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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 9002035" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Oh, I agree it's terribly unrealistic. I also don't care.I'd have no objection to hand crossbows doing d3 or d4 damage. Although, it looks like One D&D is going to include pistols. I guess I can just take 2 levels of Artificer and be the Gnome with Gno Gname.I think I'm at a point where if we have wizards hurling firebolts all day and fireballs a handful of times without sweating (quite a feat to beat the heat!) and then for the finale creating a pocket dimension for a meal or to store untold loot, that I think I'd like the option to include some minimal magical tricks for everyone else. Especially when darkvision is just a thing. Nobody's biological eyes work like that without magic, but the game seems afraid to say, "Oh, yeah, that's actually just magic." I mean, Crossbow Expert allows a high-level Fighter, with a surge of adrenaline, to fire a heavy crossbow 8 times in 6 seconds, and we're to believe that's not magic? A heavy crossbow that requires a windlass or crow's foot to span it? When light crossbows historically had a battlefield rate of fire around 2 to 4 per minute? That's at least a 20-fold increase in firepower. It's double the specified rate of fire of the M1 Garand (40-50 shots/minute), meaning it's got a higher aimed rate of fire than the semi-automatic rifle credited as "the greatest battle implement ever devised" precisely because of how it enhanced the firepower of infantry. Nobody is that much of an expert! Like the magic is already there. We're just in denial about it.This is the thing with D&D. We've got this heavy bold culture of "no magic unless caster! NO MAGIC UNLESS MAGICIAN! ONLY SPELLS IF MAGICIAN!" But we've also got a game with this pervasive problem that casters are a lot of fun and get really powerful and have a lot of dynamic choices, while martials... mostly decide whom to attack just like they did at level 1. And one of them scales really well, while the other struggles to stay relevant. So we have this situation where martials have to stick to reality because they're "not magic," so when we improve them we're obliged to only let them do things you arbitrarily accomplish in 15th century Europe. Meanwhile, casters can do whatever you can imagine from fiction? Well no wonder it's broke! There's your problem.I just... I don't find "that's not realistic" to be not only a credible defense anymore, I don't think it's a desirable defense anymore.</blockquote>

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