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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9777571" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I mean, I can accept a setting where gunpowder simply doesn't work due to some variable of the local physical laws or a divine mandate.  Zelazny's Amber series has this as a plot point early on.But when your setting presents alchemy as a legitimate practice and allows for things like thunderstones, greek fire, and the like, and also has good reasons for someone to want to deliver elemental damage to foes, surely methods to do just that will be developed and available to the masses!Alternatively, if magic is simply the easiest way to do this, then everyone would learn some!  Even basic warriors would learn cantrips or the ability to bypass resistances and inflict elemental damage!D&D's problem is, it's rules indicate a narrative where anyone could learn magic, but insists that players be required to "opt in" on having magical abilities, rather than having them integrated into each character class.  While the Fighter class, for example, could have a "fire and stone strike" that lets them inflict a small amount of fire damage on an attack, they are presented as a group that scoff at leaning into anything supernatural, with only a few specialists like arcane archers and eldritch knights breaking from tradition- but these same individuals would happily pick up a flame tongue sword or a ring of regeneration!In other words, external magic is just fine, but internal magic?  They scoff and sneer at it, apparently. And it's not like you couldn't develop internal magic without becoming an actual spellcaster- the Monk does this just fine, as do some subclasses.That some players of the game insist that they be allowed to play warriors who have no magic, who need no magic (but hey, let me see that +2 longsword you got there!) and firmly reject any attempts to get peanut butter in their chocolate maintains this status quo.  I remember a lot of the criticism heaped on 3.5's Tome of Battle, not the least of which involved someone seeing a Swordsage maneuver of the Desert Wind school that let you inflict fire damage and immediately denouncing this "anime nonsense" in their D&D game!Which you know, that's fine, to a point.  If someone's ideal of a warrior is Conan the Cimmerian as opposed to Elric of Melnibone, or Corwin of Amber, and that's fun for them, I don't have a problem with that.  It's when this becomes so enshrined in the rules that only the most basic uses for alchemy or scientific innovation are presented as options (seriously, look at 3.5's alchemical items list and compare it to 5e) by the designers that I have a problem with it.  I mean, I know people who still twitch when they see a basic healing potion in the PHB, lol.</blockquote>

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