The reason why fighters will never have nice things.

[K]

I mean, if Inuyasha is any indicator, the BBEG can raise the dead, shoots blasts, control demons, stab people, create wards, and dispels magic.

In Inuyasha, Naraku can pretty much do whatever he wants because he's the antagonist and can do whatever is demanded by the author for a given episode. But the antagonists all have much more narrowly defined schticks and don't necessarily have a perfect ability to handle every situation. Characters in Bleach and Naruto have more powers in their repertoire, but they are still predominately defined by the powers that tie into their character concept (omnipowerful DBZ-style antagonists and protagonists not withstanding). A melee warrior in an anime-flavored FRPG is going to have powers related to their primary schtick (cutting people up with swords) and a handful of supplementary powers to help offset the weaknesses of their chosen theme (Flash Steps, Wind Scars, Regeneration, etc.)....

Let me cut you off there because that is not how it works, in my humble opinion.

Anime tends to break down pure melee vs. melee OR spellcaster vs. spellcaster. I mean, Afro-samurai or Claymore is straight stabby guys vs stabby guys. Inuyasha has everyone shooting high-end blasting regardless of whether they happen to be holding a sword (Inuyasha) or not (Naraku), though the NPCs that tag along with Inuyasha have one-note powers of various sorts. Naruto seems to be pure spellcasting too.

The only close version of a middle ground I've seen is Fullmetal Alchemist, but then it tends to be multi-classed stabby/blasters (the Elric Brothers) vs. blasters(other alchemists) or stabbies (chimera).

Sadly, I haven't watched Bleach. Just couldn't get into it, but give me a few days and I'll catch a few episodes on Hulu or Netflix.

These are the reasons why people don't trust anime. Either the stabbies end up getting enough spellcaster to make the spellcasters feel small in the pants, or everyone ends up a spellcaster. Ideally, you'd get a stabbie vs spellcaster universe somewhere in anime and then we could port that to DnD, but it just hasn't happened yet. I mean, even shitty anime like Sailor Moon is just a bunch of spellcasters.

I mean, I could get into a Claymore vs. Inuyasha universe, but I haven't seen it yet.

[FatR]

What you see K, is the simple effect of "You must be this high to compete" in action, in a medium from a country where authors do not feel they should explicitly fellate VAHs/DMFs. I mean, does the fact that you need to have loads of superstrength, superendurance and superspeed to honestly contribute to the Justice League OR to oppose it bothers you?

As about anime/manga with clear divide between fighters and spellcasters, most works that emulate classical fantasy to an extent have it (from Berserk manga to ViolinistOfHameln manga). One side of the divide tends to be far more poweful/useful, compared to other, but, well, this tend to be true for practically all fantasy works out there.

[tzor]

I mean, does the fact that you need to have loads of superstrength, superendurance and superspeed to honestly contribute to the Justice League OR to oppose it bothers you?

Ironcially, it was the opposite that bothered me. Just glancing at the "wonder twins" used to make me want to puke. And seriously, how does Aquaman justify his position among heroes that are literally orders of magnitude above him. (I breathe water and talk to fish ... yea right.)

I don't think anime is the way to go for fighters. You have to really look at the other genre across the sea, the sometimes insane world of Kung Fu movies. You can see everything from realistic to the completely jaw dropping suspension of disbelief moves that are almost too bizzare to be true (because they are too bizzare and they aren't true).

[sabs]

It's the Justice League.

My Problem with the Justice League is that:
Superman, WonderWoman, and Green Lantern are literally 3 orders of magnitude more buff than the rest.
Flash and Jon the Martian are semi-cool and believably powerful.
Green Arrow and Batman are fucking awesome, but basically humans with a cool shtick.

And all the others are chumps

[Parthenon]

Wait, you're saying that Jonn Jonzz is weaker than Wonder Woman? Apart from the weakness to fire which is mostly a phobia, he's about as powerful as Superman. He's often written to be just as strong, almost as fast, can shapeshift and is psychic.

And Aquaman is always written shittily. He's tougher than Wonder Woman, just as strong, tough enough to swim to the bottom of the Marianas Trench (you know, the place thats three times harder to get to than the motherfucking moon), can see in all but pitch black, gets sonar, can breathe underwater and as a party trick also gets to talk to water creatures. The only thing Wonder Woman is better at is having an invisible plane (*cough*bullshit*cough*), the magical lasso, actual combat training and a craving for bondage. If Batman took Aquaman aside for a couple of weeks of intensive training he'd fuck her shit up. I'd rather have a competently written Aquaman on my side than most of the DC superheros.

But yeah, the rest are chumps. I mean, Hawkman? What the fuck? His power is flight? The thing that 3/5 of the rest get as an addon? Black Canary is the leader?

[sabs]

In the later comics, WonderWoman is basically Super-Girl without the special eye modules.

She can fly (they got rid of the plane)
She can go into space without a helmet/suit.
She's super strong (how superstrong is questionable.)
She gets punched by Doomsday and keeps on going several times.
She's got super-awesome martial training of doom.

Aquaman suffers from people don't know how to write him.. so he seems chump like usually. Fine I'll move Aquaman up to the Flash Tier.

Jon always strikes me as mediocre, but perhaps thats' because I haven't followed his shit. I'll move him up into Superman territory if you like

[Guyr Adamantine]

In the later comics, WonderWoman is basically Super-Girl without the special eye modules.

She can fly (they got rid of the plane)
She can go into space without a helmet/suit.
She's super strong (how superstrong is questionable.)
She gets punched by Doomsday and keeps on going several times.
She's got super-awesome martial training of doom.

Aquaman suffers from people don't know how to write him.. so he seems chump like usually. Fine I'll move Aquaman up to the Flash Tier.

Jon always strikes me as mediocre, but perhaps thats' because I haven't followed his shit. I'll move him up into Superman territory if you like

The MM suffers from psychic backlash every other episode so he doesn't guess the villain's plan before it's dramatically appropriate. Sucks to be a telepath.

Otherwise, he's pretty high tier.

[Novembermike]

The Malazan series would be a decent place to look for ideas on powerful fighters. I'll just list a few as examples.

Karsa Orlong is super humanly strong, he regenerates from deadly wounds within hours, can shrug his way through insanely powerful magic through sheer force of will and carries an unbreakable sword.

Dassem Ultor is a literal Demigod. He never loses any battles, is incredibly charismatic and carries a sword that guarantees victory as long as he has purity of intent.

The High King Kallor is a hundred thousand year old man who destroyed an entire continent rather than allow another to rule it, his curse caused three gods to fall and he kills an attacking dragon in a single blow.

The assassin Kalam Mekhar is stabbed, dumped into shark infested waters and when he manages to drag himself out there are dozens of mage assassins waiting for him. Unarmed and without magic, he cuts his way through them all. Later on he acquires a short sword that suppresses magic near him.

Adjunct Tavore inspires almost religious faith in her soldiers and while she possesses no unique combat skills she has a sword that completely suppresses magic around most of an army.

Tool is basically a mummy that can turn into dust at will, is inhumanly fast and tough and has been honing his skills with the sword for hundreds of thousands of years.

There's no reason for high level fighter types to be mundane. They should be philosopher kings, mage hunter, master generals or any number of other things.

[FatR]

In terms of potential I see following people in JL capable of contributing without plot fellating them every step: Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, maybe Aquaman. The last three are already covered above. Flash, AFAIK, can accelate to significant factions of c in seconds, which requires Superman-level toughness as a necessary complementary power, so he's up there in power. And do other stuff related to velocity manipulation, when writers do not forget about it.

The rest basically are only there because a crossover title most include as much popular heroes as possible and need both plot bias and stealth emowering (compared to their solo titles) to do anything. Well, Batman might be useful as a mission control man, preferably kept far away from the battlefield.


Anyway, back to the original theme. I forgot to add one more comment to the last K's post: distinction between people who stab shit and people who blast shit should fucking die once the game reaches the conceptual space above level 5. It is a purely DnD trope. And it is a bad trope.

Let's expand on this a bit. Let's look at the three iconic characters from various media, whose main profession is explicitly "wizard": Rand al'Thor, Doctor Strange and Lina Inverse. One of them is an uber swordsman, at least in the world's top ten, two others are highly competent melee asskickers, just their magic is almost always a better option, because it is goddamn magic. "Frail wizard" is actually not a particularly common trope today, outside of DnD and stuff directly inspired by DnD. And as we all know in DnD's actual play wizards can bring pain in melee too, despite arbitrary restrictions on them. So, if a wizard can stab, why a fighter cannot blast?

Secondly, as was explained in detail on this forum before, characters whose only schtick is "stabbing" are shitty and boring, even if allowed to stab superhumanly well. At least once the game passes the phase where mundane skills are a big deal. They should have they schtick expanded at mid and high levels. I mean, Spiderman is only a mid-level character, but he can do alot more than punching people, including spamming ranged incapacitating attacks.

[Wrathzog]

Super Hero Dick Comparisons

For Reference, the Martian Manhunter once impersonated Superman for Months and no one figured it out. There was an arc in the Justice League where he got over his fear of fire and became an unstoppable force of nature until Plastic Man (the only hero who couldn't be mind controlled) stopped him in a giant godzilla style battle in a major metropolitan area (it is as awesome as you would think).
Martian Manhunter's rarely had a decent writer to back him (and the one time he did, he was struck with a crippling addiction to Oreos) but he's still one of the heaviest hitters in the league.

If you want to talk about Tier Lists, just keep in mind that the people who make up the JLA Core (Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman) are so much more disgustingly overpowered compared with the people that make up the JLA reserves that it's pretty much pointless to distinguish between them.
Do we really care about the differences between God Tier, Awesome Tier, Still More Super Than Super Tier, and Bat Tier?

[Swordslinger]

So, if a wizard can stab, why a fighter cannot blast?

Mostly because people who picked a swordsman want to stab people. You're better off just giving sword characters abilities to close distance fast, like a flash step/teleport attack than turning them into ranged attackers. For Area attack stuff they can move through an enemy group, attacking everyone on the way.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I see no reason why being a swordfighter should preclude stabbing people at a distance.
Observe: http://www.mangareader.net/94-529-14/bl ... er-75.html

[Prak]

In the later comics, WonderWoman is basically Super-Girl without the special eye modules.

She can fly (they got rid of the plane)
She can go into space without a helmet/suit.
She's super strong (how superstrong is questionable.)
She gets punched by Doomsday and keeps on going several times.
She's got super-awesome martial training of doom.

Aquaman suffers from people don't know how to write him.. so he seems chump like usually. Fine I'll move Aquaman up to the Flash Tier.

Jon always strikes me as mediocre, but perhaps thats' because I haven't followed his shit. I'll move him up into Superman territory if you like

The MM suffers from psychic backlash every other episode so he doesn't guess the villain's plan before it's dramatically appropriate. Sucks to be a telepath.

Otherwise, he's pretty high tier.

Yeah, Martian Manhunter is actually pretty much the most powerful member of the JLA, he has all of Superman's powers, and then can phase, read minds, and shapeshift.

[sabs]

Guess he just has crappy writers.

I still don't get why people want to have Conan the Barbarian be the top tier fighter in a world where the Top Tier Wizard is Fizban the fucking Fabulous.

That's like having the Wonder Twins in the same group as Dr Atom, and then whining that Dr atom is OP.

[Josh_Kablack]

Lina Inverse is actually a really good example of a character from Anime where there is stabber / caster segregation.

Her stabbity sidekick Gourry is the only non-caster PC throughout all 4 of the series, but he gets an artifact sword to compensate. Swordfighting enemies also get magic ice swords or perfect armor or other martial gear that is explicitly magical.

So in the series, non-casters totally use magic whenever they show up - the difference is that they use magic weapons and armor, while the other characters use magic spells.

Where this becomes an issue implementing it in a D&D game is that while D&D wizards get "spellbook" as a class feature, D&D fighters don't get "magic weapon" as a class feature. And that's a shame.

[Novembermike]

I was under the impression that relative power levels just depended on who was writing. Under one writer the Flash might be able to rip Superman to shreds before anyone can even react while under another one Superman is actually faster. Comics are generally pretty terrible for keeping a consistent canon since every other writer fucks something major up.

[Chamomile]

In Guild Wars there is a class called the Assassin, with the ability to shadow step, which allows them to instantly teleport to their target, smack it around for a bit, and then teleport away. Something similar could do wonders for a pure melee fighter. The at-will ability to teleport anywhere within, say, three hundred feet, so long as you can see where you're going, for example.

[CapnTthePirateG]

How about "become really big for no reason at all, because you're badass?" I seem to recall Frank talking about how the knights of the Round Table could do this stuff, and being really frickin big could help you reach people and fight low-flying flyers. Combine with archery or javelin throwing for best results.

[Ganbare Gincun]

and no one ends up feeling like Krillan at the end of a game session.

Krillan's a bad example for the Fighter/wizard problem since strictly speaking Krillan had more or less the same number of gimmicks and powers as Goku. The only real difference between them was pure stats and the number of dice they got to throw around.

Mechanically, this is true. But Krillian started off as a character with a respectable level of power in Dragon Ball, and then ended up becoming little more then ineffectual comic relief once people started going Super Saiyan. And that's how melee classes work in D&D - they start off fairly strong, but end up being left behind when the spellcasters "go Saiyan" somewhere around levels 7 through 10.

[Psychic Robot]

I see no reason why being a swordfighter should preclude stabbing people at a distance.
Observe: http://www.mangareader.net/94-529-14/bl ... er-75.html

bleach is a piece of shit

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, fighters need some sort of martial mumbo jumbo. High level fighters need to do things other than 'hit it with a sword.' Like mini-teleports or getting really big or stabbing people from far away or AoE stabs or other weird stuff.

Single-target damage abilities is not a good trick to build a character around, and fighters don't really get anything else.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Anime tends to break down pure melee vs. melee OR spellcaster vs. spellcaster. I mean, Afro-samurai or Claymore is straight stabby guys vs stabby guys. Inuyasha has everyone shooting high-end blasting regardless of whether they happen to be holding a sword (Inuyasha) or not (Naraku), though the NPCs that tag along with Inuyasha have one-note powers of various sorts.

The main mechanical difference between Afro Samurai and Inuyasha are the powers that they manifest to offset their weaknesses as melee combatants. Both of them can move at a decent rate of speed, can leap great distances, and are good at closing gaps between themselves and ranged combatants. But Afro is skilled at deflecting or chopping up projectiles and other ranged attacks (arrows, bullets, missiles!) while moving to close with his targets, while Inuyasha is better at dodging ranged attacks and can blast back in kind as necessary. They both chop fools up with their swords, but it's their supplementary powers that set them apart tactically. And neither of them have nearly as comprehensive a bag of tricks as Naraku does. Your personal dislike of having "stabby guys" with the ability to blast people at range doesn't automatically invalidate their selection of schtick any more then if they selected a supplementary power like regeneration, teleportation, or multiform. They are all going to end up being extraordinary, supernatural characters anyway. And they all end up in people's faces doing whirlwind attacks and cleaving fools as a matter of course.

Naruto seems to be pure spellcasting too... Sadly, I haven't watched Bleach. Just couldn't get into it, but give me a few days and I'll catch a few episodes on Hulu or Netflix.

Both Naruto and Bleach start off on the same level as Inuyasha or Afro Samurai and seem promising enough at first, featuring characters with appropriate schticks and limitations, but they eventually end up driving to DBZ Crazytown. They start off strong, and then devolve to the point where one or two characters are more powerful then everyone else and every fight ends up being a collection of conversations and internal monologues where they throw magical bolts at each other and change forms until one of them dies, presumably of boredom. And no one with any tasts wants to watch that kind of shit, much less play a FRPG about it.

[Gx1080]

I liked DBZ Crazytown. But then, Naruto and Bleach have a lot, and I mean A LOT more emo. Also, Naruto did to ninjas what Twilight did to vampires and werewolves aka sucked all the cool out of them.

Back on topic. Even on the most restricted class systems ever, MMOs, melee guys still have ways to fight with ranged at high power levels. Crowd Control, Teleports/Speed Buffs, even some basic ranged attacks of their own.

Nobody is saying that everybody should blast/melee everyvody else because fuck that. But you DO need a way to make the other guy fight on your terms.

That's on combat only. On non-combat, you can't restrict the plot powers on 2-3 people. Hence, rituals. This is an important bit.

[K]

Your personal dislike of having "stabby guys" with the ability to blast people at range doesn't automatically invalidate their selection of schtick any more then if they selected a supplementary power like regeneration, teleportation, or multiform. They are all going to end up being extraordinary, supernatural characters anyway. And they all end up in people's faces doing whirlwind attacks and cleaving fools as a matter of course.

Personally, I don't care who does what. I do care that if you are going to have a class system at all you should at least feel different from other classes, and in anime that is just not happening.

You can just have unclassed levels and let people pick off various charts.... that's not even a deal. You can even have people fill the exact same roles and people will be happy (like some guys shoot fire for ranged and some guys shoot arrows). The thing you can't do is try to sell people a bill of sale where the Fighter is only different from the Wizard because one is holding a sword sometimes.

That's above and beyond the fact that some people want to be able to kill powerful monsters with some sort of skill-themed abilities and definitely don't want to be part-monster or just a pair of hands for a magic weapon. That may not be a reasonable desire, but people do want it.

[Vnonymous]

You've also got to compete against the fact that the VAH is really, really cool in the eyes of most people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRT4S9G27VE is what most people think of when they think of high level martial characters, for better or worse, and it is a concept that is really cool. Ezio can compete at all levels of modern society or any story set in the ostensibly real world, and most people, as well as even most dnd promotional material, don't really think that he can't compete at high levels in dnd either(Making Drizzt level 17 deserves at least some of the blame).