D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[Cadence]

The problem, for me, is that you (general) appear to want a definition in the game.

Adding such a definition to the game crowds out the alternative, and equally viable definitions.

It is subtraction by addition, which is why I'm not interested.

I think it would be helpful in different game worlds to have a feeling for the setup. Are the elves almost the definition of natural, or are they extra planar fey descendents? Is magic a thing everyone embraces or do they hide in schools? Is a ghost an expected thing or a thing people won't believe you about, etc ...

I wonder if a way to avoid the game-wide pigeonholing of exceptional-supernatural-spell like might be to indicate a power source. (Psionic, Arcane, Divine, Primal - like 4e?). But I can imagine that limiting too (based on the psionic discussions elsewhere).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because... it is a fantasy world.

Seriously, stop and think about this for a second. The movie Wolf Children features a wolf that became a human man, marrying a human woman, and her having two half-wolf children who can shift between wolf and human forms and must go on a journey of discovery about who they wish to be. How does it work? We don't know. Is magic real in this setting, can any other animals turn into people, can people turn into animals? We don't know. We can make guesses based off the japanese mythology that inspired the movie, but none of that matters.

OKay, take Harry Potter. Why is it that some people are born with the ability to use magic by speaking latin? We don't know. It is never explained. Why do you need a wand, well, you don't because Dumbledore doesn't, so why does everyone else? It is never explained. House Elves can do magic but it is completely different from wizard magic. How does that work? It is never explained.

Sometimes, it is useful for a story to offer some explanation. Sometimes we say magic is "the will and the word" or it is "the true name of things" or it is "the words of creation" or it is just "inner energy given exterior form" But the truth is... it is a fantasy series. The explanation is set dressing. And the more you demand from the explanation, the more damage you tend to do to the story.

Magic in DnD already is nonsensical, because of spell slots. Spell slots do not work, narratively, without a lot of explanation. But we don't need that explanation in game. Does it matter, truly, if the robot man with the sword is jumping up 20 ft because he is using magic or because his body is just that strong? No. It doesn't actually matter. Both explanations WORK.

From the perspective of the reader/viewer, all those things are obviously beyond Earth reality and thus need no further explanation. And in any case stories and games are different things, as I've said many times before.

Show me a game where people perform superhuman feats without implicit or explicit explanation, because it matters there where it doesn't in a story. Like @dave2008 said, this is a question of game terms. Continuing to bring up stories does nothing to prove your point to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Can animals talk? No.
Can animals talk in fantasy? Yes.

Is water acid? No.
Can water be acid in fantasy? Yes.

Can trees create a desert in three minutes? No
Can a tree in a fantasy setting create a desert in three minutes? Yes

Is there a global storm of hurricane force winds that hits every saturday night? No
In a fantasy setting, can you have a global storm that hits with hurricane force winds every saturday night? Yes

Does eating metal give you superpowers? No
Can eating metal give you superpowers in fantasy? Yes.

Can you animate a suit of armor with a blood seal? No
In a fantasy setting, could a suit of armor be animated with a blood seal? Yes.

Can you step on a leaf mid-fall, and jump above the treetops without damaging the leaf? No.
In Fantasy can you step on a leaf mid-fall and jump above the treetops without damaging the leaf? Yes.


Sure, any single one of these questions can be answered no in a fantasy setting too... but also every single one of these is something I have read in a fantasy story. So, is every single thing possible in all fantasy all the time? No. Is anything possible in fantasy? Yes. And that is the point you keep crashing into. You keep saying "but if it isn't magic, it can't work that way"

But speaking the language of friend Bird does not require magic. It only requires that birds have a language you can speak. The old man who cooked the Ginger Bread man didn't use magic, the gingerbread man simply came to life. John Henry didn't grab his magic hammer to carve through that mountain, he just grabbed a second hammer. There are more things in storytelling than you are allowing to be expressed, simply because you don't like them.

No try all of that in game terms, because that's what I'm concerned about.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I'm not stopping anyone from making awesome martials. I just question why you clearly want martials to do things beyond what is possible in our world, but fight like mad to not label said beyond our reality abilities as...beyond reality. Why? I seriously do not get it.

Because the standards of our reality are not and don’t need to be the same as the standards of their reality and because of being able to play themes and narratives specific to nonmagical characters, there is no benefit to making their extraordinary capabilities rely on supernatural forces and by making it so it they do it only prevents certain narratives from being told,

 

[Micah Sweet]

The problem, for me, is that you (general) appear to want a definition in the game.

Adding such a definition to the game crowds out the alternative, and equally viable definitions.

It is subtraction by addition, which is why I'm not interested.

Can you provide such an alternative definition?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because the standards of our reality are not and don’t need to be the same as the standards of their reality and because of being able to play themes and narratives specific to nonmagical characters, there is no benefit to making their extraordinary capabilities rely on supernatural forces and by making it so it they do it only prevents certain narratives from being told,

What narratives? This just sounds like an embrace of pretense to me, and I don't understand it.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I think it would be helpful in different game worlds to have a feeling for the setup. Are the elves almost the definition of natural, or are they extra planar fey descendents? Is magic a thing everyone embraces or do they hide in schools? Is a ghost an expected thing or a thing people won't believe you about, etc ...

I wonder if a way to avoid the game-wide pigeonholing of exceptional-supernatural-spell like might be to indicate a power source. (Psionic, Arcane, Divine, Primal - like 4e?). But I can imagine that limiting too (based on the psionic discussions elsewhere).

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.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I'm of two minds really: I like ambiguity for its flexibility and I dislike it for its lake of specificity. You can't really have both I don't think.

I personally don't find adding some clarity to be a subtraction by addition, but I understand that is how you feel. The level of simplicity vs specificity or abstraction vs simulation is different for everyone I suspect. You can't make everyone happy. That is why I've always said this is something I want, not something that needs to be.

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.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Can you provide such an alternative definition?

Asked and answered a dozen times by dozens of people.

I'm not going to repeat that loop with you.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.


Well, not really... It also represents gibbons, orangutans, and chimpanzees.

However, we can estimate these creatures are several (whatever number) times stronger than humans, with the exception of gibbons. But all this shows is the game designers didn't bother to research real-life creatures in-depth, otherwise "ape" would likely have a feature to compensate for their strength.

There is also the issue that Strength (ability) often is not treated as "strength" (how strong you actually are).

The official artwork for the DnD Ape always presents a gorilla. Not Chimps, not orangutans. Additionally, you can't have it both ways. You can't claim that they clearly meant ape in the scientific sense, and therefore the strength includes gibbons, while also claiming that the designers clearly didn't know how strong these creatures are, since they didn't include a special feature for their strength.

Also, we aren't counting the Giant Ape, but the Giant Ape is CLEARLY meant to represent King Kong and Mighty Joe and other... giant apes (ei gorillas). By your logic it must also be the average of the classic giant oranguntans? Or the Giant Chimpanzees?

I have a simpler explanation. They meant gorillas, they intended gorillas have a strength of 16. Meaning your human fighter at level 1, has the same strength as a gorilla.

Oh, no, no, no...

While DCs are universal, there are far more rivers with low flow rates. The increase of flow rates is expontential, not linear. The Mississippi is 10th in the WORLD. I was probably being generous giving it a (comparatively) lowly DC 20 for this scenario. So, not DC 12 or even 15, but clearly 20 or likely higher.

The 10th... what? Because there is another factor you haven't considered. Speed. The Mississipi does have the highest discharge rate, but the current averages 1.2 mph. That is a walking speed. A current that needs to be resisted, sure, but not nearly a death sentence, like white water rapids can be.

Fine, we can go with your version of difficult terrain, and guess what? The Mississippi is not clean, clear water. It has "things in the water" like floatsam, fish, vegetation (heavy at times), and much more. So, still difficult terrain.

For the entire mile? And filling the entire 30 ft depth of the river? It looks... to not have a bunch of stuff clogging every foot of the river, in any picture I've seen.

So, your DC 15 is much too low. Which means you'll have several times the checks...

Therefore, we have 5000 feet, at 10 feet speed (30 - 10 (armor STR restriction) = 20, swim speed 10, difficult terrain 5, but dashing, so back to 10) per check, is 500 checks. At DC 20 (yes, 20 is generous, this is cleary a "hard" task), that equates to 10000 checks, which brings us to 16 hours and 20 minutes... or dead from exhaustion---as I said.

Well, I did adjudicate "more" fairly, and if you adjudicate more realistically, it really is not possible for the "average" man. They would drown and die.

You think swimming in the Mississippi is clearly a DC 20 task? Well... let's examine that.

According to the rules, a DC 20 is a check that requires proficiency (ie training) and higher than average scores to accomplish. DMG pg 238, if you are curious. So, is swimming in the Mississippi something that can only be done by trained athletes above the normal strength of average people?


Absolutely not. Not a single person in that news story hesitated to say that they would absolutely swim in the River. One person even equated it to swimming in a lake (lakes, famous for their powerful currents)

Now, you might argue: "But those people weren't trying to swim the full mile across!" Yeah... but the DC 20 is for swimming in the river at all, not for swimming the distance.

You might also argue that these people aren't in full armor... but the armor isn't changing the DC, the armor is changing the speed the character is swimming.

So, no matter how you slice it... DC 20 is wrong. DC 15 might even be extreme, since according to someone who actually swam in the Mississippi it is equivalent to swimming in a lake, not a death sentence like you are making it out to be.

Oh, moving the goalposts, huh? Who said 24 miles a day? You just said marching for 8 hours... which obviously the travel rules include things like periodic rest, etc. It is difficult terrain, so 12 miles, if you insist on a "distance to cover".

But, hey, let's go crazy! Why 80 lbs? Why not 150 lbs? I mean if you have a person with STR 10, the RAW is just 15 x STR score in pounds. Of course, this is why we have the variant rules. Which 80 lbs at STR 10 would be encumbered, and speed 20 not 30, which for travel would equate to 18 miles, reduced to 9 with difficult terrain.

Regardless, with STR 10 it would be hard at first (college professor or whatever) to carry 80 lbs for a "day's march", but very possible. They would still have 16 hours to rest and after a few days, would fine it easier going as they become assimulated to it.

Moving goalposts? Not at all. You standard DnD party moving at a normal pace, hikes 24 miles in a day. Right there in the rules. You... are familiar with how fast a party moves overland right?

Also, I love how you immediately went "well, this is why we have variant rules". My post has been about the fact that the base rules allow 1st level human fighters to achieve things beyond human strength and endurance, and you immediately try and move to a harsher, variant rule... because the baseline is too forgiving.

Well, to make that speed, you have to be a Thief subclass, having the feature Second-Story Work, which says you've gained the ability to climb faster--- that seems like some form of "training" to me.

I didn't miss anything, not even the 6 seconds part.

Speed climbing (basically this scenario) currently has a world-record under 5 seconds for 15-meters (5 stories). But these contests have frequent handholds, etc. as well as safety precautions to make speed the ultimate concern, not threat to life and limb.

But to say a "normal" person could climb 9 stories in 30 seconds is frankly, pretty silly. (Actually, RAW it would be 36 seconds, not 30...) It is just another case of simple rules over realistic rules.

So... because the rule depicts something, let's say fantastical, then the solution is.... ignore it because fantasy humans clearly cannot do what the rules say they do?

I find it incredibly frustrating the number of times I've been told by the same people demanding that we cannot give abilities to fighters that are greater than human (at least without explicitly saying "this is magic") that the rules depicting some greater than human feat don't count, because that would be silly.

Well, the issue is that is what WotC made it--sort of. AD&D rules leaned a bit more towards reality in fantasy.

I mean, if people really wanted 1451 Europe, the game should be MUCH different. What it actually is IME is a transplanted world. The level of infusion of magic also varies widely from table to table. There is no real standard.

FWIW, my personal take is extraodinary but plausible, but not magical, for such tasks. Do I have any problem attributing a heroic warrior in plate swimming a mile? No, I can go with that. The wiley thief speed climbing twice as quick as I can see people doing on YouTube? No, that's fine, it is a stretch as "mundane" but plausible in a fantasy world---without the need to say it is "magical".

Agreed. Your other post about how this sort of back-and-forth between mundane and fantasy simply stops progress on the real issue is spot on.

...

Regardless, even a 20th level Fighter with some good magic items wouldn't be able to solo a Pit Fiend... let alone the mundane knight.

FWIW, I completely agree if the game is fantasy and the PCs were mundane, they would never leave home.

Okay, so... what's the point of this all then?

See, I think this is the issue. Plausibility.

You seem to be approaching from "Is this plausible for a human"
My approach is far more rooted in "is this plausible for someone with this level of capability". This is why the level 1 strength of a gorilla is important. Or noticing that the strongest vampires are strength 18. Because while it may not be plausible for someone to rip a steel door from stone and use it as a shield... A vampire with "super strength" would be able to do it. So someone as strong or stronger should be capable of doing it.