D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Micah Sweet]

I'm fine with clarity existing at the table level. Heck, I'm great with it. Make magic in your worlds feel exactly how you want it to feel for your players.

I don't need the game to do that.

I just need the game to provide mechanics for cool (maybe magic, maybe not) stuff for the PCs to do.

Apparently you need the game to explicitly not do that, with the side effect that no one else gets to have it either.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

True, since gorillas are apes, we could go that route... but since their are four types of traditional apes, and gorillas are by far the strongest of those, one stat block really has to encompass an average of them all.

...why would it need to encompass an average? that would mean it isn't even a particularly useful statblock, since the apes are different enough that it wouldn't actually represent any of them.

it's probably just a single type of ape - and considering that black bears have a strength of 15, i'd guess that ape is probably a gorilla.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Apparently you need the game to explicitly not do that, with the side effect that no one else gets to have it either.

Yeah..sure.

I don't want your seasoned broth pre-loaded into the pot everyone has to cook with.

 

[Cadence]

My personal feeling is that tables are capable of figuring that stuff out on their own if they need it.

And that whatever they figure out will be better for the table than what the game designers can provide.

But think of all the threads we could have fighting about how wrong/right they were in what they chose to make official!

 

[Vaalingrade]

When magic is natural, mutations are magical.

When milk is a liquid, water is milk.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am even more interested in what I originally posted about: I would like there to be line in the game, after which certain actions taken are clearly something beyond what we can expect IRL. That is it. I don't really care what you call it, I am just interested in where the line is. I stated my preference in the 1st or 2nd page of this thread, but that was just my preference.

Right but... that's level 1, isn't it?

At level 1 a character can summon fire from thin air with mere words and gestures. That is an action clearly beyond what we can expect IRL. Or swim in full plate. Or climb incredibly fast.

Okay, but you don't want to count mages or people who take magic initiate as a feat, and you think those physical accomplishments are silly... then level 3, when the majority of fighter subclasses suddenly start summoning flaming chains, creating shadow clones, or shooting ghost arrows?

Level 5 when the rogue can dodge psychic damage?

So, you are going to need a different line for every class, and every subclass? Are magical subclasses allowed to get extraordinary abilities sooner than non-magical ones?

I appreciate the idea of the line, think level 9 to 11 is a good place for a line, but we need to make a lot of exceptions to that line.

 

[Yaarel]

When milk is a liquid, water is milk.

You are prejudiced by Western science characterizing all magic to be as if "supernatural".

But animistic cultures deeply disagree and view the distinction between subjective imagination and objective fact to be a fluid boundary. Magic is natural. The soul (consciousness, spirit, aura) is natural. Its influences are natural.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You are prejudiced by Western science characterizing all magic to be as if "supernatural".

But animistic cultures deeply disagree and view the distinction between subjective imagination and objective fact to be a fluid boundary. Magic is natural. The soul (mind, spirit) is natural. Its influences are natural.

Animistic cultures probably wouldn't use the word 'magic' in a cavalier manner either.

Their equivalent is likely to be closer to 'spiritual' and there's no way someone would get away with describing someone's spiritual beliefs and practices as 'magic' without looking bad.

 

[Yaarel]

Animistic cultures probably wouldn't use the word 'magic' in a cavalier manner either.

Their equivalent is likely to be closer to 'spiritual' and there's no way someone would get away with describing someone's spiritual beliefs and practices as 'magic' without looking bad.

Animistic cultures often use the term "magic", or its equivalents like "witch".

Conversely most animistic terms are adopted within the concepts of magic, such as "seiðr" and "spá", "mana" and "medicine". The term fairie (spelled variously) originally means "magic", both as noun and adjective. Norwegians sometimes refer to holistic medicine as "trollmedicin", literally "magic medicine".

For animism, magic is inherent and natural.

Again, it is Western Christian theist modern science ethnocentrism that makes it difficult to understand what animism even is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah..sure.

I don't want your seasoned broth pre-loaded into the pot everyone has to cook with.

Yeah...so weird to have stuff that is beyond real life reality in a fantasy game called out as such in the game to the players living in real life reality.