D&D 5E [+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap

[Raiztt]

I'm not the one that took this to giants being made of something other than giant meat to support erasing or denying the fantasy element that permeates the world including the humans.

They're made of giant meat, it's just that giant meat isn't the same as human meat. Again, obtuse.

 

[Cadence]

I hate to bring it up but dragons and wizards makes it not real life and not attempting to be like at all.

Since it isn't like real life at all, what happens to an apple dropped off a castle walls and why? Does it levitate in place? Rise? Drop at a constant velocity? Accelerate to a certain speed? What informs the decision for your game world?

Can the party generally use time to estimate how far a lightning strike is away from the thunder? What informs the decision for your game world?

 

[Raiztt]

No assumptions, just what you asserted, that the physiology is the same, and the cube-square law applies.

that HUMAN physiology is the same. HUMAN. Then you are assuming that a giant just is a human, but bigger - the assumption that I am denying. I didn't say ALL physiology is the same, I said HUMAN physiology is the same.

If giants can be physiologically different in an unspecified way that lets them be physically impossible giants, humans can be physiologically different in an unspecified way that lets them be anime/wuxia protagonists.

Why are you applying a double standard that only harms martial characters, in a [+] thread about closing the martial caster gap?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills right now.

You can do whatever you want, you can have super hero normal humans - we're talking about what D&D's general assumption about normal, every day humans is in their fictional world.

 

[mamba]

This is a great example...

Of course not! Luke is an alien like every other rhing in the Star Wars fiction..it's right there in the crawl and what you wrote.."galaxy far far away"

Thanks to space travel, Earth humans in Star Ware live on many worlds…

Luke for all intents and purposes is an Earth human, born on a different planet

Let me pose it to you this way. Did the introduction of midichlorians make you giddy that you finally had an explanation for why Luke was able to use force powers despite being just a "human"?

No, I did not care for having an explanation, and I did not really like that explanation in particular as it removed something mythical and replaced it with something trivial

Doesn’t change that Luke was a human before and after that explanation. He was more naturally gifted in the Force than many others and lived in a universe where that Force existed, but that is not really conceptually different from being very good at memorizing things in our world, or great at tennis / chess / etc. and then training your talent to become better at it. It just is a talent that you cannot have on Earth for world reasons, not for char reasons.

I did, and still do, see him as identical to Earth humans in every way. The difference is the environment.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No assumptions, just what you asserted, that the physiology is the same, and the cube-square law applies.

If giants can be physiologically different in an unspecified way that lets them be physically impossible giants, humans can be physiologically different in an unspecified way that lets them be anime/wuxia protagonists.

Why are you applying a double standard that only harms martial characters, in a [+] thread about closing the martial caster gap?

But humans aren't different, because nothing says they are, and the lore doesn't even imply it.

 

[TwoSix]

But that’s mostly an artifact of D&D being a loose simulator* for adventuring adults, not because human children in D&D are intentionally superhuman in nature.

Unless the game or setting explicitly says otherwise, I expect human to be akin to what I can relate to as a human, and take mechanical abstraction in the simulator as, well, abstractions, not intentional changes.

Well yea, definitely. If someone tried to pull "Hey, this 4 year old should be able to haul 60 lb of our gear, they have Str 4", I'd laugh at them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Let’s take an actual example.

The PCs are in a gaming establishment. They end up gambling against one of the patrons. Statswise, he is a human noble with + 10 proficiency in gaming tools. Even with expertise, you can’t build a rogue with +10 in gaming until relatively high level.

Of course, the noble isn’t a rogue. He doesn’t have Cunning Action, or sneak attack and he can’t do what a rogue can. While the rogue was learning those cool tricks, the noble was gambling, and therefore is better at gambling than a rogue with expertise.

A player could ask to play a gambler in a future campaign, though the character is pretty useless in the combat, exploration and social pillars (apart from gambling).

From a realism perspective, it is less realistic to say that this NPC who is really good at gambling is also a high level rogue, when there is no reason to establish that he is good at combat, than to say that PCs are adventurers first, and the cost of that breadth is that they may be less good at certain tasks than NPCs that specialize.

I don’t see this as huge issue, this is a NPC who has some similar capabilities than a PC but not all of them.

Granted, I wouldn’t give some random normies epic skill levels, as I feel that would devalue the status of high level characters as mythic heroes. +10 is probably fine though, thats a fifth level with expertise and good stat.

In any case the sort of thing I don’t like is how the new caster statblocks just have spell-like powers that are different from actual spells.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I feel like you're purposely obtuse.

No one is making the argument that D&D is and must be a 1:1 earth analog with no fantasy elements. The argument is what a 'normal' person is in the setting.

And the point is that the setting assumptions required to make D&D settings remotely coherent conspire to make the likelihood of "basically earth humans across all possible PC races" damned unlikely.

You and some others like it that way, but it is, IMO, contra-indicated by most all the stuff that happens in a game setting in D&D.

 

[Raiztt]

And the point is that the setting assumptions required to make D&D settings remotely coherent conspire to make the likelihood of "basically earth humans across all possible PC races" damned unlikely.

You and some others like it that way, but it is, IMO, contra-indicated by most all the stuff that happens in a game setting in D&D.

I agree - D&D's world building is incredibly incoherent.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I agree - D&D's world building is incredibly incoherent.

Especially when you try to cram real world humans into it.