superman?

By themselves? I know you mentioned magic items, but what about supernatural abilities?
What "supernatural abilities"? I mean what you consider to be Fighters and Rogues in your D&D fantasy game. If you feel they have already (or should have) such abilities, then they do. If you feel the don't, then they don't.

but as I write that I wonder how much of this is driven by the magic items is bad crowd that want thier fighters to do all the stuff they took away with magic items?
Which was why I excluded magic items from my prior post.

Much of what was magical about PCs in AD&D, for instance, was the magical items they got. Otherwise, they would never be able to defeat an adult dragon (well, in 2E anyway...).

I can completely envision a 20th-level Fighter with magical armor, weapons, etc. doing battle with a dragon toe-to-toe because his class and levels give him the ability, but his magical items are what offer the additional offensive and defensive oomph needed to survive such a fight, let alone win.
 

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