D&D 5E The Magical Martial

[FrogReaver]

The thread suggests Mundane Martials be supernatural not because they don't make sense but because the system does not support it

I don’t think this is accurate. Definitely wasn’t the point of the conversation around @dave2008’s idea that us 3 were discussing that directed to your comment in question.

I’m just as confused now as I was before.

and they cannot get hardliners to create a system that support it

Not sure what this part really means either.

 

[Stormonu]

I’m not concerned with the line between supernatural and not supernatural.

I am concerned with the spectrum of supernatural. Just barely above non-supernatural to the most amazingly supernatural powers ever dreamt of.

So let’s suppose falling like that is supernatural? So what? It doesn’t mean the fighter should be any more supernatural than that.

What bothers me is the jumping, not the falling. And not just jumping, but anything physical - swim speed, climb speed, wrestling down giants and dragons, etc. Without needing magic items or spells I think the fighter should be beating world records at 9th level, if not 5th. Not by a small bit either, but by the time the character gets to 20th, it should be as jaw-dropping as being able to take the above mentioned fall.

For example, would it kill the Fighter class if at 5th level they could double their Jump, at 10th triple it, at 15th quadruple it and at 20th have a x5 jump? Or the ability at 5th/9th they climb and swim at full speed (and at 5th they can swim in heavy armor without sinking - though I don't think that limitation is mentioned anywhere in the current ruleset...).

Just even these kind of things I think would be quality-of-life improvements for the Fighter/martials without even getting into crazy damage abilities.

 

[Minigiant]

You can. Like I said, the level of the cap is irrelevant. It could be at level 50. My point is that there is a line somewhere. I just chose 10 for the reasons I stated. Level only means what we decide it means. You can have a full featured game that is only 10 levels (or 5).

So, why can't you have Hawkeye, Deadshot, Usopp, Batman, Kenshin play at level 7?

Sure

But I want to continue playing them to level 20.

 

[FrogReaver]

What bothers me is the jumping, not the falling. And not just jumping, but anything physical - swim speed, climb speed, wrestling down giants and dragons, etc. Without needing magic items or spells I think the fighter should be beating world records at 9th level, if not 5th. Not by a small bit either, but by the time the character gets to 20th, it should be as jaw-dropping as being able to take the above mentioned fall.

At some point there id say that crosses the line from non-supernatural to supernatural?

For example, would it kill the Fighter class if at 5th level they could double their Jump, at 10th triple it, at 15th quadruple it and at 20th have a x5 jump? Or the ability at 5th/9th they climb and swim at full speed (and at 5th they can swim in heavy armor without sinking - though I don't think that limitation is mentioned anywhere in the current ruleset...).

Just even these kind of things I think would be quality-of-life improvements for the Fighter/martials without even getting into crazy damage abilities.

Sure they would, but the question then becomes how supernatural should the fighter be?

Also, there’s the other issue that this fairly minor level of supernatural ability that you describe here, still doesn’t help the fighter compare to the supernatural capabilities of the wizard. It doesn’t really help mechanical balance and it doesn’t necessarily help conceptually either (depends on what conceptions you want for martial heroes in the game).

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure

But I want to continue playing them to level 20.

To me the answer there is - Conceptually they would grow so supernatural they wouldn’t really be the same hero anymore - so your not really playing them anymore.

 

[Minigiant]

To me the answer there is - Conceptually they would grow so supernatural they wouldn’t really be the same hero anymore - so your not really playing them anymore.

And the response is

Why do they need to become supernatural?

 

[FrogReaver]

And the response is

Why do they need to become supernatural?

Maybe if you stayed your actual position instead of 1 liners?

 

[Minigiant]

Maybe if you stayed your actual position instead of 1 liners?

I stated it a few times. But this thread is long

My position is that multiple sources of media has non-supernatural heroes who face threats from the lowly street thug to the world ending super easy with nothing but non-supernatural weapons training, armor training, and skill training.

D&D barely supports multiple archetypes of this.

And now fans suggest these archetypes be supernatural rather than pushing for support of these non-supernatural archetypes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You can only take Skill Expert and Fighting Initiate once each.
Combat and noncombat aspects complete for feats and most editions give limited feats or require using many feats to excel.
And in 5e, it competes with your ASI too.

Okay, but these are limitations for everyone. And frankly, I've never had someone tell me I couldn't take Skill Expert or Fighting Initiate more than once, and usually I don't WANT to take them more than once.

There are artificial non-genre limitations on horizontal growth for the sake of "simplicity".
Only 6 ASI/feats for your level 16 fighter. The class that gets the most. Why only six?

That's why everyone jumps straight into magic and supernatural. Because the limitations are off or lower. And you get more customizable slots if you go magic.

Do you know what 1st level feat I've taken the most on every One DnD character I've built? Magic Initiate. It is just that good. Even if you doubled the number of feats characters could get... magic feats are still going to generally be more desirable.

I agree it is a limitation of the design, but I'm not sure you are going to get the desired result if you just gave martial characters a feat every two levels. I'm not against decoupling them from ASIs or getting more, I just don't think that is going to get you anywhere. Because there just are not feats that give the sort of abilities we are talking about.

 

[Stormonu]

To me, the non-magical martial, by 20th level should be able to do things like:

• Pick up and move a 400 lb. boulder, and break it in half with a single karate chop
• Snipe a running enemy with a longbow from a mile away
• Kill an army, bare naked, while surrounded (with Flanking rules active) with the jawbone of a donkey
• Swim to an island miles away in full plate mail armor, in a thunderstorm while fending off a kraken
• Lasso a flying dragon, haul it to the ground and subdue it to use it as their mount
• While bleeding out (at 0 hp) keep on fighting for the next half hour

These don't have to be things that they can do unfailingly, every single time. But at the same time, they should possible at least once between long rests or so.