D&D 5E What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[Raiztt]

So, I personally have no problem with mundanity and supernatural existing in concert. The settings have dragons, hydras, bulettes, owlbears, and purple worms knocking about on a series of stacked planes of existence..as a baseline expectation.

If you put a gun to my head, I'd probably point to fantastical training regimes, unusual diet, genetic lottery, exposure to exotic energies or some other number of factors that could be completely natural within the fantasy setting without being explicitly or exclusively magical.

Some people, including you it seems, are not fond of fantasy settings with fantastical elements that have no explicitly magical explanation. I don't really understand it, but it certainly does seem a source of disconnnect..
........
Setting all that aside though.. what if our guy is a dwarf? Or elf? Or dragonborn? Do the same limitations apply?

So, as I was just saying, then your answer is "I just deny the first premise" - which is fine - it just means that 'humans' in D&D are actually not humans, they're some sort of supernatural being that just happens to use the same name.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is the new true issue:

5e removed the assumption and bias of magic items from the game but did not replace this design philosophy with anything.​

More to the point, 5e doesn't really have a focused design philosophy besides 'cobble together other editions and be simple'.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

My thought experiment's first premise is that all D&D humans are facsimilies of actual humans in terms of their capabilities.

Look, in Forgotten Realms, Mulhorand people are literally from real world Earth. They were brought there.

Same rules apply to them, so they are able to wrestle manticores, drop from any height with a few levels, etc.

Even literal Earth humans are just different in a DnD world.

 

[Raiztt]

Now, separately from the facts, you are entitled to an opinion that, because humans in D&D have similar (though not identical) age ranges, weights, lifting capacities and so on to Earth humans, they essentially are identical to Earth humans, but that's not a fact, that's an opinion. Whereas the fact is, it's an unknown.

Further, it's not as well-supported as you seem to think by the facts of D&D, not least that in D&D, sufficient tough humans can literally leap from a thousand foot tower on to a stone surface and only survive, but not break a single bone or limb, perhaps not even be prone! If you want to argue things like "lifting capacities" as evidence for your opinion, you must accept things like falling damage as evidence against your opinion. And it's quite persuasive evidence, I'd suggest.

I'm happy to concede that - but you can't have your cake and eat it too. D&D cannot on the one hand use their 'human' as a way for the players to measure the world relative to their real life selves AND also be a supernatural being.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Enh..more specifically..it seems like you need someone to apply the "magic" keyword before you accept superheroes.

Well, superheroes are basically magic. You can't blame him.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Rules say Medium person can grapple a Large target. Manticores are Large. Grapple done, now he can drag them where he wants to.


If I've seen two dragons already fly by, and someone else drop a car into the Feywild through a portal, I am not going to be shaken by some guy doing it through muscle and willpower. Especially when I saw him, a minute prior, jump from the tallest building in the land, land on his face, get up and dust himself off.

DnD world residents are just built different.

I mean the real question that you, as a character within the setting, should have been asking is "what the heck was that guy throwing?"

(Not a lot of cars in D&D)

 

[Raiztt]

Look, in Forgotten Realms, Mulhorand people are literally from real world Earth. They were brought there.

Same rules apply to them, able to wrestle manticores, drop from any height with a few levels, etc.

So. Even literal Earth humans are just different in a DnD world.

Really that just tells me that the writing is garbage and violates the PSR.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See to me there is a middle ground where leveling up reflects a process of becoming superhuman (by earth standards at least) for all classes.

Edit: And the game has no explicit divide between natural and supernatural..that's actual nonsense.

It did in 3e, and such was at least strongly applied before that.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I cannot believe the 'actually actual egyptians' dumb fact came in useful for something.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Today Vaalingrade learns that the same word can have different meanings.

So your rebuttal to me saying that the humans in the book are not Earth humans is to insist that they are Earth humans, watch me and others demonstrate they are not Earth humans... then insult me while insisting they are not Earth humans.

I admit it's a bold strategy.