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fool_of_sound posted:The problem is more that D&D mostly assumes that anything beyond realistic human capabilities MUST be magic or some other supernatural power. You can have non-magical fighters, but they should be like Hercules and Beowulf, not some average knight. I'd say Hercules and Beowulf are magic, just that their magic source is "Being a hero/demigod", and their "spells" (we can't call them powers or grogs will have an aneurysm) are poo poo like diverting a river in an afternoon. Roughly 80% of crappy 80s fantasy movies have some riff on, "The magic was inside you all along!" - this isn't really any different.
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Mar 18, 2019 18:51
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I wish I would have been in a group where wizards didn't just win but unfortunately through 7th grade until the end of high school one of our players was my friends little brother who transitioned from making goofy characters to power gaming. He would roll up casters using weird classes and races from splatbooks and Dragon and it would just be the Josh show. He rolled up a martial guy once and at level 1 had three attacks. He got legitimately furious when someone out performed him in combat and went back to casters.
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Mar 18, 2019 18:57
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Gort posted:Just make everyone magic. "Guy who can't do magic when everyone else can" isn't a niche we really need to be protecting. It's a boring cop-out when characters who aren't "magic" (in the bullshit arbitrary meaning of that word that D&D uses) should be equally capable of performing superhuman feats as some dude "casting spells," instead of bowing to the dumb groggy "but non-magical people have to suck!" logic. e; and I'd much rather play someone who is just superhumanly trained with a weapon than a dude who casts a bunch of self-buffs every morning so they can fight good, because arbitrary bullshit D&D reasons demand that only spellcasters can have agency. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 19:22
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Coolness Averted posted:to this day talking to friends with (bad) opinions about d&d they always regard tome of battle classes as brokenly OP, just like psionics (especially the psychic knife or whatever class), monks, and anything that dared to give things to do non-spellcasters. It's funny because nearly everything they identify as broken usually is broken, just not in the direction they think Your friends may very well be trapped in some time pocket of bad D&D takes from 2006. Do they also think the Warlock is op because it can blast all day?
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Mar 18, 2019 19:45
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The problem with this lane of thought is that "magic" in D&D is actually extremely specific. It's "poo poo the spellcaster does with spells."
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Mar 18, 2019 19:46
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ProfessorCirno posted:The problem with this lane of thought is that "magic" in D&D is actually extremely specific. It's "poo poo the spellcaster does with spells." I don't think there is much difference between supernatural abilities and magic in D&D
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Mar 18, 2019 19:48
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I don't want to be a magician throwing fireballs or a priest praying for holy power, i just wanna be a guy who got really good with a rifle
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Mar 18, 2019 19:53
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Magic means, "anything a person does that isn't completely mundane," to a lot of people who've played a lot of 3.X and I don't think that's entirely coincidence
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Mar 18, 2019 19:57
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Nuns with Guns posted:Your friends may very well be trapped in some time pocket of bad D&D takes from 2006. Do they also think the Warlock is op because it can blast all day? no way! they love modern systems too! like pathfinder and 5e  -and yes 3.5 warlock goes in their list of bad takes I mostly just play board games with those folks, or don't play anything with them these days.
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Mar 18, 2019 20:01
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Just don't have fighters and make a game about magical god-kings. Eventually I'll release my card based dnd4e / ars magicka heartbreaker
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Mar 18, 2019 20:55
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Man, I remember hating 3.5 Warlock and thinking it was OP at the time. Mostly because I was playing an archery fighter, and it did everything I could do only better.
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Mar 18, 2019 21:02
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Liquid Communism posted:Man, I remember hating 3.5 Warlock and thinking it was OP at the time. It benefits the ruling classes to set the lower tier classes against one another.
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Mar 18, 2019 22:01
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Darwinism posted:Magic means, "anything a person does that isn't completely mundane," to a lot of people who've played a lot of 3.X and I don't think that's entirely coincidence True, but among some segment of grog that seems to have ossified into "hitting things with a sword must be explicitly non-magical". Book of 9 swords had some of the classes be rather mystical/supernatural in how they did their special things, and people still howled about how it was terrible that martial-type classes had things to do. I'd say it was generational, but sword mages and fighter/mages and whatnot have been around since the demihuman class/races in basic. So I'm not sure what prompts that particular lineage of stupid.
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Mar 18, 2019 22:50
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The people who hated Book of Nine Swords didn't hate that it was magical, they were totally fine with the Hexblade and Duskblade. They hated that most of it was explicitly not magical. While some of the maneuvers were magic, most were Extraordinary (meaning beyond normal human, but not magical). But what most of them really hated was the fact that you could just keep using maneuvers over and over all day long (there was a fairly big overlap between these people and the ones that thought the Warlock was OP). Because for some reason being able to use an ability repeatedly is super overpowered, regardless of the content of that ability.
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Mar 18, 2019 23:09
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I mean I guess if your spell asters are taking super inefficient blasting/healing spells and nothing else then some of the Bo9S stuff or Warlock might feel like they're better than full casters. I remember when my middle school group and I were first learning 3.5 we didnt really notice the magic/non-magic discrepancy until we started experimenting with non-healbot/blastbot casters. It helped that we were following older modules the GMs dad gave him, so we knew that if you tried to rest and regain spells when you weren't supposed to you'd get ambushed in the night.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:25
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fool_of_sound posted:I mean I guess if your spell asters are taking super inefficient blasting/healing spells and nothing else then some of the Bo9S stuff or Warlock might feel like they're better than full casters. I remember when my middle school group and I were first learning 3.5 we didnt really notice the magic/non-magic discrepancy until we started experimenting with non-healbot/blastbot casters. I accidentally stumbled into caster dominance playing Dragonlance as a Red Robe and just annihilating encounters at first with Sleep, because Raistlin, and then Hypnotic Pattern, and it just snowballs from there. (3E didn't invent caster dominance, 2E was there already just martials had more room to be good...ish)
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Mar 19, 2019 00:44
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Yeah ours came when one of the other players said "hey you know my paladin is really awful, but I was looking at clerics and thing I could make a cleric who fights instead" and then we all started branching out from the base archetypes and nobody wanted to play a fighter again.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:48
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senrath posted:But what most of them really hated was the fact that you could just keep using maneuvers over and over all day long (there was a fairly big overlap between these people and the ones that thought the Warlock was OP). Because for some reason being able to use an ability repeatedly is super overpowered, regardless of the content of that ability. This kind of mentality was carried over into Pathfinder, where Paizo started putting daily limits on everything ... even if the daily limit was set to a number that a player would practically never hit in the course of play. Or, alternatively, anything that was given at-will status did so with a lot of caveats, such as the Kineticist class, which ends up being a poor (poor!) man's Warlock. Also, this sort of thing gets brought up in the context of the few people who review the Path of War content. I forget what proper noun they use to describe it, but basically, the idea is similar to the "bag of rats" - if you bring a bunch of chickens with you or whatever, and you throw one down on the ground and initiate combat with it in order to use your maneuvers, can you come up with an effect that you can exploit? If the answer is yes, they dock points from their impression of the content.
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Mar 19, 2019 03:57
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Andrast posted:I don't think there is much difference between supernatural abilities and magic in D&D Darwinism posted:Magic means, "anything a person does that isn't completely mundane," to a lot of people who've played a lot of 3.X and I don't think that's entirely coincidence Right, but "supernatural abilities" are all expressed as spells. It's one of those things that's completely and absolutely hosed up and you don't notice it right until you do. Genies don't grant wishes - they just get access to the wizard Wish spell. Which means, if it's not a spell, it's not allowed to be supernatural.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:18
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ProfessorCirno posted:Right, but "supernatural abilities" are all expressed as spells. This isn't entirely true. There's a separate tag for Spell-like Abilities and Supernatural Abilities, like dragon breath. It's largely true though.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:22
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Even then, a lot of Su abilities are "This is exactly the same as spell X, but it can't be dispelled because it's supernatural." Edit: Like, I understand the usefulness of going "we've already written a spell that does what we want, so we'll just give to the creature as an SLA/SU", the problem is that it ended up being very much "rules as physics"ed into being "spells define everything" instead of "this was a useful shorthand". senrath fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 04:40
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fool_of_sound posted:This isn't entirely true. There's a separate tag for Spell-like Abilities and Supernatural Abilities, like dragon breath. It's largely true though. aren't supernatural abilities just spells without the casting requirements that everyone already ignores anyway?
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Mar 19, 2019 05:07
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S.J. posted:aren't supernatural abilities just spells without the casting requirements that everyone already ignores anyway? Spell-like Abilities mimic specific spells. Supernatural Abilities typically do not; again, dragon breath is supernatural because it's magical in nature, but doesn't mimic a spell.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:14
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S.J. posted:aren't supernatural abilities just spells without the casting requirements that everyone already ignores anyway? Even ignoring the fact that probably fewer people ignored the casting requirements than you think, no. Supernatural abilities in 3.PF are a catchall "This is a magic ability of some sort, it ignores spell resistance, it cannot be dispelled, and it cannot be countered." They range from "literally a spell, but with the changes listed above" to "a strange ability literally one unique creature has." I think you're confusing them with spell-like abilities, which are literally "a spell, but without any of the components." Also most people probably didn't ignore the casting requirements. Unless you're counting the silly fluff material components some spells had, which were explicitly designed to be ignored (via spell component pouch or Eschew Materials).
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Mar 19, 2019 05:15
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Oh right, I always got the two names mixed up. I was thinking spell-like
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Mar 19, 2019 05:19
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fool_of_sound posted:This isn't entirely true. There's a separate tag for Spell-like Abilities and Supernatural Abilities, like dragon breath. It's largely true though. but it's a deliberate feature added in 3rd. They wanted everything to largely be running on 'the same system' rather than having weird subtables for how each class works. It was Monte's Monkey Paw for "make everyone a wizard,' in that nearly everything that wasn't mundane (you still kept the weird subsystems and table for poo poo like lifting, grappling, and parlaying) became a spell and worked off the same model.
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Mar 19, 2019 07:03
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I know it's been a while, I just remember everything either being "a spell" or "basically a spell, but"
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Mar 19, 2019 07:45
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Ex and Su have tons of overlap in 3E, too, because they have no consistent idea what counts as a creature's innate abilities and a creature having powers. Stuff like the balor's Death Throes (suicide bomb) being Ex and its flaming whip with special rules being Ex but also having a Su ability that just says "it has a vorpal sword that like, looks really cool man"
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Mar 19, 2019 08:44
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I really hate the "only [Magic-Users] can do special things while [Fighting-Men] are bound to the strict laws of real-world physics" thing. Like if any nerd can spend a few years in school reading books and learning to wave a stick the right way to throw a fireball that blows up a squad of troops then someone who spends the same amount of time training should be able to cut a squad of troops in half with one stroke of their sword. Most of the stuff in a standard D&D-like monster manual doesn't exactly follow the laws of physics either so just let everything be magic or have the ability to use the equivalent of the game world's magic (psionics, ancient terraforming nanites, midi-chlorians, whatever the gently caress) to do cool stuff.
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Mar 19, 2019 09:31
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It's unrealistic to be able to Full Attack all day. You should be able to use your iterative attacks 1/day when you gain your first at level 6, up to 3/day when you gain your third, assuming a full BAB class. It's just physics.
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Mar 19, 2019 09:40
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Hit points are meat. If you kill enough goblins to attain level 2 you double your body mass, like in real life
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Mar 19, 2019 09:42
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90s Cringe Rock posted:It's unrealistic to be able to Full Attack all day. You should be able to use your iterative attacks 1/day when you gain your first at level 6, up to 3/day when you gain your third, assuming a full BAB class. Sadly enough, if you balanced it like wizard spells you'd probably end up with a more powerful fighter with this approach. BattleMaster posted:Hit points are meat. If you kill enough goblins to attain level 2 you double your body mass, like in real life I'd love to see this kind of amoeba-warrior written up as a full class/race.
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Mar 19, 2019 09:43
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Gort posted:Sadly enough, if you balanced it like wizard spells you'd probably end up with a more powerful fighter with this approach.
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Mar 19, 2019 09:47
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One faintly interesting approach I saw in a third-party supplement was to change Fighter combat feats such that they'd come with a thrice-per-day limit on effects that were more powerful. That is, if you took Improved Trip, you could just automatically knock a monster prone, three times per day, on top of what Improved Trip normally does.
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Mar 19, 2019 09:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:One faintly interesting approach I saw in a third-party supplement was to change Fighter combat feats such that they'd come with a thrice-per-day limit on effects that were more powerful. I kind of like that idea, except for the main problem of just turning feats into another spell list that Wizards also get access to. Like it actually addresses the issue that martials get no declarative effects which is a lot more than most 'solutions' to that problem
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Mar 19, 2019 16:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:One faintly interesting approach I saw in a third-party supplement was to change Fighter combat feats such that they'd come with a thrice-per-day limit on effects that were more powerful. it would be neat if they broke stuff into different uses based on how powerful the ability was, like some base stuff really could be used all day, other things maybe you get 3-6 per day (you know roughly once per fight) and really powerful stuff is only once per day. Can't see why d&d never tried giving all classes something like that
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Mar 19, 2019 17:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:Also, this sort of thing gets brought up in the context of the few people who review the Path of War content. I forget what proper noun they use to describe it, but basically, the idea is similar to the "bag of rats" - if you bring a bunch of chickens with you or whatever, and you throw one down on the ground and initiate combat with it in order to use your maneuvers, can you come up with an effect that you can exploit? If the answer is yes, they dock points from their impression of the content. Is that related to the Chicken Infested flaw? People used to theorycraft 3e D&D builds using that Dragon Magazine flaw. It always seemed like it was in good fun though, and iirc one build involved dual wielding chickens as improvised weapons.
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Mar 19, 2019 17:28
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Nuns with Guns posted:Is that related to the Chicken Infested flaw? People used to theorycraft 3e D&D builds using that Dragon Magazine flaw. It always seemed like it was in good fun though, and iirc one build involved dual wielding chickens as improvised weapons. no, it's more like, if you have a power like this: quote:Enduring Crane Strike you could theoretically keep a bag of rats or chickens or whatever other rodent or pest in your bags, then whenever you need health, you let out a rat, chicken, etc., attack it with this thing, and then do it over and over again until you're healed up
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Mar 19, 2019 17:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:no, it's more like, if you have a power like this: Yep. And guess which edition definitely solved the bag of rats issue for healing by implementing a cap on the number of heals a character could receive per day? If you guessed the only good edition, you are right!
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Mar 19, 2019 18:25
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Jimbozig posted:Yep. And guess which edition definitely solved the bag of rats issue for healing by implementing a cap on the number of heals a character could receive per day? If you guessed the only good edition, you are right! nah that wasn't the solution to the bag of rats issue (because you could still bag of rats with stuff like cleric at-wills and encounter powers that gave small hp gains without surges) the real solution was in the DMG for that edition: Talk to your players and tell them stuff like that wouldn't fly and ask why they felt they needed to do that stuff and ensure everyone felt you were playing fair/that they didn't need to do cheesy things like that which violates the spirit of the game and themes you're trying to evoke edit: I also think bag of rats was also used as an example for stuff like greater cleave shenanigans to ensure you got to attack all nearby enemies every round Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 18:38
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