Tome Fighter and Foil Ability

[angelfromanotherpin]

The main one I think of when it comes to dodging is the animated series version where he runs behind some cover as it chases him.

There's actually nothing particularly bogus about that. Normal people have simply outrun the finder beams for minutes at a time (though this may have been big D toying with them for purposes of sadism, it's not clear). And the beams can discharge on unintended targets – Darkseid's zapped himself at least once.

[Aryxbez]

Edit: I doubt the whole Batman Dodges Omega Beams thing is even canon. Then again, Ghost Rider beat Galactus with the Penance Stare once.

Well, the cartoon "Justice League Unlimited" takes place in it's own canon, the DCAU or "DC Animated Universe" Since it was the combination of all the DC 90's cartoons, Superman, Batman Animated series, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited.

I've long accepted that Batman has Charles Atlas superpowers, but at the time, found it acceptable that Batman pulled a one-time feat that "nobody else" ever could (can be represented by him having rolled a 20, or otherwise being a Rogue w/Evasion). Though thankfully Galactus has the excuse of "hunger" that changes his power levels, albeit still surprising to hear. Then again, there is silliness of Doctor strange having said Ghost Rider's power is boundless & godlike in World War Hulk.

[Schleiermacher]

"However, the Omega Sanction does not actually kill its target, but sends its consciousness back in time. Although the presence of Batman's corpse would suggest that he is dead, at the conclusion of Final Crisis it is revealed that Batman has been sent to the distant past, and it is later revealed that the corpse assumed to be Wayne's was in fact that of Darkseid's clone....

Yes. I am familiar with the story, as I even alluded to when talking about Batman's "death". I have read Final Crisis, although not the Death and Return of Bruce Wayne.

But the fact that DC will never allow Batman to die and will instead produce all sorts of insane stories like Death and Return is entirely beside the point that the beams did hit Batman and had their intended effect.

[MGuy]

I always hate "not real deaths" in comics but by the time that happened I expected a comeback from batman. Just... not the way they did it.

[Cheiromancer]

Although I hate derailing a thread about comic books, I'd like to know how folks think the fighter's Foil Action ability could be fluffed. I can see that it is tied up with problems about fighters being "mundane", but I think that can be separated out.

Suppose that the Fighter were a 5th level class that just happened to meet the prerequisites of a certain 15 level prestige class. The class abilities are mechanically identical to those of levels 6 through 20 of the current Tome Fighter. The problem is that although the mechanics of the class have been written, the fluff is absent; it is just "fourth level ability" etc. There needs to be a supernatural power source of some sort that gives coherence and narrative justification to the whole thing.

So. How does a character negate an opponent's action with a 30 foot range, immediate action touch attack? What's the fluff? What's the power source?

It occurs to me that any answer will have to flavor the other abilities of the class. Say it's ki energy. You project ki energy at an opponent and it momentarily overwhelms them and they lose the action. But then the ability to craft magic arms and equipment will have to be named "ki crafting" or something. Getting extra immediate actions will have to be explained as due to ki mastery. BAB will represent the degree of ki that the character contains. And so on.

Now I don't think I'd use ki. That sounds like a monk. Maybe runes? You make this little hand gesture and a little glowing rune flies at the target - if it hits, whatever action it was engaged in is lost. And you inscribe runes on items to make them magical, or on yourself to get an extra action and so on.

I suggested Unbelief as the fluff for Foil Action, but I don't think it would work as a supernatural power source. None of the other fighter abilities are related to skepticism, doubt, or denial. So that's out.

What other possibilities are there? If there were half a dozen or so, maybe a fighter could pick one and start describing their actions that way right from the time the first game session. After all, if ki energy is the schtick of a class, it makes sense that you had a little exposure to it when you were busy qualifying.

tl;dr If Foil Ability is supernatural, the supernatural power source should flavor more than that one ability. It should have been part of the character description all along. What are the options? This isn't a mundane fighter - it's got a supernatural power source, but all the same abilities.

[Mistborn]

Although I hate derailing a thread about comic books, I'd like to know how folks think the fighter's Foil Action ability could be fluffed. I can see that it is tied up with problems about fighters being "mundane", but I think that can be separated out.

Stop being so frozen fast you blithering idiot. What has defined the mundane archetype in this shitty thread and the five hundred other shitty threads on their is that their fluff is shit. You can not write fluff for the characters nocker virgil fap too because those characters basically are Captain Hobo in a fantasy setting.

[Cheiromancer]

Stop being so frozen fast you blithering idiot. What has defined the mundane archetype in this shitty thread and the five hundred other shitty threads on their is that their fluff is shit. You can not write fluff for the characters nocker virgil fap too because those characters basically are Captain Hobo in a fantasy setting.

If I understand you correctly, you are stating that any mundane class falls prey to Captain Hobo syndrome.

However, "mundane fighter" is itself fluff. A class could be mechanically the same as a tome fighter, but be fluffed as a demon warrior - each "feat" actually being an evil spirit bound to the character's soul. It would be kind of dumb, but Foil Ability could be "demonic denial" or something. I'm looking for ideas that are less dumb than "demon warrior" to justify the mechanics of Tome Fighter if "mundane fighter" is not available.

So say a DM doesn't allow "mundane fighter" to be the concept of the class, his reason being that after 5th level a mundane fighter is Captain Hobo. What are some alternative concepts that keep those same mechanics?

(I suppose there could be minimal alterations, but they should be pretty much the same.)

[Avoraciopoctules]

@Cheiromancer

As an "Akashic Warrior", you could rant for hours about memes. But what your party cares about is the fact that your link to the Worldmind lets you intuitively know stuff without study or trainging. When you temporarily manifest a feat, your third eye tattoo opens up and maybe glows.

Later on, the Worldmind starts whispering to you about the weaknesses of those nearby, and your Unraveling strike lets you weaponize your soul to hit magical faultlines that disrupt people's understanding of what they were about to do.

Does that work for you?

[RadiantPhoenix]

@Cheiromancer

As an "Akashic Warrior", you could rant for hours about memes. But what your party cares about is the fact that your link to the Worldmind lets you intuitively know stuff without study or trainging. When you temporarily manifest a feat, your third eye tattoo opens up and maybe glows.

Later on, the Worldmind starts whispering to you about the weaknesses of those nearby, and your Unraveling strike lets you weaponize your soul to hit magical faultlines that disrupt people's understanding of what they were about to do.

Does that work for you?

This looks acceptable at first glance.

[vagrant]

I was gonna go with the 'psychic warrior' fluff - forget the actual 3.5 psionics bullshit - you can tap into the mind of any warrior you've trained with and you've got the ability to see a half-moment into the future - enough time to interrupt any action. YMMV I suppose.

[Kaelik]

The bottom line is that you can fluff almost any set of abilities in several different ways, but they won't all make sense if the abilities were designed for different fluff.

If you want to play a Demon Warrior, you can make a Demon Warrior from scratch, and the abilities will fit better than the Tome Fighters. The same is true for any non mundane power source, including knowledge.

So my question is why do you get such a fucking hard on for the Tome Fighter that you refuse to just use some other class with abilities designed for the supernatural fluff in question?

[Omegonthesane]

I'm going to hazard a guess that it's partially that the Tome Fighter mechanics already exist as a thing and it's easier to fuck around with the fluff or have square fluff fit a round class than write actual new mechanics.

The ideas given for the demon warrior take is somewhat more dumb than it has to be as Wizards don't need demons bound to themselves to use Feats, and could theoretically take the same Tome Feats as a Tome Fighter. "Just" less of them. Akashic Warrior seems the best fit of "I have a supernatural power source of Having Read The Monster Manual Backwards 37 Times Every Sunday After Church Since I Was 3".

[Cheiromancer]

So my question is why do you get such a fucking hard on for the Tome Fighter that you refuse to just use some other class with abilities designed for the supernatural fluff in question?

D&D to me is a wizard, a cleric, a rogue and a fighter on adventures together. I started with the Red Box, and early impressions stick. And yeah, you can blend and mix the classes depending on the campaign, and there are fighter/magic user/thief elves and maybe there's a dwarf instead of a fighter or something, but for me those four are the fundamental classes. But the archetypical party doesn't work at high levels. You *could* play E6, but that throws out at half the game, and I'd rather not go there. The tomes promise to fix the wizard>fighter problem, and I think mechanically it does. But there is something about Foil Ability that didn't click. So I'm trying to see if it can be tweaked to be just right. Then my core idea of D&D is validated.

I've played 3.0 and 3.5 long enough that the identity of a fighter is more than just good BAB and a focus on melee. *That* there is a fighter is from way before 3rd edition, but *what* a fighter is has evolved. For me it has a whole bunch of feats, lots of weapons and armor, no specific cultural or regional bias, and it is neither arcane or divine. It can use archery, but the base fighter is in melee. No spellcasting.

The three good saves of the Tome fighter made me a little suspicious, but it wasn't a deal breaker. The special abilities did not contradict my idea of a fighter. Well, forge lore a bit of a stretch, unless it's just armor and shields. But I can swallow it; a blacksmith could naturally be a fighter, right? Foil Ability, as written, is hard to swallow. It also seems to be the stumbling block for a lot of people. So can it be tweaked?

I think it can be. Avoraciopoctules' suggestion of Akashic Warrior is a very good one. Maybe not the only one, but it seems good at first glance. The connection to the Akashic records could be unconscious and subliminal during the "mundane" lower levels, and is unobtrusive even at higher levels. But it provides the crucial bit of phlebotinum if the question of supernatural power sources ever really comes up. And it is not something Captain Hobo uses.

So that's why.

[Mistborn]

I've played 3.0 and 3.5 long enough that the identity of a fighter is more than just good BAB and a focus on melee. *That* there is a fighter is from way before 3rd edition, but *what* a fighter is has evolved. For me it has a whole bunch of feats, lots of weapons and armor, no specific cultural or regional bias, and it is neither arcane or divine. It can use archery, but the base fighter is in melee. No spellcasting.

Seriously we have this thread all the time. It just keeps happening ad nauseum

[Cheiromancer]

Thank you for the links, Lord Mistborn. Although I have been trying to focus on the Foil Ability of the Tome Fighter, it is good to put it in the broader context of the role of fighters in the game.

[Kaelik]

D&D to me is a wizard, a cleric, a rogue and a fighter on adventures together.

Then you are full of fucking shit.

The reason you give for using the Tome Fighters mechanics is because you like the flavor of a fighter. The reason you give for wanting to change the flavor of the Tome Fighter to not be a fighter is because you don't like the fluff, or don't think they work with the mechanics.

Do you not see how that is self contradictory?

If you want a "Fighter" the solution is to make a fighter that you like. If you don't want a fighter, then the solution is to definitely not make a fighter and make something else.

You can't demand that you use specifically the mechanics that don't work with fighters because you like fighters, and you can't insist that you have to have non fighter fluff, because you like fighter fluff.

You are a confused mess, and no one can help you figure out what you want, because you want contradictory fucking things.

If I could define you in one word, it would be lazy. You are too lazy to come up with your own mechanics for the fluff you want, so you try to take someone elses, and you are too lazy to figure out what you actually want from fluff, so you call it fighter fluff and not fighter fluff, even though neither of those things means anything at all.

[MGuy]

Thank you for the links, Lord Mistborn. Although I have been trying to focus on the Foil Ability of the Tome Fighter, it is good to put it in the broader context of the role of fighters in the game.

The best role for fighters is nonexistence at this point. Honestly and truly listen to me on this one. I used to be like you. I opposed Kaelik about 'fighters' and redefining them for the game too. I thought that you seriously could just rewrite what fighters were expected to do in the game and people would fall in line with it. I mean Street Fighter is a thing and all of the characters on their are considered "fighters" and yet they host a bunch of different abilities.

However, when it comes to RPGs things are different.You even said it yourself "When you envision D+D" right? You picture the 'classic' party right? That right there is the entire problem. I understand that Kaelik comes off like (is) an asshole but he is not lying. The proof is right there in front of you. The fact that you cannot wrap your head around fundamentally changing the fighter (even into just being a demon warrior) is the exact reason why "fighters can't have nice things". People "envision" the fighter as being the only sword wielding bastard around who can smash stuff good and never anything else. The minute you want to give him more acceptable stuff he ceases being the fighter that you once knew. Now some people would welcome the change (I for one liked Tome of Battle Bo9S) but many many people will range from either not wanting the changes at all to "limiting" what the changes can do for the fighter ('cause REALISM!).

Just let the fighter die. Let the fighter you envision in the party go. It had it's run but it is beyond time to move on.

[MGuy]

I've played 3.0 and 3.5 long enough that the identity of a fighter is more than just good BAB and a focus on melee. *That* there is a fighter is from way before 3rd edition, but *what* a fighter is has evolved. For me it has a whole bunch of feats, lots of weapons and armor, no specific cultural or regional bias, and it is neither arcane or divine. It can use archery, but the base fighter is in melee. No spellcasting.

Seriously we have this thread all the time. It just keeps happening ad nauseum

This is exactly what my tagline at the end of every one of my posts is for.

[Cheiromancer]

Honestly and truly listen to me on this one. I used to be like you. I opposed Kaelik about 'fighters' and redefining them for the game too. I thought that you seriously could just rewrite what fighters were expected to do in the game and people would fall in line with it...

...You even said it yourself "When you envision D+D" right? You picture the 'classic' party right? That right there is the entire problem... The proof is right there in front of you. The fact that you cannot wrap your head around fundamentally changing the fighter (even into just being a demon warrior) is the exact reason why "fighters can't have nice things". People "envision" the fighter as being the only sword wielding bastard around who can smash stuff good and never anything else. The minute you want to give him more acceptable stuff he ceases being the fighter that you once knew. Now some people would welcome the change (I for one liked Tome of Battle Bo9S) but many many people will range from either not wanting the changes at all to "limiting" what the changes can do for the fighter ('cause REALISM!).

Just let the fighter die. Let the fighter you envision in the party go. It had it's run but it is beyond time to move on.

I think I'm getting it. If the archetype simulated by the fighter is "realistic action hero" then it can't go beyond level 5. Because real world people (even action heroes) don't go beyond level 5, and so there is no way of realistically simulating that is inherently unrealistic. You can mask the problem by making a fighter cohort-strength after level 5 and loading him down with magic items and buffs, but if he ever steals the spotlight by using a class ability then people will ask "how is he doing that, exactly?" And you either have to break immersion by not giving an answer ("it's just a game mechanic") or else you have to go Captain Hobo.

Eliminating the fighter is a completely valid response to the situation. Still, I am not at the point of letting the fighter die. I think that you can have a supernatural power source for a high level fighter which is a smooth continuation of low level abilities. It is not a power source suddenly and jarringly acquired at level 6, but one that can be explained as being there all along, inconspicuous and implicit. Think of incarnum - soul magic. Every living being has a soul -the principle of life, sentience and action- and so (for narrative purposes) a realistic character can gradually come to do unrealistic things by improving his connection to incarnum.

Or take vagrant's suggestion to flavor it as a psychic warrior. Psychic energy is the stuff of thought and the mind. Real people can think, and characters that simulate real thinking people can advance in power by improving their ability to use the mental energy which everyone taps into by virtue of having thoughts. When you use your mind to lift your hand; that's "mundane" psychic activity. A fighter doesn't detach his psychic powers from the body to perform telekinesis or something; instead he improves the psychic ability to move his own limbs until he can do extraordinary things.

Avoraciopoctules' suggestion about Akashic warriors is a similar kind of idea. I know virtually nothing about the backstory of the Akashic records except what I got by peeking at a wikipedia entry. Something about knowledge and skills being stored "in the cloud" - i.e. in the astral plane. "Astra" means "star". Now the stars are literally "other worldly" but all matter on earth was forged in a star- we are literally made of star stuff. Link the two together and you can have a mundane character that eventually becomes superhuman by improving his connection to the realm of the stars and the akashic records.

You'd have to relate this to other character's power sources. Maybe it's analogous to how low level computer languages implement programs written in high level languages. In which case wizards shape spell energy by means of the incarnum/psychic energy/star stuff that all humans naturally use, etc.. The only constraint would be that the fighter's power source has to be more basic and fundamental than what spellcasters use; when you distinguish between "reality" and "magic", fighters have to be on the opposite side of wizards.

BTW I initially resisted "demon warrior" because it was not a neutral concept. Lawful good fighters should not be demon warriors. Also because there are templates and classes that simulate it very differently. On second thought I realized that you could substitute different outsiders for different alignments, but even then I had trouble seeing the connection between moral and ethical convictions and what a fighter does.

Still, just because I want to think of a fighter a certain way, doesn't mean other views aren't legitimate, even if they are incompatible with "mundane at level 5". If I had a player who wanted to flavor his fighter character as a binder or something (the feats being abilities granted by life-long pacts with bound vestiges, or demons, or ghosts), I think I'd be OK with that. The important thing is that there is some narrative justification for the awesome things they do at high level, and that the justification isn't Captain Hobo.

edit: I've been reading some of those threads in your sig, and so far I don't think I see anything that makes such a unique contribution to the discussion as Ice9's explanation of Captain Hobo. So it is not just the same old thing over and over again.

[Judging__Eagle]

Kaelik, at least twice, yes. Once in a discussion on PC success rates; where you conflated and confused "Players being more prepared than Referees on a per encounter basis" with "Players can always win forever". As well as an other time in a discussion on the concept of level; where you confused "the nature of a combat is never equal" with "PCs are supposed to be more powerful than creatures of the same CR."

Getting back to this trope character however, I'm a glutton for suffering, and I feel making this original character concept from OD&D function conceptually deserves more merit over a thousand flavour of the week classes, that are some variation on the Complete Arcane Warlock's "all powers At-Will" ideology of a power schedule.

Partly because "Fighting Men" was one of the three core options; and that at its roots, this is a wargame; and "Fighting Units" are the basic measuring unit against which everything else will be measured.

Edit:

Now, the next question would be is this:

How comfortable are people about Gandalf/Hero Wizard having to face a single Uruk-Hai/Black Ork; or a regiment of five; or a regiment of twenty?

Should the hero wizard have more than good odds against a single guy; have an iffy chance of surviving a small group of them; and not engage a large group of them?

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, at least twice, yes. Once in a discussion on PC success rates; where you conflated and confused "Players being more prepared than Referees on a per encounter basis" with "Players can always win forever". As well as an other time in a discussion on the concept of level; where you confused "the nature of a combat is never equal" with "PCs are supposed to be more powerful than creatures of the same CR."

Hey dumbshit, if you are going to insult me, at least figure out what insult you are making. You just accused me of deliberately misquoting people, and then, as your two examples, you used the word "confused." Guess what dumbshit, that must mean I wasn't deliberately misquoting people.

But hey, since you decided to provide "examples" that are not actually examples of what you were supposed to provide because you actually just wanted to snipe at me with your incredible dumb person attacks that are also wrong because you are butthurt about how stupid you are, allow me to make this quote.

This quote is also 100% accurate, and related to one of your stupid as fuck accusations:

A level 16 Fighter should be able to beat four CR 16 enemies at once without taking a scratch.

I will now take the time to make this small editorial comment: A level 16 fighter is a CR 16 enemy.

I will now make the following observation: JE is a fucking idiot who literally thinks that a level 16 Fighter should be able to beat four level 16 fighters without taking a scratch. This is actually fucking retarded.