The reason fighters can't have nice things.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, that's because she is mary sue.

lol whut?

Mary Sues, boiled down to their essential essence, is what happens when a character takes a share of the spotlight in a way that A) ruins suspension of disbelief and B) is there to stroke the author's ego.

Wonder Woman's combination of powers would make her a Mary Sue if she was fighting, say, Batman's foes, but she either fights A) in a weird Greek mythology pastiche where all of her shit is nothing special, B) in the universe of the New Gods, or C) helping out whatever crazy challenges the JLA are up to. Yes, her character sheet is pretty long, but most of that stuff adds up to precisely dick. Being crafted by the five gods/Hades & Athena (depending on which continuity you listen to) is nothing special. It doesn't help her much when Sinestro or Cyborg Superman wants to stomp a mudhole in her back.

For her own adventures, she's actually quite normal. Some people even claim with some justification that she's underpowered compared to the rest of the team when she fights alongside Zatanna/Superman/Green Lantern. But Mary Sue? Puh-leeze.

[Zinegata]

I just got done playing final fantasy 13, and something came to me:

Wizards can remake reality on a whim, and noone bats a eye because that's what wizards do, but when a human fighter is jumping thirty stories vertically to slice at a bird...it just doesn't make any sense. in order to compete at those levels of power, you NEED some type of magical(reality-bending) ability, because reality is getting bent so much that not bending it puts you into the shit tier.

To those of you who have watched final fantasy advent children: what class and level would you put cloud at? Outside of some final fantasy universe where being cool actually is more tactically effective than...using tactics, non-magic people can no longer even pretend to compete once people are flying at will. It makes me wonder if the game designers really thought about this when making the classes.

*sighs and attempts to bump thread back to the original topic as opposed to wailing over things people don't like*

I'd just like to note that Cloud is technically a Gish. Final Fantasy VII characters can all employ magic and have their own mana pools. And since FFVII is also set in a world where technology has progressed to a fair degree, so jumping up 30 storeys is totally kosher (they can always say he got special anti-grav SOLDIER boots).

But yeah, fighters do eventually get reality-bending abilities in most RPGs. They either get big artifact swords (or uber technoguns), learn secret techniques, go Gish, and other stuff that gives them supernatural abilities. A lot of it is often explained (either in-game or in the manual), but it's not as "natural" as a Wizard simply blowing shit up because he's a Wizard.

[Josh_Kablack]

No, that's because she is mary sue.
By the way she is some sort of demigod or have blessings of five gods, whatsoever. Still her bio with super-beautiful (by the modern standards despite she is from ancient greece, what a coincidence) super strength, super agility super-whatever else, makes me sick.
If I want my non-spellcaster to be awesome is not equal "I want my character to be wet-dreams beautiful genius strategist with super-str-dex-con, immortality and no flaws except for inability to have children, what a tragedy, she never need this".

Wow.

There is more WRONG in compressed into that post than I've seen on the Den in like a year now.

Before I begin, I have yet to see any definition of "Mary Sue" that doesn't boil down to "character I don't like for reasons I can't define" - but that's a personal view, so I'll move on to stuff I can post links about:

1. She's a freakin' superhero in a comic book. Being a god or demigod is a valid power source in such media. Such characters get fight againt evil gods as a regular trope of the media

2. Being a superhero means you get to be super-human, often in more ways than one.

3. And frankly, modern standards of beauty are largely derived from the Hellenistic Ideal

4. Wonder Woman does have flaws. Chief among them being her lack of sales. I dunoo about you, but I've of the age where my wet dreams can hold bring in a respectable income.

And now moving on to actual gaming content.

5. In high level 3.x D&D, spellcasters largely do get to be super Str (Polymorph), super Con (Bear's Endurance + Righteous Might, super Dex (Cat's Grace, Int & Cha (Empowered Awaken cycling) and Wis (Owl's Wisdom) Plus Wish for inherent bonuses to all of them. They also get to be immortal (half-golem, lich, magic-jar, temporal stasis, clone, contingent ressurrection, simulacrum loops and well no flaws except having to sleep 8 hours inside their non-dimensional space which can only be entered via an aware perfectly warded against all enemies through Forbiddence. While Non-casters get to augment Str and Con with Barbarian Rage and otherwise depend on casters or equipment for stat bonuses and everything else. So yeah, saying "I want my 3rd ed D&D high level non-caster to be a wet-dreams beautiful genius strategist with super-str-dex-con-int-wis-cha, immortality, teleport, near-omnscience and no flaws except for ones that don't matter" is pretty much the same thing as saying "I want to play a non-caster who has abilities equal to the abilities of a caster in this system at these levels"

[K]

I think people are missing my point.

Batman's power level is equal to a superpowered guy because he can fight superpowered things, but the flavor is that he isn't superpowered. It's a lot like the old psionic rules where magic would affect magic, but psionics would be their own power source and punch right through magic. Different power sources have their own unique conventions.

Regardless of the flavor, a statted out Batman would have abilities as powerful as a similar level character. He'd have a bunch of abilities that do nonmagical flavored things as powerful as eyebeams and being rock hard. Then, when you make the comic you get Superman being tossed through buildings by Darksied but somehow Batman only ever gets hit by glancing hits from debris that Darkseid throws up when he misses Batman. Separate but equal powers.

As a character in a comic, we never see Batman's stat sheet. All we know is that he uses a different power source, so things he does that seem like plot points or normal RPGing choices are actually his abilities at work; for example Doc Fate may use divination and Superman uses super senses to get information, Batman uses Detective to get information. Normally, you'd let the players unravel the mystery but in Batman's case his character just gets to automatically deduce things.

In an RPG like DnD, you can't really do Batman because his power really is "always makes the right tactical choice during movement that leads him to being 5' out of an enemies reach" during melee combat which is a result that RPGs generally only give to player decisions and not a character's abstracted abilities.

The player vs character is the crux of the problem. I mean, no one minds if my making good player choices where my character ends up winning an encounter, but they do care if my character gets to auto-win at things other players have to have good tactical and strategic skills to do.

So Superman could be done by DnD because he is expected to take hits and get tossed around and shoot eye beams, but everything he does is limited by options available within the plot. Batman can't be done because Batman's abilities affect the plot directly so that he can avoid blows and damage enemies and DnD doesn't allow that.

That being said, adding more abstraction to the game makes Batman more viable. Simulationist games can't do Batman at all. I mean, Batman is immortal because the plot won't let him die and Superman is immortal because he's an alien god, but at the end of the day a simulationst game wants you to tally up all the equipment in your backpack for weigh on a spreedsheet and not directly affect the plot.

[Zinegata]

So.... Batman is essentially a gimped character but with an incredible player? Hence it cannot actually be fixed by changing mechanics?

And hence this entire debate is ultimately futile?

[8headeddragon]

He's got an incredible player and far more money than anyone else has which he spends crafting items that keep him relevant as "just" a healthy genius.

Batman has always been an awful example of anything D&D related whether the discussion is alignment or "badass normals" or what.

Anyway, the flavor, the matter of how the guy with the sword keeps up with the spellcasters is at the heart of the conflict. It's there that tastes begin to vary and people begin to squabble. So much and for so long that I think the setting needs to establish one (or some?) models for how it should be.

[Princess]

I have yet to see any definition of "Mary Sue" that doesn't boil down to "character I don't like for reasons I can't define"

Mary Sue is in particular overperfect character. I don't like Spiderman, but he is definetly not marty stu.

1. Sooo what? Supergirl and Power girl are superheroines too. Wonderwoman is better than both of them in every aspect and don't have something like cryptonite vulnerability.

2. Sure it is. But being super human in every aspect is quite a bell.

3. Lol. Hellenistic Ideal may be somehow related, but it's 21th century now, not renaissance. Well, let's see. Venus do not have long legs, her waist is far from 60 cm, overall she is overweight by modern standards (in ancient times famines were common problem, so having weight was considered as being healthy. In modern times we suffer from obesity, standards has changed). Now look at any Wonder Woman image - there is definitely no resemblance to Venus. I assure you, if DC will portray Wonder Woman appearance as one of Venus it will be catastrophe (not mentioning overweight lobby) and lot's of WTF.
Ah, and now girls with Venus-like appearance are not considered beutiful.

4. It is not flaw by design.

5. Ok.

spellcasters largely do get to be super Str (Polymorph), super Con (Bear's Endurance + Righteous Might, super Dex (Cat's Grace, Int & Cha (Empowered Awaken cycling) and Wis (Owl's Wisdom)

Polymorph is usually banned, Righteous Might is Clr spell, Awaken Cycling gives you only Cha, and this is again rules loop which will be banned.

Plus Wish for inherent bonuses to all of them.

Sor/Wiz spell, 150k exp required for all 6 stats.

They also get to be immortal (half-golem, lich, magic-jar, temporal stasis, clone, contingent ressurrection

It is not immortality, it's just "harder to kill".

Yes, spellcasters are better, even without loophole tricks you mentioned. But still they usually have only one decent mental stat. So my druid may be able to tear raging barbarians, and it may have super-high wisdom because of Owl's Insight (+10 Insight Wisdom), but it's cha and int will be dumped unless I play freak who always live in wild shape, thus dumping physical stats in favour of mental.

And yes, as for me, "to make fighters as good as spellcasters" is to give them options, not to make them Wonder Womans - because Wonder Woman concept character will definitely will be named marysueish.

[A Man In Black]

stuff

Please stop talking about Wonder Woman. You're completely in left field factually, and it's only hurting whatever the hell point you're trying to make.

[Prak]

The only real point one could make with Wonder Woman in any current discussion on these boards is in the Being a Good DM thread, about not shoving your fetishes into the game, and even then it's not a particularly great case maker, because Wonder Woman works.

[FatR]

Mary Sue is in particular overperfect character.

Standards of perfection depend on genre. So this definition is useless. Mary Sue is either a blatant author's self-insert (the closest this term has to an objective definition); or a character that warps the world around itself and can ignore the genre conventions/hog the spotlight/upstage other characters through the power of authorwank.

[K]

So.... Batman is essentially a gimped character but with an incredible player? Hence it cannot actually be fixed by changing mechanics?

And hence this entire debate is ultimately futile?

No. Batman is not even making player decisions in DnD as we know it in most encounters.

So take a battle: character make moves, count squares to figure out ranges for weapons, etc. Batman doesn't take moves or count squares, like at all. His abilities put him whereever on the battlefield he needs to be to not get hit, so that entire aspect of being a player is on auto-pilot for him.

And that's a huge departure. I mean, people accept that in a movie if you need a griffon to fly across the battlefield in a certain way so that you can grab it's leg and carry you to the other side so you can stab the villain that such a thing is possible and even realistic. The problem is that for Batman, his ability specifically has to let his player summon plot circumstances that allow that to happen for his character, and that's where you lose people because in RPGs like DnD you can only affect the plot in ways outlined by the DM. Directly controlling the plot is foreign to DnD.

DnD is a simulationist reality where you get hit all the time, meaning as a badass normal your abilities cannot be modelled by DnD in a satisfying way.

Basically, you'd need a different game to do Batman. Maybe Feng Shui. Of course, you could just do a 4e where you just handwave everything and assign a random name made out of action verbs and adjectives, but in the end that makes for boring and uninspired play.

[JonSetanta]

Batman with a yellow lantern ring is satisfying.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Batman with a yellow lantern ring is satisfying.

[Zinegata]

No. Batman is not even making player decisions in DnD as we know it in most encounters.

So take a battle: character make moves, count squares to figure out ranges for weapons, etc. Batman doesn't take moves or count squares, like at all. His abilities put him whereever on the battlefield he needs to be to not get hit, so that entire aspect of being a player is on auto-pilot for him.

Eh? Just because Batman (fluff-wise) doesn't count squares, doesn't mean that the (real-life) player controlling the scenes behind the scenes isn't. Those two need not happen concurrently.

Different players do in fact have different levels in tactical skill. Some people just don't count whether a slight adjustment in position could be the difference between getting hit or making an opponent waste their turn entirely.

Now, of course, it may seem dissonant for an average Fighter with 10 Int and Wis to emply better tactics than a Wizard simply because the Fighter's player knows what he's doing (while the Wizard is off casting sleep against undead enemies). But I think that is very much one such situation wherein "Badass Normals" emerge.

So I don't think it boils down to "You have to play Mouseguard", wherein players have an actual ability to reshape the plot to suit their needs. It's really just an inherent part of the game wherein some people can take gimped characters and do amazing things with them because the other players don't fully know what they're doing.

[PoliteNewb]

No. Batman is not even making player decisions in DnD as we know it in most encounters.

So take a battle: character make moves, count squares to figure out ranges for weapons, etc. Batman doesn't take moves or count squares, like at all. His abilities put him whereever on the battlefield he needs to be to not get hit, so that entire aspect of being a player is on auto-pilot for him.

Eh? Just because Batman (fluff-wise) doesn't count squares, doesn't mean that the (real-life) player controlling the scenes behind the scenes isn't.

Yes, it does. That's the whole point.
No player has the tactical skill of Batman. So if the CHARACTER is going to, his tactical decisions cannot be based on those of his player. They need to be inherent in the mechanics.

You can have a non-superstrong player controlling a superstrong character...because how much your guy can lift is governed by mechanics, not player decisions. If you're going to have Batman-level tactical genius in a character, it has to be mechanically supported, not dependent on player decisions.

Which is why simulationist play cannot model a Batman character accurately. Because then you would have Batman the genius making bonehead decisions because he's being played by Todd the Fratboy.

[Zinegata]

Again though... wouldn't that same logic allow a genius player make an otherwise normal character punch far above its weight class, and hence earn the title "Badass Normal"?

[TheWorid]

Again though... wouldn't that same logic allow a genius player make an otherwise normal character punch far above its weight class, and hence earn the title "Badass Normal"?

Yes, but apparently most of the people in this thread can't stand the idea of player skill being involved in how well a character does.

I support giving "mastermind" types and the like powers that abstractly represent their ability to plan and control the situation, because all character stats are abstractions in the first place. I will not, however, put up with "plot manipulation" crap where the player can make things pop in and out of existence because they feel like it.

[JonSetanta]

Catharz, that's just synergy in action.

The perfect item with the perfect user.
Also helps that it (probably) can't be removed by others unless the wearer is dead. It's practically part of the character.

[Nerding Out]
I wonder how a Lantern Batman would fare against Darkseid.
[/Nerding Out]

[PoliteNewb]

Again though... wouldn't that same logic allow a genius player make an otherwise normal character punch far above its weight class, and hence earn the title "Badass Normal"?

Maybe. But K seems to be saying (and I agree) that Batman is not a valid character archetype unless anyone can play him to full capacity. And your interpretation, by definition, does not allow that. So it's irrelevant.

Also, it's hard for a genius player to make a Str 10 character who can lift a boulder, no matter how smart they are. Because generally, the mechanics don't support it.

Yes, but apparently most of the people in this thread can't stand the idea of player skill being involved in how well a character does.

I tend to frown on it, especially if you're interested in game balance...since it's hard to balance "how well a character does" when it's not constant from one player to another.

There's obviously a sweet spot between "player skill is irrelevant" and "player skill determines everything". But characters that are strongly skill-based tend to need a system that leans more toward the former.

[Zinegata]

I was under the impression that what's being debated is the Badass Normal trope, and that K only brought Batman up as an example of said trope (and people have also questioned whether or not Batman even fits - given that he has unlimited wealth and can call on weapons like orbital laser cannons in the DCAU).

Therefore, while it may not apply to a specific interpretation of Batman, it certainly doesn't make it invalid for the Badass Normal trope.

[CCarter]

Catharz, that's just synergy in action.

The perfect item with the perfect user.
Also helps that it (probably) can't be removed by others unless the wearer is dead. It's practically part of the character.

[Nerding Out]
I wonder how a Lantern Batman would fare against Darkseid.
[/Nerding Out]

In the actual DC Heroes RPG?
[Darkseid uses Continuum Control. Batman disintegrates]

Omni-Power is based on 1/2 WILL (Batman has 12). By contrast Superman has a 20 WILL; actual Green Lanterns vary between about an 18 (Guy Gardner) and 25 (Hal Jordan). A character can bump ratings as far as double spending Hero Points.
By Contrast Darkseid's Continuum Control is 30, and is Warp rating could also possibly be used offensively (e.g. to drop an opponent somewhere inconvenient in intergalactic space) and is the highest stat in the game at 65.

[Prak]

Catharz, that's just synergy in action.

The perfect item with the perfect user.
Also helps that it (probably) can't be removed by others unless the wearer is dead. It's practically part of the character.

[Nerding Out]
I wonder how a Lantern Batman would fare against Darkseid.
[/Nerding Out]

Well, seeing as how he usually kicks Darkseid's ass without "powers", he'd probably nigh-murder the fucker, wouldn't he?

[8headeddragon]

Also, it's hard for a genius player to make a Str 10 character who can lift a boulder, no matter how smart they are. Because generally, the mechanics don't support it.

Well, the way Batman would do it is by using a bat shaped Ring of Telekinesis...

Also as far as this example is concerned, if we bump the scale of the challenge up just a little bit, the creative player (or one that's been on the internet, anyway) would probably do something with a Hulking Hurler to lift things a character of his STR shouldn't be able to pick up.

So at best the "Badass Normal" is a veteran player voluntarily undertaking a particular build/challenge and at worst there's no such thing because of whatever they're doing will be different but nowhere near 'normal'. One way or the other, it's definitely not something that can be granted as a class ability for anybody to use.

[K]

Again though... wouldn't that same logic allow a genius player make an otherwise normal character punch far above its weight class, and hence earn the title "Badass Normal"?

Maybe. But K seems to be saying (and I agree) that Batman is not a valid character archetype unless anyone can play him to full capacity. And your interpretation, by definition, does not allow that. So it's irrelevant.

Also, it's hard for a genius player to make a Str 10 character who can lift a boulder, no matter how smart they are. Because generally, the mechanics don't support it.

Ok, you still don't get it.

Batman's player doesn't make choices, or not many at all. His "powers" look like the result of successful player choices, but they aren't actually the product of successful player choices.

So Batman's player doesn't figure out how to kill the puzzle monster. He has an ability that not only figure it out, but makes it so he happens to have the correct weapon on hand too. He literally has Shrodendingers Utility Belt, where items only exist when he needs to pull them out.

Batman's player doesn't do anything much at all. His moves and tactics in combat are already pre-decided. At best, he gets a round-by-round choice of overall objectives. He literally doesn't need a player because in action he is more like a DM-penis self-insertion character who doesn't even roll dice.

Batman can't be hit by weapons. His plot-warping powers won't allow it. He will find the weapon that can destroy the villain of the week, because where other people get eyebeams and mystic powers and must play within the plot, he gets to play with the plot.

And there are no plot-warping powers in DnD. That's why you can't do Batman in DnD.

[Zinegata]

K, what you're trying to say is that you can't do it consistently unless the ruleset supports it.

Nobody is denying that.

But again, you're talking about a very specific interpretation of Batman as a character, when what I'm ultimately aiming for is "How do we get Badass Normals in D&D?" (along with a lot of people, otherwise you wouldn't have people saying Batman is a terrible example). Don't think of Batman in the midst of Infinite Crisis where he's going up against Darkseid, but think of the Batman from Year One where he has very real physical limitations.

(Besides which, Batman is saved as much by his gadgets as the plot warping around him - giving weight to the argument that Batman may not be entirely in the "normal" category when he has unlimited wealth and access to orbital laser weaponry)

--------

I'm arguing that with a veteran player - even playing a game like D&D - can exploit his knowledge of the rules and tactics to make his gimped character punch way above his weight class. It's as simple as knowing to grapple a tiny-sized enemy who has been tearing the rest of the party to shreds by casting spells.

And that this pretty much constitutes the "Badass Normal" experience for a very large number of players.

Can this be done consistently? Nope. There will be certain (if not many) situations that don't have a clever solution. But that's the point of being a Badass Normal for some people. It's a challenge.