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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6514133" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I know a lot of "Combat as War" grognardy types who would disagree with this contention, particularly in regard to "out play". I mean, what Odysseus does to defeat the Cyclops doesn't really require any special abilities! Even a 1st level AD&D fighter might pull it off. Although most PCs I know would have slain the passed-out cyclops, rather than blind him. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /> Similarly, a lot of old-school D&D involves taking precautions that obviate the need for saving throws, etc. (whether or not the game provides an effective model or reflection of those strategies is perhaps beyond the scope of this thread)Conan...I'm not sure how "supernatural" any of his stunts get vs. "exaggerated grotesquely", although certainly his world has supernatural elements. Batman....well Batman has a lot of incarnations with wildly varying levels of sleuthy acumen, ninja-like combat ability, and gadget-dependence so its hard to say. Certainly even early-edition fighters can get complicated with the right suite of magical gear. Hercules...well, yes Hercules sorta breaks the mold, but then again he's a demi-god, and his stories are myth that stretches the edge of what D&D covers with its genre conceits. (I would suggest that if one wanted that in 5e, a "Demigod" race with no limit to ability score increases might suffice as a starting point.) So I don't really buy what you're saying about how impossible it is to play these characters outside of a narrow range of edition-options...However, the idea that such things are not inherent in the class design for 5e (or any edition of D&D)...that I will buy. Whether they should be or not...is a matter of opinion. I've played plenty of "indie" games where the mechanics play at a much more narrative manner than D&D's rather hand-waved "Fantasy", and it works very well. If we accept that one of our conventions will be that "Batman always can pull out just the right bit of Bat-gear" is an inherent part of playing the Batman, then that's fine, and we can skip equipment lists, etc. Dungeon World works this way and, for many players, emulates or reflects the D&D experience quite well.However, D&D hasn't really moved to function in this manner, and still tends to default to a really profoundly bad simulation-y model that attempts to correlate things to game-world processes, rather than narrative-fictional processes. IME, this approach to game design fares very poorly when dealing with mythological levels of ability (like re-directing a river) in comparison to the more narrative models. Even within D&D, spells and their functioning are often the breaking point for edition after edition. In part, this is because magic is typically used in more mythical stories as an authorial tool, not an aspect of physics. Trying to map various magical effects from myth, legend, fairy tale, and modern fiction onto some kind of sensible scale for a "real" world is a fool's errand, and the problems only get worse as you increase the capacity of the magic in question.  I've known many groups not only don't reach, but work hard to avoid higher-level D&D play in part because "things get silly". I think E6 earned some of its appeal this way. wheww....that got a lot longer and rambly than I intended.</blockquote>

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