D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Vaalingrade]

Most of these sounded like people were actually enjoying it though ;-)

Polar Bear Clubs absolutely love it. Like, to a point where I'm sure no one here will ever enjoy anything half as much as the glowing interviews make it seem like to them.

 

[Cadence]

Any river has dangerous and safe parts. It's not like the Mississippi isn't dangerous in places, just that it's not the impossible murder river that would slay Jack Lalane that's being portrayed.

It's like saying the Ganges is super dangerous to swim due to current while people are posting images of old ladies wading in it. Yeah there are dangerous parts, yeah there are other factors that make it dangerous, but no it's not a good argument to apply to the entire river.

Who are the two individuals who have swum the entire length of the Mississippi River?

Answer (1 of 5): The two individuals who have swum the entire length of the Mississippi River are: 1. Martin Strel: He is a Slovenian endurance swimmer who swam the entire length of the Mississippi River in 2002. The swim took him 68 days to complete and he covered a distance of 2,360 miles (3,8...

www.quora.com

Extraordinary or supernatural? ;-)

 

[Chaosmancer]

All of those games have beings performing superhuman feats without any explanation? I played Deadlands, and it is chock-full of explanations for the many supernatural abilities of its creatures. So do virtually all superhero games I'm familiar with. Where are characters presented as mundane but demonstrably not so?

Do they? There is an edge you can take so that when you die, you come back from the dead. Not a whole lot of explanation of how my completely mundane character is suddenly able to resurrect as an undead.

There is also the edge that says my completely mundane character with no magical abilities is suddenly holding a relic weapon, which is odd, because he is a completely mundane, average person. But he gets this edge, and now he can pick one of his weapons to permanently become a relic, even if he has never used that weapon before!

What are the explanations for these abilities, because I read them again and... they don't seem to have any.

Edit: Oh, sorry you also asked about superhero games. Yeah, you can get super strength from training in superhero games. OR energy blasts. Or, I mean I think I could even swing shapechanging through training. So, since you have said that training isn't a good enough explanation... those would be effectively without explanation.

 

[Tonguez]

Who are the two individuals who have swum the entire length of the Mississippi River?

Answer (1 of 5): The two individuals who have swum the entire length of the Mississippi River are: 1. Martin Strel: He is a Slovenian endurance swimmer who swam the entire length of the Mississippi River in 2002. The swim took him 68 days to complete and he covered a distance of 2,360 miles (3,8...

www.quora.com

Extraordinary or supernatural? ;-)

Maniac Swims the Mississippi — and Survives

Some madman decided to swim across the Mississippi River — scaring his friend into thinking he'd drowned. The unnamed 41-year-old slipped into the water on...

www.riverfronttimes.com

Definitely extraordinary

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then they should have called it a gorilla, not an ape. Ape encompasses much more than just gorilla...

And they should have been more specific about what they mean by "Crab" or "Lizard" or "Cat" or "Poisonous Snake". Just because they didn't doesn't mean we can't look at the art for the Ape statblock, see a gorilla, and put two and two together.

That much water, even moving at 1.2 mph, is a tremedous amount of force to even more with let alone resist.


Probably not, of course, be as often as it might occur (who knows, right?) it would half the speed during those checks.


Yes, DC 20 does require training an higher than average ability to accomplish. Your average person would not be able to swim a mile and not drown.


Have you ever swum a mile? I have, in Boy Scouts, across a lake. With people in boats going with us to help if we got cramps, became fatigued, etc. Lake currents are not nearly as strong as the current flow of a river like the Mississippi. It isn't called "The Mighty Mississippi" for nothing, you know. Lake currents are only strong IF you near a river system of a lake.

Now, lakes can be "choppy" with worse waves, of course.


Well, I wouldn't argue those points because they don't have anything to do with the DC, as you point out. Distance determines time, and thus the number of checks. Armor simply hinders the speed.

You won't argue about the distance being 1 mile? Did I hallucinate that bolded text then? You literally did argue that. But yeah, there is no "1 mile limit" on swimming in DnD. You could swim in calm, clear water for napkin mathing looks like around 12 miles without a single hint of a problem

Oh? No human on earth could do that because swimming is tiring, exhausting work? Yeah... that's sort of the point I'm making. The rules say, these things are possible even if they are beyond human.

But even beyond that, as I stated, the DC 20 is for swimming in the Mississippi River. It isn't for swimming a mile, or half a mile, or 10 ft, it is for swimming in it period. You cannot justify the DC by quoting the distance, then use the DC to show that you can't make the distance.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The DC doesn't change according to who is doing it. The DC would be 20 (or worse!). A trained swimmer who practices endurance swims, etc. would benefit from an actual bonus to the check, not +0, and would be swimming an full speed (since they are not wearing armor).

You are arguing backwards. I am saying that if untrained, average people can say "yeah, this is fine. I swim in it all the time" then it isn't a DC 20 check. I'm arguing the REAL LIFE PEOPLE who have ACTUALLY DONE IT are indicating that your insanely high DC is inpropriate.

Hmm... let me think. Yeah, probably more familiar with them then you are.

Yep, moved goalposts. You said:

Nothing there about the distance you want him to travel, is there? 8 hour march in rough terrain (rough = difficult, right? I mean, they are synonyms...) would only be 12 miles, not 24 anyway. And, you don't actually think it is 8 hours moving constantly, right? It is 8 hours in the course of the day of travelling, which includes periods of rest, eating, etc.

Even if I give you difficult terrain (Which I don't think I should) then the professor is lugging 80 lbs, 12 miles, through dense jungle, swamps, mountainous terrain. And, as you helpfully pointed out , that could actually be increased to 150 lbs with no change in speed.

And, again, most people recommend 30 lbs for hiking, and through a clear trail without debris or anything other than elevation changes, they say people make about 12 miles per day. So, sure, if you count elevation on a clearly marked, well maintained trail as equivalent to moving through a dense forest thicket, then this untrained professor is only carrying five times the recommended weight while making the hike. If you think a clearly marked and maintained trail with starirs in it, isn't difficult terrain... then they are moving twice as fast.

Well, not immediately.

I simply brought it up because it IS in the rules (not like a houserule or anything) and there explicitly for groups who want more detailed rules for how weight hinders movement. It is still "simple" but not overly simplified as the baseline RAW.

I mean, am I not allowed to bring up valid points about how the game was designed???

"If you change the base rules" doesn't really counter my point about what the base rules say.

Well, baseline IS forgiving, which is fine if you want to keep your game simple. I didn't immediate go to it, and it is there for a reason.

Humans IRL can accomplish things 1st level human fighters can't by RAW. Look at weight-lifting competitions. The most a PC can LIFT in RAW is 30 x STR. At 1st level, max human strength is 18, 20 if you allow the floating +2 ASI. That is 600 lbs, which is pathetic compared to real life world records...

Honestly, we BOTH know the rules aren't meant to express real life or simulate it. They are an approximation at best for a game.

True, and I consider that a problem. Not just for PCs, but it also means that massive predators per RAW can't actually drag off their prey.

LOL I'm having fun, aren't you?

No. Most of your points are pedantry and aren't even amusing to counter.

Yes. But what seems plausible to one person often isn't to another. Which is the issue as well.


True. That is my approach. However, plausible also stretches beyond real world for me. People can do INCREDIBLE things IRL, so going a bit further makes it fantasy for me, without necessarily being "magical" or "superhuman".

For example, a rogue leaping over 40 feet from the roof on one side of the street to another roof on the other side is certainly beyond real life, but in a fantasy setting it is something I can certainly imagine.


Sure, level of capacity is part of plausibility for me, too. The problem is comparing game designed creatures, rules, and systems to real-life facts. They rarely ever work out to be even close to each other.

Now, I mentioned the leaping rogue above. But I never mentioned his level, ability scores, or anything else. If it is plausible to me, I imagine he has whatever capacity is necessary for the task. But speaking of jumping, the rules don't allow for a PC to do a 30-foot running long jump without having a "magical/mystical" feature, such as Step of the Wind.

Honestly, level is convenient, just because it is something we will need to deal with as we make these abilities, and it can be a compromise. The rest is honestly just having to endlessly justify why fantasy heroes don't match 1 to 1 with real life human limitations, and why we don't need to spell out "MAGIC IS REAL" for everything.

Heck, I still have to justify why a warforged is held to the same limitations of earth humans, despite it being a well-established fact that robots, cyborgs and golems can achieve far more than humans can in most physical tasks.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I have so not read 85 pages of this thread.

Isn't the level of awesome for any character going to be highly campaign dependent? In some campaigns PC fighter types are Heracles and Rama. In some they're Aragorn and Gawain. In yet others they're the 4 musketeers.

Admittedly DnD straight out of the box isn't going to support fighters doing much of anything. But with some careful curation and a few house/3rd party rules you can set the dial to roughly where you want it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Isn't the level of awesome for any character going to be highly campaign dependent? In some campaigns PC fighter types are Heracles and Rama. In some they're Aragorn and Gawain. In yet others they're the 4 musketeers.

Well... sort of, but not really.

I would say it is campaign dependent in so far that, the campaign determines when things end. It is easiest to see this with spellcasters, but if you are playing the 4 musketeers, and your greatest foes are thugs and criminal street toughs... well if you play to level 7 your wizard can get Greater Invisibility. Unless the DM specifically steps in and prevents that.

And if you play to the level where your wizard can level small towns, turn invisible, summon servitors and make clones of themselves... well, it might feel weird when your DM pulls out the big boss fight with the CR 4 thug-boss.

The issue is that DnD is a progression-fantasy, but created before that genre had a name. Fighters cannot just be the 4 musketeers, and they cannot be just Heracles, God of Strength. Fighters need to start at the low end, and move up to the high end. Just like the spellcasters start weaker and move to stronger and stronger abilities. Because, the opponents do the same thing. You don't start by fighting goons, then fighting a mob boss who is just a more skilled goon. You start by fighting rats and end by fighting demi-gods of destruction.

The only way to make it campaign dependent is to, eventually, stop gaining official levels and held the power scaling steady.

Admittedly DnD straight out of the box isn't going to support fighters doing much of anything. But with some careful curation and a few house/3rd party rules you can set the dial to roughly where you want it.

And this is what threads like this SHOULD focus on. WE know the game isn't doing this out of the box, we are frustrated by that, and so we try and talk solutions.

Then we get dragged into the weeds debating whether or not we can justify giving the fighter the ability to break a stone wall with his fist if we don't rewrite the fighter to be an explicitly supernatural character, which of course they will remind us not everyone wants a magical fighter. Then we get the joy of people saying that we need to define the fighter and supernatural from the perspective of the NPCs, while other people insist we need to define them as magical from the perspective of the players at the table. THEN we get to argue about whether or not the words supernatural and magical mean the same thing or not, because one is acceptable and the other isn't.

And 85 pages later, we still have barely scratched anything resembling solutions or abilities, because we need to define and justify who these characters are, why they are this way, what the world is like, and how similiar it is to the planet earth in the sol system.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But we don't want "anything". No one has ever asked that the Fighter be able to speak with the dead or see the future. We aren't asking for the fighter to be able to mind control someone into turning on their allies. I think this worry about "fighters will be able to do anything without limit" is massively overblown.

Oooh! I want this!

Or, more specifically, I want martial characters to be able to do things like this. I have zero issue with a "warrior of the grave" who can speak with the dead or a "knight of fate" who can see the future. If our concept of Fighter is limited to "hit things good," then our Fighters will always be kind of one-note. I think there's a lot more potential diversity in there.

Why can't I play level 17 Hawkeye, Deadshot, Usopp, Batman, Kenshin, or Cap and stay non-supernatursl like the source material?

I mean, you can. D&D's current martial model includes that possibility space (and peppers in dragons and demigods that you can headshot or whatever). The most skilled traumatized orphan in the world can be all sorts of Batman and doesn't even need to wait 'till 17th level because even at 5th level they're more skilled and deadly than 99% of the people on earth.

But it can be very limiting for martial characters. "Hit things good" sometimes feels like it's ALL a Fighter can do (and rogues have a similar "get big skill check" pigeonhole) And in a game that includes elements other than combat, it's often not enough.

So bring to me the tacticians that create illusions, the leaders that heal wounds with their voices, the rogues that use shadow magic, the warriors blessed by the gods. I mean, sure, keep the Champion and the Thief and your high skill check results and big damage nukes, if you'd like. It works, it's fine. But let's not assume that it's all a Fighter or a Rogue can be, because if we do that, we say things like the first quote above: that Fighter's can't speak with the dead or see the future (both things that Aeneas did, if I'm remembering right!). There's no in-genre reason for that to be the case.

Official D&D seems to be able to dip a toe into this (there's some supernatural fighters and rogues out there), but it seems hesitant, perhaps because earlier editions were hesitant. I'm with the OP in that I think there's a lot of untapped potential if you remove the assumption that "hit things good" is all a Fighter can be and that "be good at skill checks and sneak attack" is all a Rogue can be.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Oooh! I want this!

Or, more specifically, I want martial characters to be able to do things like this. I have zero issue with a "warrior of the grave" who can speak with the dead or a "knight of fate" who can see the future. If our concept of Fighter is limited to "hit things good," then our Fighters will always be kind of one-note. I think there's a lot more potential diversity in there.

Fair, but I think those concepts are best served by subclasses, and I was speaking more broadly for the main class.

I mean, you can. D&D's current martial model includes that possibility space (and peppers in dragons and demigods that you can headshot or whatever). The most skilled traumatized orphan in the world can be all sorts of Batman and doesn't even need to wait 'till 17th level because even at 5th level they're more skilled and deadly than 99% of the people on earth.

But it can be very limiting for martial characters. "Hit things good" sometimes feels like it's ALL a Fighter can do (and rogues have a similar "get big skill check" pigeonhole) And in a game that includes elements other than combat, it's often not enough.

So bring to me the tacticians that create illusions, the leaders that heal wounds with their voices, the rogues that use shadow magic, the warriors blessed by the gods. I mean, sure, keep the Champion and the Thief and your high skill check results and big damage nukes, if you'd like. It works, it's fine. But let's not assume that it's all a Fighter or a Rogue can be, because if we do that, we say things like the first quote above: that Fighter's can't speak with the dead or see the future (both things that Aeneas did, if I'm remembering right!). There's no in-genre reason for that to be the case.

Official D&D seems to be able to dip a toe into this (there's some supernatural fighters and rogues out there), but it seems hesitant, perhaps because earlier editions were hesitant. I'm with the OP in that I think there's a lot of untapped potential if you remove the assumption that "hit things good" is all a Fighter can be and that "be good at skill checks and sneak attack" is all a Rogue can be.

One thing I would like, but I know would be a bear to balance, is to have skills do more.

For an egregious example of what is wrong, look to the Medicine Skill. Medicine... is worthless. You cannot use medicine to heal people. You cannot use medicine to cure disease or poison. The best use for medicine in terms of actually dealing with injuries is to stabilize a dying creature... which the 10 gp healer's kit let's you do regardless of skill prof. Even doing things like looking at a corpse to see what killed them is something you can also do with an investigation skill.

And that is just basic, mundane uses for the skill. Going beyond that to what the limits of magical, fantastical medicine can be aren't even on the table.

I think the designers wanted to be vague, so that people didn't feel pigeonholed into the charts from 3.5, but what we are left with is a situation where skills feel so limited. A rogue being better at skills than anyone else doesn't feel impactful for most skills, because there is nothing to achieve. Stealth and other skills which are generally opposed checks are the only ones that even sort of bypass this, because you are dealing with opposing checks, not static tasks with static DCs.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I think the designers wanted to be vague, so that people didn't feel pigeonholed into the charts from 3.5, but what we are left with is a situation where skills feel so limited. A rogue being better at skills than anyone else doesn't feel impactful for most skills, because there is nothing to achieve. Stealth and other skills which are generally opposed checks are the only ones that even sort of bypass this, because you are dealing with opposing checks, not static tasks with static DCs.

Bolded for emphasis. That line specifically is a huge issue I have with 5E D&D. At first when I played Pathfinder 2E I didn't see the point of Skill Feats, but the more I played it the more I understand that they are quite important because they allow characters to get really good at something in a way that actually feels like it makes a difference.

It's a big problem to me that many skills are basically useless or just plain badly defined. Even the best skills are actually quite "meh".