D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Neonchameleon]

Like "3.x was a point build system, the only problem was you only got 1 point?"

Pretty much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I've long known that people are trying to slander 4e fans and want to keep fighters down to what can be done by the nerds playing them.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I've seen stage conjuring called magic. I've seen Messi's football called magic. I've seen programming called magic. None of these are traditionally what is thought of as magic and they all exist in the real world.

What's wanted is a fighter that fits this larger than life world where dragons can fly without magic. It's the heroes of mythology. Not schlubs that run no faster than a first level wizard who dumped all their physical stats other than for two brief intervals per short rest.

And I say if you want PCs to exceed mundane limitations, that's fine. Just call it out.

You know, like 4e did.

 

[Remathilis]

Thieves didn't have that design goal in the TSR editions. The rogue is a different class.

Thieves design goal was something that demimumans could multi-class with that had unlimited level advancement when your primary class level capped.

3e rogues design goal was to save the wizard some gold by not using as many wands of knock and invisibility.

5e is the first time rogues felt like they had a solid niche. So of course we have to give all its toys to the fighter and reduce it back to being the trapfinder npc class.

 

[Scribe]

So what you want is for the fighter to be an outright muggle in a universe full of high powered magic? Why? How?

And if you don't want them to be magic by your definition you need to take away their hit points. Fighters can be dropped from orbit and are unlikely to die and will not break a single bone. Fighters are already larger than life in a way that you can define as magic even if "not traditional magic". Why do you want to turn them into helpless chumps, unable to take a blow or be near dragon breath or a fireball without suffering third degree burns because they do not fit the universe? Or are you fine with fighters being magic but "not traditional magic"?

I never said that.

I'm not the one with some existential crisis at the state of the Fighter. I'm aware that it can already survive things that would drop a normal human. I have trained and spared, and I'm 100% aware that what would actually stop a human, is already not accurately reflected in any capacity within the edition that has actual relevance.

I simply made an observation, and I'm not seeing it disproven here so far.

 

[MichaelSomething]

By playing any edition of D&D that's really D&D.

Take away endless cantrips!
Add back expensive material components!
Bring back d4 hit dice!
Multi round casting times!

 

[Remathilis]

Just so long as my fighter’s trained abilities don’t turn off from antimagic or need VSM components you guys can call their abilities whatever you want and insist ‘but what you’re doing is actually magic really no real mundane person could perform those feats’ all day long.

No ability of a monk turns off in antimagic. No bloodhunter ability needs VSM components. (Well, I guess technically they need your blood, which is part of the action to activate it). Both are magic. Let the fighter and rogue have the same types of abilities.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Take away endless cantrips!
Add back expensive material components!
Bring back d4 hit dice!
Multi round casting times!

Now maybe people will accept simply deleting the wizard instead of dealing with this again!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I simply made an observation, and I'm not seeing it disproven here so far.

I’m not sure where you even get the idea that “4e folks” want magic martials that aren’t called that.

Like even the more extraordinary suggestions folks are making aren’t magical, theyre just extraordinary. Those aren’t the same thing.

 

[Maxperson]

No.

Yes. I played it with multiple groups with dozens of players from 1st to 23rd level over dozens of campaigns spanning 2000 to 2019. It worked fine each and every time.

 

[Maxperson]

Like I said I had fun with my fighter. But I also out-damaged the rest of the party on a regular basis. Well, until about 15th level when wizards exponential growth made every other PC superfluous. But to get there? I'm not one to peruse the optimization boards so figuring it out was not simple.

It's just one of those things. I was tempted switch to PF at one point in the hopes that they had fixed the linear fighter exponential wizard issue 3E had but after chatting with people realized they had just doubled down on build complexity.

A certain part of me enjoyed the optimization side of things and I'm good at it, but I also accept that for a lot of people that complexity was a huge barrier to entry.

P.S. I forgot about power attack and the chart I figured out about how much to subtract from my attacks based on target AC (reduced by bonuses to hit of course). Like I said, fun but complex.

When my group decided that we were not going to switch over to 4e we took a look at Pathfinder. I had hoped that Pathfinder had tamped down a bit on 3e's power level, because I felt(and still feel) that it was a bit to high. Instead when I looked the Pathfinder books, I realized that not only had they not reduced the power level, they looked over at WotC and said, "Hold my beer."

I did end up buying a few Pathfinder books to cannibalize parts of for use in my games.