D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?

[see]

A lot of D&D campaigns have trade routes constantly being disrupted by dangerous monsters, which is what you need adventurers for.

Fortunately, the very same wizard who created the owlbear also created the coffee oak, where the roasted acorns taste just like Jamaican Blue Mountain.

 

[Maxperson]

Take something like the Silk Road on our planet, or the Triangle Trades, and now add all the monsters in the Monster Manual you could encounter. Seems suspect to me.

I mean sea travel especially, when you have things like Dragon Turtles, ocean going Dragons, Krakens, Kuo-Toa, Sahuagin, and Umberlee knows what else that can attack and sink ships with relative impunity.

This has been a sticking point with me in past discussions(not with you). If monsters were so common as that, there would be no trade, or ship travel at all, and most of the civilized races would be dead or on the verge of extinction.

PCs encounter monsters at a much higher rate than the rest of the world does, since the game almost requires monster encounters in order to be fun and because the PCs travel to places where monsters live, like ruins and tombs.

Yes there are dragon turtles, krakens, etc., but they would only very rarely be encountered by ships and trade would continue. The occasional ship lost to such creatures would be written off like those in the real world occasionally sunk by hurricanes or freak waves. The rare monster attacking the silk road would cause the loss of a rare caravan, which would be written off the same way. And perhaps is the reason why your adventuring group is in that area right now.

The ocean is terrifying on our planet, now add all these intelligent sea monsters to the mix, and the fact that in most campaign settings, ships are built the same way they were in Earth's past, with no real defense against a big sea going critter that wants to destroy it, and intercontinental trade becomes nearly impossible.

And yet it exists in these worlds because these monsters are for the most part pretty darned rare. PCs are just bad luck monster magnets.

 

[Maxperson]

The problem with the Book of Nine Swords is really twofold. The Warblade, Swordsage, and Crusader were far better designed than the Fighter, Monk/Rogue, and the Paladin. They could compete with the more powerful classes while obsoleting other classes.

Then add on top of that, those players who adamantly reject non-caster fighting classes (often referred to as "martials") as having any abilities that cannot be replicated in real life. They don't want people able to ignore DR or teleport without explicit magic.

Add the fantastic naming scheme for the various Manifester powers, which is highly reminiscent of Exalted, or the special attacks of anime characters, and the myths about the Book of Nine Swords being overpowered garbage that has no business in D&D appeared. It was a paradigm shift that many could not accept- having renewable, encounter-based resources and abilities that allowed someone to knock on the door of what spellcasters have been doing for decades.

I loved the nine swords book. The supernatural powers were labeled as supernatural, so it was easy to swallow those abilities in a fighting class. My issue was that I ran a campaign for 5 nine swords PCs and I had more trouble challenging them with encounters than I did a party with wizards, sorcerers, druids and clerics. I wouldn't call it overpowered garbage, but I did end up banning the book as overpowered.

 

[glass]

And yet, WotC went to a lot of lengths to get back the lost players who went to Pathfinder 1e or back to more familiar ground like OSR games.

Well, they spent a lot of time talking about how that was what they were going to do....but it quickly became clear that it was mostly just talk. 5e killed of vancian magic; not even 4e did that! Fortunately for WotC, they found a largely new audience for what they had come up with (aided by the rise of streaming).

As for the rest, you're preaching to the choir, I'm well aware that the Warblade was not magical, but there were and still are naysayers who feel that Elder Mountain Hammer and Iron Heart Surge push boundaries that (in their opinion) D&D was not meant to cross.

Neither of those are teleportation which was your original contention. Elder Mountain Hammer is literally just "hit the target with one big attack, really hard", and I am content to believe that when any one is claiming to have a problem with martials doing that, good faith left the building some time back...

_
glass.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, they spent a lot of time talking about how that was what they were going to do....but it quickly became clear that it was mostly just talk. 5e killed of vancian magic; not even 4e did that! Fortunately for WotC, they found a largely new audience for what they had come up with (aided by the rise of streaming).


Neither of those are teleportation which was your original contention. Elder Mountain Hammer is literally just "hit the target with one big attack, really hard", and I am content to believe that when any one is claiming to have a problem with martials doing that, good faith left the building some time back...

_
glass.

I don't have a contention; this is just a complaint I've heard a lot from people who dislike the Tome of Battle. They feel that even some of the Warblade's abilities stretch believability, and then they take one look at the Swordsage lighting people on fire with sword moves, or, gasp, Crusaders healing without magic, and they lose their darned minds, lol.

Maxperson, I find the fact that you had more problems with Manfesting classes than with full casters a bit surprising- my last two experiences with groups where I was a caster and there were such classes around still found the DM's gaze firmly on myself.

I had a Druid that traded away Wildshape in a party with a Crusader that focused on crowd control that apparently infuriated the DM so much they started to just ignore how some spells worked (having enemies ignore Spike Growth and Stone Spikes despite needing a high DC needed to realize they were there), and when I played a DMM Cleric who solely focused on party buffs and whose main damage output was from a reserve Feat, the Warblade didn't even seem to raise an eyebrow.

I'm not saying it didn't happen obviously, it's just interesting how different people's experiences with game elements can be.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't have a contention; this is just a complaint I've heard a lot from people who dislike the Tome of Battle. They feel that even some of the Warblade's abilities stretch believability, and then they take one look at the Swordsage lighting people on fire with sword moves, or, gasp, Crusaders healing without magic, and they lose their darned minds, lol.

Maxperson, I find the fact that you had more problems with Manfesting classes than with full casters a bit surprising- my last two experiences with groups where I was a caster and there were such classes around still found the DM's gaze firmly on myself.

I think the issue was that they were all Nine Swords classes and their abilities synergized tremendously. I don't think I'd have had as much of an issue if it was a mostly normal party with 1 Nine Swords PC in the group.

 

[James Gasik]

This has been a sticking point with me in past discussions(not with you). If monsters were so common as that, there would be no trade, or ship travel at all, and most of the civilized races would be dead or on the verge of extinction.

PCs encounter monsters at a much higher rate than the rest of the world does, since the game almost requires monster encounters in order to be fun and because the PCs travel to places where monsters live, like ruins and tombs.

Yes there are dragon turtles, krakens, etc., but they would only very rarely be encountered by ships and trade would continue. The occasional ship lost to such creatures would be written off like those in the real world occasionally sunk by hurricanes or freak waves. The rare monster attacking the silk road would cause the loss of a rare caravan, which would be written off the same way. And perhaps is the reason why your adventuring group is in that area right now.

And yet it exists in these worlds because these monsters are for the most part pretty darned rare. PCs are just bad luck monster magnets.

The rarity of monsters is kind of like discussing how much magic is in a typical D&D campaign- I have doubts about exactly how rare these things are. I know what the books say, but take a setting like the Forgotten Realms, which is lousy with adventurers, who seem to have no shortage of bandits, orcs, drow, trolls, undead, and dragons to throw down with. I just can't accept the idea that "yeah, you face about 6-8 encounters of enemies a day, but that doesn't really impact the rest of the world".

 

[James Gasik]

I think the issue was that they were all Nine Swords classes and their abilities synergized tremendously. I don't think I'd have had as much of an issue if it was a mostly normal party with 1 Nine Swords PC in the group.

Maybe so? I just feel that despite their greater utility in combat than "I swing my weapon!", the ToB classes still lack the problem solving power of high level spellcasters.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't have a contention; this is just a complaint I've heard a lot from people who dislike the Tome of Battle. They feel that even some of the Warblade's abilities stretch believability, and then they take one look at the Swordsage lighting people on fire with sword moves, or, gasp, Crusaders healing without magic, and they lose their darned minds, lol.

It wasn't truly without magic, though. The fire abilities were labeled supernatural, and while surprisingly, Crusader maneuvers like Crusader's Strike weren't labeled supernatural, the description was, "Divine energy surrounds your weapon as you strike..." and allowed a bit of healing, so was clearly "magic" even if not labeled as such.

 

[Maxperson]

The rarity of monsters is kind of like discussing how much magic is in a typical D&D campaign- I have doubts about exactly how rare these things are. I know what the books say, but take a setting like the Forgotten Realms, which is lousy with adventurers, who seem to have no shortage of bandits, orcs, drow, trolls, undead, and dragons to throw down with. I just can't accept the idea that "yeah, you face about 6-8 encounters of enemies a day, but that doesn't really impact the rest of the world".

5e's 6-8 encounter adventuring day bugs the living hell out of me.

Two things with the adventuring day, though. First, it's not every day. You can go 3 months without one and then have one with 6-8 encounters in it. Second, I engaged the long rest variant so that I could stretch that adventuring day out to a week, so it makes it more palatable, though still frustrating.

As I said, though, if there really were that many monsters just wandering all over, then not even the number of adventurers in the FR could save humanity and the other PC races. They'd have gone extinct millennia ago.