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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6514260" data-attributes="member: 42582">As per REH's Conan stories, I tend to incline towards might being more powerful than magic in combat. In an RPG, players of magic-users almost always get more flexibility out of combat - they shouldn't be better at combat too!Conan isn't supernatural in the fiction - but compared to what real human beings can do he is very lucky and effective. In a D&D-style RPG this requires mechanics - eg the ability to ignore roles below a certain number, good saving throws, etc.Aragorn's ability to turn the tide by rousing his allies' spirits isn't supernatural either - but in D&D how are you going to implement that if not in the form of hit point restoration and/or combat buffs (along the lines of the 4e warlord)?"Combat as war" doesn't speak to any of this (and tends not to support either Conan-esque or LotR-esque play, because it does not reward Conan-esque boldness nor LotR-esque providentially-guided rightenousness).I think that [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION]'s point is that there is an edition of D&D that does support these tropes as inherent in its class design.For what it's worth, I agree with him. The warlord, in particular, is a breakthrough in D&D for enabling characters who resemble Tolkien's battle captains; and the system does more than any other version of D&D (5e excepted? - reports seem to be mixes) to put martial characters (whether Conan-esque or otherwise) on a par with magic-using ones, even at upper levels.</blockquote>

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