MfA wrote:What I said is also the truth, many try to pretend that if they just show people a "better" way they will change people's mind on that ... which is both arrogant and foolish.
It's also just as arrogant to hold onto a belief no matter how much counter-argument you're given. Moreso in fact.
But yeah, it's pretty damn hard to convince someone that their feelings or opinions are wrong
in isolation. But it's not so hard to convince someone that two or more of their beliefs contradict each other and that they need to remove one of them (or add another caveat) in order to remove the dissonance.
MfA wrote:
What K said is simply the truth ... magic items are simply more generally accepted as sources for fantastic abilities for non caster archetypes than inherent abilities.
I can't really disprove this, not with the amount of research or polling I'm actually willing to do. If I say 'nuh uh!' it just devolves to pointless bickering. I mean, I'll do so anyway, because I like pointless bickering, but let's get real here.
I think that Frank's (and my) attacks on the problems of implementing this trope are a better line of argument. That is, you can concede the premise of 'this is how people want to build their fighters' (even though I think there are plenty of counter-arguments) and still show how this design principle would still fail to deliver the goods in other areas.
How does this fail to deliver the goods? A quick summary. I'll elaborate on them if you ask.
1) Most people insist that The Fighter can't make the legendary equipment they'll need under this paradigm, that they'll have to bother some other character. This isn't a problem in the abstract since there are well-established archetypes that need to suck on the cock of another being, but:
1A) Unlike the summoner and priest, the fighter goes from being independent to having to suck the cocks of a third party more and more. This is actually a serious deviation in flavor, one people might not be able to appreciate--look at how many people prefer Punisher without Micro. Or don't like sidekicks in flavor. What you're proposing for a fighter is an even bigger flavor drift; it's not just Jason Bourne acquiring a personal professor who builds him gadgets like Q/R does for Bond (which is a sticking point in the Bourne/Bond debate), but it's more like Fred Flintstone becoming more and more dependent on The Great Gazoo within the context of power inflation of D&D.
2) As Frank mentioned, a lot of grognards have a problem with the idea that people are supposed to get powerful magical items. How many times have you seen 'low magic only!' thrown around? There are of course ways around it (such as forcing the equipment upgrades with a class feature) but still.
3) To me at least, there's the inherent dishonesty (or dissonance if you're feeling charitable) in this trope. People in this very thread have been oooing and aaaing over how Batman is a well-trained, but regular guy, who just happens to get a little help from his gadgets. But he's not a regular guy. You either have to bend the story in his favor by stealth-nerfing or stealth-buffing him at important junctures or you have to make his gadgets vastly overpowered and then pretend like that shit never happened when he goes back to his street-level adventures.
4) There's the question of why this trope is even in the game. You and K say that people accept this trope more, but seriously, aside from Batman can you point to source material? It seems to be an American Comic/D&D-specific belief. The converse of this trope, that of high-level mundane characters ceasing to exist or high-level mundane characters getting mundane-flavored superpowers like infinite double jumps or shapeshifting on command, is more common. Again, this is just an assertion I only have as samples that you're free to dismiss, but why are you dismissing those two views of fighters?
5) Why even call such characters fighters/rogues/barbarians/etc. in the first place? They're no longer such things once their equipment starts looming larger than their abilities. Again, is Iron Man a martial artist who happens to own a robot suit or is he an artificer that happens to know martial arts.
What's most damning about this is that high-level fighters/rogues/barbarians/mundanes start looking more and more like each other the more you indulge into the Magic Items Only paradigm. Unlike, say, a wizard and a druid, if you give the rogue/barbarian/fighter/warlord/etc. an identical set of equipment with the superpowers they need to stay relevant at higher level their abilities will look exactly the same except for one or two minor differences like 'swings a sword better than most' or 'best at picking locks'.
At that point, why even still have a rogue/fighter/barbarian/etc. class? Why now just have a Gadgeteer class who minors in rage/sneaking?
