D&D (2024) Martial vs Caster: Removing the "Magical Dependencies" of high level.

[Emberashh]

If the scifi is unexplainable, then it cannot be "hard" scifi.

Science can be intuitive (as a kind of protoscience that at least coheres with what is known to be scientifically true). And scifi can speculate about things that may or may not be possible, such as time travel or FTL (faster than light travel).

But "hard" means things that are scientific facts are made part of a scenario for a thought experiment.

Well I didn't say things shouldn't be explainable, just that it isn't worth it to focus on it.

The film Arrival for instance is as hard a scifi film as it gets. It doesn't waste time trying to be a textbook on its speculative science. Peter Watts novel Blindsight, which has vampires, only gives a general explanation of why they exist, but doesn't waste time trying to justify their existence by breaking down the exact evolutionary process that developed them.

Its "explained", but not really. Only enough to be reasonably plausible.

And in actual fantasy, the line for reasonably plausible is a lot more forgiving.

Ive described it before, but even in 5e as it exists (and even its harder mundaneity ancestors), just the fact that an ostensible normal human can fight a dragon in melee combat establishes a baseline well above real human capability, even if its mechanically unsatisfying.

That dragons exist at all frames fantasy towards a forgiving plausibility line.

The movie Reign of Fire, interestingly, goes the other direction though and arguably approaches hard scifi more than fantasy. The humans are genuinely human and dragons are as devastating to them as you'd expect, and the dragons were designed to be about the most realistic take on dragons that existed when it came out; a feat it accomplishes so well its Dragons have basically become the ancestors of all depictions of dragons since in film, tv, and video games.

 

[Yaarel]

Its "explained", but not really. Only enough to be reasonably plausible.

But that is when it stops being "hard".

It is still scientific speculation, of course. It is scifi.

But "hard" means demonstrable.


For comparison, I compared the Wikipedia article. The first line says, "Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic." That sounds about right to me. Namely, the accuracy. There is no waiving of explanation.

Hard scifi really can happen.

 

[Emberashh]

But that is when it stops being "hard".

It is still scientific speculation, of course. It is scifi.

But "hard" means demonstrable.


For comparison, I compared the Wikipedia article. The first line says, "Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic." That sounds about right to me. Namely, the accuracy. There is no waiving of explanation.

Hard scifi really can happen.

Accuracy doesn't imply 100%. A lot of hard scifi, from the classics on up to your modern stuff, hinges on the speculative and a lot of it you can't actially say "it can happen".

I mean, Jurassic Park (the novel) is hard scifi. Even when it was written, the idea that dinosaur DNA could survive to be used as it was was entirely fictional; it was an enabling device.

What made JP hard scifi is that what that device enabled was accurate; the dinosaurs were at the time the most accurate depiction put to screen or print.

Where you start to cross out of hard scifi is when not only accuracy has been handwaved, but logic and internal consistency, both of which are more important. Accuracy is flexible, but things have to follow logically and stay consistent. In JP, unintended until the sequel trilogy of films, its inaccuracies vis a vis dinosaurs can be attributed to the gaps in DNA filled by other animals, resulting in hybrid animals that aren't true to life but as close as possible.

Thats a plausible logical consequence of the enabling device thats consistent with the real concepts involved.

The opposite of this would just be straight technobabble ala Star Trek, where there might be actual jargon thrown around but its all practically gibberish, with little to no logic and no consistency with any of the real concepts invoked.

 

[Hussar]

If the scifi is unexplainable, then it cannot be "hard" scifi.

Science can be intuitive (as a kind of protoscience that at least coheres with what is known to be scientifically true). And scifi can speculate about things that may or may not be possible, such as time travel or FTL (faster than light travel).

But "hard" means things that are scientific facts are made part of a scenario for a thought experiment.

That is very much not true.

Sf absolutely can be hard so without trying to explain every little thing. See Allistair Reynolds, Robert Reed and Steven Baxter. These are three of the hardest SF writers in the business.

 

[Hussar]

On the point about Star Trek though. Couldn't be the answer to the whole "breaking a force effect"? You simply hit it so hard you ... reverse the polarity.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Dogs learn to speak Common, people flying. These things have been tossed around, and not just for PCs.

Every place I've seen these, it has only been as a counterpoint for why PCs martials should not have mythic abilities without "appropriate narrative justification ".

Near as I can tell these have not been separate.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Dogs learn to speak Common, people flying. These things have been tossed around, and not just for PCs.

And both are things that wouldn't really be even that unusual for a DnD world, because they are fairly blatantly common things to see in fantasy. Heck, Scooby-Doo lives in a modern world where we insist magic and monsters aren't real... AND HE'S A TALKING DOG!

I'm flabberghasted at how many people seem stunned, STUNNED I SAY, that their fantasy worlds might be fantastical.

 

[HammerMan]

Who says that? I've never heard that particular piece of circular logic before.

It is a joke from one of the dragon magazine comic strips. It might be dork tower or it might be knights of dinner table.

 

[HammerMan]

Does the fighter class have supernatural or magical abilities, outside of subclass?

So the fighter can’t have supernatural abailities becuse it doesn’t and it doesn't cause it can’t.
The line between what they can and can’t have is entirely made up.

 

[Emberashh]

On the point about Star Trek though. Couldn't be the answer to the whole "breaking a force effect"? You simply hit it so hard you ... reverse the polarity.

Like putting too much air in a baloon!

Funnily enough thats another white whale of mine. Developing a system of hard-ish technobabble that teaches people to intuitively speak in plausible technobabble to solve problems in a scifi RPG.