Why Shouldn't Martial Characters have powers?

[Hussar]

For the same reason that Batman doesn't fly without an airplane, and can't generally lift cars and throw them at people. And why not everyone in D&D is a magical elf....

If everyone has special, cool superhuman powers, then those powers... aren't special at all. Thanks, I played Earthdawn, and the fact that every single PC was highly magical with flagrant powers made all the powers mean less...

We need classes for those who don't want their characters to be magic-users in different clothing.

Bringing this back from 1st page. Batman is a perfect example of the Christmas Tree effect of D&D. He's got "all those wonderful toys" to back up the fact that he's superior to a normal human in every possible way. Yup, he doesn't have any "super" powers, but, with all his gadgets and goodies, he's pretty much just as super as anyone else.

Or, put it another way, what super power does Batman lack? He can fly, be super strong, bulletproof, see and hear long distances, practically omniscient - all due to his toys true. But, how often is Batman without his toys?

So, you have a choice, you can either stick with the Batman style of PC, and go with the Christmas Tree at high levels, or you can go the 1e route and make high level play unattainable.

Neither seems like very good choices to me. I'll take the third option of giving fighters special abilities that are not magically tied, much like the Knight class currently, and go with a game that actually functions at all levels.

 

[FourthBear]

Fireball isn't the problem.

Charm Person, Invisibility, Web, Fly, Polymorph, Teleport, Wall of Force, Plane Shift, Forcecage and Time Stop are part of it, not to mention plenty of other spells.

I would definitely agree with that. An evocation, blast-em-all style wizard is likely the easiest type of mage to balance against the fighter. It's the illusion, divination, transportation and other spells that change the nature of the game world (as well as the immediate combat grid) that make magic-using so potent.

 

[Mallus]

Just because you enjoy magic coming out the pores of your heroes doesn't mean that all D&D players do.

Who said anything about liking it? I'm simply talking about what I've observed since I started playing back in the mid 1980's. My personal experience has been that D&D has always been PC-magic heavy, and this is backed up by all of the published game materials I've read.

Are you seriously arguing that standard D&D is or ever was low-magic? Have you thumbed through any 1st editions modules lately?

The amount of magic in the game isn't in question; it's whether that magic comes from an imaginary ring or from somewhere deep inside your character's imaginary elf-body.

You want a magically-inclined fighter, play a swordmage. That's what that class is for.

Or I could just play a fighter. With magic items. Because it's the exact same thing.

 

[Henry]

MASSIVELY disagree. I flatly refuse to play D&D below 3rd level, and would never even think of running it. I can't see a single thing about it that could be construed as fun, much less appropriate to any genre of fantasy I'm familiar with. Plus, it's yet another dramatic and unexplained shift in tone, feel and power level.

That new groups used to be introduced to this totally atypical play strikes me as a huge weakness of the current rulesset; removing level 1 as 'beware of housecats and 10 ft. falls' level is the single best change I've heard about 4e.

I like to play lower levels. Many people do.

By contrast, the lower levels (approx 1 through 5) are my favorite levels of play, too. IMO it's those levels where the most character-building, defining moments come from - when your PC is the weakest they'll ever be, and where an act of heroism is more meaningful than after they have scores of powers and hit points.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

By contrast, the lower levels (approx 1 through 5) are my favorite levels of play, too. IMO it's those levels where the most character-building, defining moments come from - when your PC is the weakest they'll ever be, and where an act of heroism is more meaningful than after they have scores of powers and hit points.

Well said. My campaign is finally leaving the low levels behind (everyone should be level 4 in the near future), but the sheer terror of being still somewhat ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations has its charms.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

If looking at the Book of Nine Swords stuff as an example, plenty of stuff in the White Raven and Iron Heart dsiciplines are darned effective, and very non-magical in description.

Forget the Tome of Battle, and look at Iron Heroes. One of those classes uses magical abilities - everyone else is as "mundane" as you can be when you're essentially capable of picking up any old longsword and cutting a giant the size of a mountain to ribbons.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Making an improbably jump is one thing, but the fairy-prancing in Crouching Tiger-like movies isn't the image I want coupled with my dwarves.

I guess, if I could pick a mental image for high-level martial characters, it would be "300". I may be missing something, but I don't recall any flaming weapons or fairy-prancing.

That's not insulting at all. Asian mythical martial arts are just fairy-prancing, eh?

 

[Exen Trik]

That's not insulting at all. Asian mythical martial arts are just fairy-prancing, eh?

Well, I've seen that movie. Loved that movie. I love the whole wuxia genre. And I'm going to have to agree, lightly tip-toeing across the land at hundreds of feet per step is very much like fairy-prancing

I think the main difference is whether you ever need to actually land between jumps instead of hopping off of one toe from tree branches, water and clouds. But I guess an extra +20 to balance would take care of that too.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I'm all for powers for high-level fighters and other martial characters. In 1e and 2e, a high-level fighter had basically one thing to do, in combat or outside it: go up to a critter, and whale at it with a sword. This becomes immensely boring, when compared to the stuff all the other classes can do.

3.* helped to fix this by giving fighters access to plenty of feats which both enhanced their combat abilities at higher levels and gave them much more options. Despite this, fighters lagged somewhat behind other classes, especially the full casters (who've always been the darlings of D&D).

ToB, with its combat maneuvers, was a huge leap to the correct direction, IMO, and as people repeat (to deaf ears, it seems), much if not most of what it had to offer was non-magical. (And there's a difference between mundane and non-magical; a 20th-level fighter may be non-magical in his abilities, but he damn well shouldn't be mundane!)

 

[Mallus]

Asian mythical martial arts are just fairy-prancing, eh?

And 300's gorgeous, oiled, and half-naked Spartans wasn't fairy-prancing?!