The Mundane Melee fighter can go fuck himself.

[Cyberzombie]

The problem with kingdoms is that they don't really do anything. D&D is a superhero setting, and nobody cares if you've got hundreds or thousands of low level warriors at your command.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Earlier on you spoke about how higher level play necessitates entering into Kingdom building and the like. It's sort of fitting to the fantasy genre that barring an evil empire, most kingdoms are rules by a mundane, with a council of magic users behind them, so why not give mundane fighters a bonus for leading states and the like? So as there career path progresses they go from damage source and defenseman to more of a "face of the party" like role. This represents less CHA and more their reputation as a warrior and a leader. So a Wizard can flatten a city with a fireball, but if you want to actually take that sucker, Conan is going to have a lot easier of a time raising an army and laying siege to the place. So in effect, both classes have similar power, but one is concentrated in one person's hands and the other lies in all the tools he can bring marching behind him.

Well. I can think of some reasons why this won't fly.

1.) The problem is that unless numerical bonuses mundane characters get are extremely cynically large, a high-level D&D character will still be better. Think of all of the tricks a high-level spellcaster can do: charming, bootstrapping the industrial age, undead creation, teleportation, etc. The ability of a 15th level wizard to craft decanters of endless water and put a permanency on a prismatic wall and several wall of fires is by itself a better city-building thing than most people will imagine for mundane characters -- barring recursive Leadership shenanigans, of course.

1a.) Making up the difference in classes' horizontal advancement with vertical advancement is extremely dicey balance-wise. Unimaginative or rushed or newbie DMs/players will unwarrantedly have mundane city-builders being better than spellcaster ones. Telling people that they have to try and think harder for their class to be balanced with those who get more powerful but less versatile options in a non-starter.

2.) Mundane characters being better state-leaders than their empowered counterparts in stories which they exist is actually a gross violation of genre. Yes, really. For every Conan or Xanatos, there's an Emperor Palpatine/Raoh/Thulsa Doom/Sylvanas/Horus ready to show them what's what. In any fantasy game that has more magic than Lord of the Rings, 9 times out of 10 a ruler that has enough game to play with the Big Boyz has magic. Unempowered and competent rulers in medium/high-fantasy settings certainly do exist, but they're rare for a reason.

3.) Probably the most important reason however is that as a solution to D&D, this doesn't actually solve the problem. See, it's not hard to imagine that people are going to want to play ActRaiser I or The Authority with their tokens. Even if 75% of their adventuring from then on involves city management, people are still going to insist that they personally lead a strike raid or head into a dungeon.

It's never going to be close to 100% (and in fact will probably be much lower) is because of this simple reason -- if they were totally cool with citybuilding from then on, they wouldn't insist on being able to do it as Conan. Seriously, think about your solution for a second: people are unhappy that their mundane abilities are increasingly obsolete in the flow of D&D-adventure as she is envisioned, so in order to assuage their sense of irrelevance you're going to put them in a situation where their abilities are guaranteed to get even less use?

It's not a totally contradictory solution, because there are a non-zero number of people who wouldn't mind writing James Bond or Bruce Wayne in a permanently kicked upstairs position because they're more intrigued with the personality more than they are with their personal ass-kicking abilities. But the vast majority of people who complain about fighter obsolescence aren't complaining that there isn't a way to keep them inserted into the story at all (otherwise they'd be more receptive to empowering solutions) but that there isn't a way to keep them in the story and maintain the relevancy of their schtick.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

The problem with kingdoms is that they don't really do anything. D&D is a superhero setting, and nobody cares if you've got hundreds or thousands of low level warriors at your command.

Hmm, maybe its a problem with DnD failing to open up high level problems to high level parties? As Frank mentioned, high level folks are meant to be huge power brokers striding the earth. So if a GM is still designing low level goals (go to this dungeon, shank this fool) only with higher level enemies, you're not really taking advantage of the high level environment. If you designed the end game around large scale objectives (take this goddamn evil empire down) then a superhero can still be a superhero, but you also need the low level mundanes to solve a problem. Sort of the difference between Moria and the Pelennor Fields. The Fellowship are still uber powerful, and when serving as a concentrated kill team they kicked all kinds of ass, but their problems became of a different scale, making the use of mundane necessary.

So they can work as a kill team to take down Emperor MacPuppyKicker, but to get to that point the fighter and his troops need to clear the way. Sort of adding in a bit of Shadowrun's preparation phase to DnD. Its nowhere near perfect, but it would be a way to keep a figher player feeling relevant without forcing him to become magical.

Paranoia Cat (sorry, edited post)- really good point there. I guess the only way to keep it viable would be to ration world shaking magic and add a bit of danger to it. Sort of take a Warhammer-ey approach to magic. Magic can be turned into a nuke, but its super risky and cannot happen to often. So the Wizard has incentives to be a bit more low key, sort of a level 5 guy with an exponential increase in power, while the fighter continues to do his thing in the same way. And then, when its time to break out the good shit, the Wizard can flatten a city and the warrior can bring in the horde. So maybe keep the massive world breaking powers limited to an out of combat (roleplaying) thing but on the tabletop they don't radically change as much in role as they increase in levels.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The unavoidable problem, TNAMP, is that if you devote a large portion of your game to the melee-ranged squad-sized combat engine (which is a reasonable assumption for most D&D or any action-heavy TTRPGs) then people will still want to do combat things in it. The DM or the players will eventually introduce a story hook or a player-proposed solution which involves the PCs stepping off of their throne/parliament seat and going to kick some ass on foot and in-person.

Order of the Stick does it, Kingdom Come does it, Final Fantasy IV does it, Neverwinter Nights 2 does it, Rune Factory 4 does it, so on and so forth. Then of course you're back to square one.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

The unavoidable problem, TNAMP, is that if you devote a large portion of your game to the melee-ranged squad-sized combat engine (which is a reasonable assumption for most D&D or any action-heavy TTRPGs) then people will still want to do combat things in it. The DM or the players will eventually introduce a story hook or a player-proposed solution which involves the PCs stepping off of their throne/parliament seat and going to kick some ass on foot and in-person.

Order of the Stick does it, Kingdom Come does it, Final Fantasy IV does it, Neverwinter Nights 2 does it, Rune Factory 4 does it, so on and so forth. Then of course you're back to square one.

Sorry, had to edit my post to respond (why does php not allow you to insert quotes into an edited post), see above.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, there's nothing structurally wrong with making certain magical powers ineligible for combat or even adventure-use. There's no reason why a poisonous, acid rain that's a mile-wide in radius and raises undead couldn't just be a standard citygame tactic like mass literacy or flinging diseased cows over the walls for a week. Or even just be a superior and specifically magical tactic that any organization with sufficient knowledge and manpower could perform -- like uses of magic in King of Dragon Pass.

However, that vision of the game is specifically incompatible with versions of D&D that isn't 4th Edition. By level 11 or so, your typical D&D full-caster already has tricks that would be decisive in most literary fantasy battles or would put them above the median power level of the Justice League. Unless you want to recreate the ActRaiser problem again, you'd also have to put a cap on the instant-use superpowers individual characters get.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

However, that vision of the game is specifically incompatible with versions of D&D that isn't 4th Edition. By level 11 or so, your typical D&D full-caster already has tricks that would be decisive in most literary fantasy battles or would put them above the median power level of the Justice League. Unless you want to recreate the ActRaiser problem again, you'd also have to put a cap on the instant-use superpowers individual characters get.

That would be the thing, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Telling someone they can't do something sucks in a rpg, because at that power level they want to feel powerful and flexible. So what you could do is make the preparation for such a gigantic spell take a while and make the doing of so kind of risky. So a caster could try to do a nuke level spell in combat, but because it's rushed it's insanely risky. That could add a level of desperation to it and make for a memorable moment. The party is facing down a huge foe and every last trick they have isn't enough. To prevent a TPK they go for an insanely risky last move, which still requires people to protect him while he prepares.

That way a wizard is kept within bounds during normal periods and the tricks that make fighters irrelevant are a last, not first choice of action. Normally, the wizard could still function sort of like a higher level fighter does. The fighter is better at hitting stuff, the wizard's spells heal better or does more damage to single people, the table roles don't change too much on the table top from level 1 to 20. Plus, even when the nuke is being brought out, the fighters still have a role as sort of a guidance system protecting it while its arming. I mean, channeling the power to nuke something should be a tough process, full of pitfalls for even the greatest of wizards. So a tank is still a necessary part of the machine.

However, out of combat you could then take the reigns off a bit, so wizards don't feel like they are continually needing to play with a handicap. If they have all the time and concentration in the world to play with, they can be the gods amongst men they want to be. And the same thing could go for fighters, people want to be mundane fighters in combat, but out of combat they could assume a meta role as a commander without replacing their bash people in the face role.

[Lokathor]

Sorry, had to edit my post to respond (why does php not allow you to insert quotes into an edited post), see above.

You can, you just have to put in the quote tags manually.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Sorry, had to edit my post to respond (why does php not allow you to insert quotes into an edited post), see above.

You can, you just have to put in the quote tags manually.

True, but then you also need to retype the entire post you want to work with, kind of a pain.

[Leress]

...copy-paste.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

...copy-paste.

You know, I'm a complete moron some times.

Though it would be nice for php to halt your post and show you if someone has posted before you and then you can incorporate it. On larger forums it sucks, but there aren't too many real flurries of posts here and it could be useful.

[OgreBattle]

Order of the Stick does it, Kingdom Come does it, Final Fantasy IV does it

Not that you don't know, I just want to post this video of FFIV's CG intro that shows how the whole party fights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT12DW2Fm9M

The mages are blasters and the melee guys are all jumping around like irish myth ninjas.
------

Y'know I've been posting on the Paizo boards now and there's actually resistance to the idea of PrC's replacing Fighters. More than one person's said "Lancelot is a LEVEL TWENTY character DONT INSULT ME by saying he's level 6!!" "I WANT to be the underdog against a wizard!!"

But... Pathfinder has also shown that you can stealth buff the Thief concept with new classes, keep the rogue around, and people who want to play really capable thieves will be alchemists and ninjas and inquisitors while the rogue option remains.

I doubt that was Pathfinder's intention, but they've shown that keeping some waterballoon options around as well as providing ideas that work 'higher than level 6' can both exist in the same game.

[rampaging-poet]

...copy-paste.

You know, I'm a complete moron some times.

Though it would be nice for php to halt your post and show you if someone has posted before you and then you can incorporate it. On larger forums it sucks, but there aren't too many real flurries of posts here and it could be useful.

If you hit Preview before you actually post, any new posts will show up in the Topic Review box. There's still the possibility that someone will post between when you hit Preview and Submit, but it's less likely than someone posting during the entire time you were writing your post.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

...copy-paste.

You know, I'm a complete moron some times.

Though it would be nice for php to halt your post and show you if someone has posted before you and then you can incorporate it. On larger forums it sucks, but there aren't too many real flurries of posts here and it could be useful.

If you hit Preview before you actually post, any new posts will show up in the Topic Review box. There's still the possibility that someone will post between when you hit Preview and Submit, but it's less likely than someone posting during the entire time you were writing your post.

Cool, thanks!

[Username17]

I doubt that was Pathfinder's intention, but they've shown that keeping some waterballoon options around as well as providing ideas that work 'higher than level 6' can both exist in the same game.

Can I buy pot from you? That is not a thing that needed to be shown. It already was shown by the Fighter and the Paladin being in the same book back in 1978. I literally wasn't even born when Gygax proved beyond reasonable doubt that you could put "waterballoon" options in next to similar character concepts who were able to play the game in the deeper dungeons. Welcome to the mother fucking seventies.

However, I would like you to catch up to the nineteen eighties. Because that is when an interesting thing happened: people noticed that being a Fighter who had an expiration date on his ass while other people got to play Rangers and Paladins and shit that actually got shit to do in the late single digit levels was fucking lame. And so we start getting Fighter options like Weapon Specialization and supercharged "mundane warrior" options like the Barbarian and Cavalier.

So it has ever been. People are willing to get all up in your shit demanding to play character concepts that don't have high level things they can do, but a couple sessions of playing Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit and they change their tune right quick. That's why every Monk gets a fucking adamantine gauntlet and then an amulet that lets them turn into a god damned tiger. Because whatever people tell you, the reality is that they are not OK with hitting infrequently for inconsequential damage. They just fucking aren't.

And that is why Epic Destinies need to be baked into the system from day one. And of course, all of the epic destinies need to be awesome shit like Demigod and Witch Queen, and none of them should be bullshit like Dagger Master or Dwarven Defender.

-Username17

[codeGlaze]

I liked the story concept of a Dwarven Defender... for a low level PrC/ Specialization/ ACF kind of thing.

[Cyberzombie]

So they can work as a kill team to take down Emperor MacPuppyKicker, but to get to that point the fighter and his troops need to clear the way. Sort of adding in a bit of Shadowrun's preparation phase to DnD. Its nowhere near perfect, but it would be a way to keep a figher player feeling relevant without forcing him to become magical.

But that's the thing. See you don't actually need a bunch of troops to clear the way. The big advantage of adventurers is that they're mobile. You can just fly, turn invisible or teleport past any mundane obstacle that an army could clear. And assuming they don't want to just wreck the army with any number of spells, they'll just sneak around and kill the emperor.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

But that's the thing. See you don't actually need a bunch of troops to clear the way. The big advantage of adventurers is that they're mobile. You can just fly, turn invisible or teleport past any mundane obstacle that an army could clear. And assuming they don't want to just wreck the army with any number of spells, they'll just sneak around and kill the emperor.

They are mobile, but so was the Fellowship of the Ring. However, when dealing with Emperor McPuppyKicker, who probably is magic and has powers too, I'd assume you would need to do what happened in the LOTR and distract him while you go in all kill team style. Though this is waaay more of a GM and player choice thing than anything else. Situations like these are where a good GM can create a situation where everyone feels needed, rather than just letting the wizard fix everything.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That way a wizard is kept within bounds during normal periods and the tricks that make fighters irrelevant are a last, not first choice of action. Normally, the wizard could still function sort of like a higher level fighter does. The fighter is better at hitting stuff, the wizard's spells heal better or does more damage to single people, the table roles don't change too much on the table top from level 1 to 20. Plus, even when the nuke is being brought out, the fighters still have a role as sort of a guidance system protecting it while its arming. I mean, channeling the power to nuke something should be a tough process, full of pitfalls for even the greatest of wizards. So a tank is still a necessary part of the machine.

That would be the thing, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Telling someone they can't do something sucks in a rpg, because at that power level they want to feel powerful and flexible. So what you could do is make the preparation for such a gigantic spell take a while and make the doing of so kind of risky. So a caster could try to do a nuke level spell in combat, but because it's rushed it's insanely risky. That could add a level of desperation to it and make for a memorable moment. The party is facing down a huge foe and every last trick they have isn't enough. To prevent a TPK they go for an insanely risky last move, which still requires people to protect him while he prepares.

This isn't going to work for your transition from 3E D&D: ActRaiser II to 3E D&D: ActRaiser I. Unless you nerf every spell at or above 6th level (and probably 5th), non-casters have already been rendered obsolete in close-range squadron combat. Thinking of a paradigm shift that will keep non-casters relevant at this point is closing the barn door after the cows have escaped and been eaten by lions.

If you're going to make this as a balance point, then you need to cap out the spellcaster powers lower than that. Nerf the time it takes to use it, nerf the absolute power, nerf the resource management system, whatever. Regardless, getting to this point is a vision of the game that's not compatible with high-level 1st-3rd D&D as she is played.

[Lokathor]

They are mobile, but so was the Fellowship of the Ring. However, when dealing with Emperor McPuppyKicker, who probably is magic and has powers too, I'd assume you would need to do what happened in the LOTR and distract him while you go in all kill team style. Though this is waaay more of a GM and player choice thing than anything else. Situations like these are where a good GM can create a situation where everyone feels needed, rather than just letting the wizard fix everything.

The Fellowship had the mobility of a 5th level group of DnD characters (because that's what they are). Which is to say they had almost no mobility worth talking about at all.

They had one scene where they got carried off by eagles. The rest of the time they walk, ride small boats, walk more, ride horses, walk more, and walk even some more after that. They did not personally fly, they did not teleport, they did not plane shift, they did not turn incorporeal, they didn't even blink. They had one ring of invisibility that they weren't even able to use without bringing down the super kill monsters.

Which is not to say that the wizard needs to hand out all these options to the other players just to show off, the point is that all the classes should get options like this all on their own. The fighter can't do that and stay in theme, so the fighter needs to go or something. Congrats to me, I just summarized the whole thread for you.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

This isn't going to work for your transition from 3E D&D: ActRaiser II to 3E D&D: ActRaiser I. Unless you nerf every spell at or above 6th level (and probably 5th), non-casters have already been rendered obsolete in close-range squadron combat. Thinking of a paradigm shift that will keep non-casters relevant at this point is closing the barn door after the cows have escaped and been eaten by lions.

If you're going to make this as a balance point, then you need to cap out the spellcaster powers lower than that. Nerf the time it takes to use it, nerf the absolute power, nerf the resource management system, whatever. Regardless, getting to this point is a vision of the game that's not compatible with high-level 1st-3rd D&D as she is played.

Guess you're right, seems like it would require a whole new game to be built with this very thing in mind (non caster relevancy) from the start. That or making magic in normal D and D much more in line with Dark Suns, which I guess would kill a lot of the high fantasy setting's atmosphere.

[darkmaster]

They are mobile, but so was the Fellowship of the Ring. However, when dealing with Emperor McPuppyKicker, who probably is magic and has powers too, I'd assume you would need to do what happened in the LOTR and distract him while you go in all kill team style. Though this is waaay more of a GM and player choice thing than anything else. Situations like these are where a good GM can create a situation where everyone feels needed, rather than just letting the wizard fix everything.

I just envisioned a game where the fellowship get's TPKd and the GM declares that they were actually a distraction for Rivendel's Delta Force to go to Mordor on eagle back and sort things out.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

They are mobile, but so was the Fellowship of the Ring. However, when dealing with Emperor McPuppyKicker, who probably is magic and has powers too, I'd assume you would need to do what happened in the LOTR and distract him while you go in all kill team style. Though this is waaay more of a GM and player choice thing than anything else. Situations like these are where a good GM can create a situation where everyone feels needed, rather than just letting the wizard fix everything.

I just envisioned a game where the fellowship get's TPKd and the GM declares that they were actually a distraction for Rivendel's Delta Force to go to Mordor on eagle back and sort things out.

You could transfer that to Shadowrun so perfectly. You all die, but since you were just a distraction for Harlequin and Tir Taingire ghosts, it means fuck all anyway.

[RedstoneOrc]

Just to comment on the thread title, the mundane melee fighter is not flexible enough to fuck himself, it's kind of one of his many flaws. Through if anyone wants to drag him into a dark alley he can't really stop you big fullcasters.