The reason fighters can't have nice things.

[Maj]

So back to the topic...

What about historical figures? Real people do seem to go through a leveling effect, so do stories about them count?

Sure, do you have any candidates that show this though?

Caesar? I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Is it really all that helpful to discuss the age of the leveling trope in stories?

It's justification, I guess.

I asked earlier about filling out a low-magic version of the fighter, and the responses seemed to support the idea that D&D can't really be a low-magic game. Twenty levels of banality just won't cut it.

So why is the notion of low-magic = low level so despised by players?

The only thing I can think of is that it's really not a love of low magic, it's a hate of high magic. Sort of like how the current Democratic campaign is "Don't vote Republican because they're the ones that screwed us over"... But voting Democrat is actually kind of lame given how ineffective and pussyish they're being.

virgil, the trouble is that DnD creators don't want players to have such powers. Dungeon have walls, traps, pits and such stuff. Truly epic fighter will just render it all useless.

Exactly. Players want the uberity of bigger and bigger numbers without breaking the traditional storylines that their fantasy has.

[Princess]

Exactly. Players want the uberity of bigger and bigger numbers without breaking the traditional storylines that their fantasy has.

Not all players. If all players would be happy dungeoncrawling threads like this wouldn't come in to existence.
Some players want quantity to result in quality. Others want just same story with bigger number. And I prefer the first one type, because second type causes me to start "Hey guys! You are freaking 16th level! Why don't you crush some state or build your own? You can defeat armies! And you are waiting for someone superior who'll give you a quest?!?! facepalm".

[Judging__Eagle]

Dungeon walls are dead easy to burrow through.

A Fighter with TWF, and twin Adamantine light maces, or daggers; can chip through the 900 hp of a 5' block of uncut granite in a couple of minutes.

With Power Attack, and an Str of 10; a level 6 Fighter is dealing 36 damage per round plus about 10~ points of weapon damage (assuming a 1d6 light mace) (assuming 3.5 damage per swing) stupid TWF; not Tome 3.X logical TWF; logical TWF at level 6 renders 48 damage per round +12~ from weapon damage; or about 60 damage per round).

Each round dealing about 50 (or 60) damage per round means that in 1 minute, you've got 500 damage dealt; and before the 2nd minute is up; you've busted through the square.

That's level 6. With PHB stuff, assuming 1 fighter, with two possibly pricey weapons. Using a greatclub/greatsword/giant pick/maul; the character trades out amount of actions for bigger weapon damage, and a larger strength modifier. Stronger characters without TWF are probably not going to TWF, but they'll still plough through stone walls.

Of course, that's assuming they blow through all 900~ hp; and not, say, dig a hole wide enough to squeeze through; say 1/2 ot 450 hp.

As well, this is assuming the toughest and highest HP material for walls. Unworked granite/stone walls. Masonry, or worked stone both have less HP than unworked stone. Meaning that most actual dungeon walls that are constructed will fall pretty easily.

Mind you; this can't be reliably done in combat time. Being able to reshape terrain as an in-combat tactic is a bit harder, and doesn't usually come online until level 10-20; depending on build and character focus.

[Princess]

First of all, crushing 10 squares in one attack is more impressive than crushing 1 square in 1 minute.
Second, adamantine is a lightsaber bullshit. Actually I'd prefer using some other weapon material, not one dedicated to scenery crushing.
And in combat clever fighter attacks his opponent, not scenery.

Oh, and what about fatigue from hard labour in DnD?

[Zinegata]

Okay Zine, let's talk literature. Maj already agreed that no levels-ups happen in the Gospel narratives. Are you going to disagree, or propose some other literary source?

Actually, she showed that Level Up happened in Luke. Not a great story, but it did.

We're not talking about how awesome the level up story is. It's a Yes/No thing. Otherwise we get mired in subjective shit.

Moreover, the counter-argument - that this was a Xanatos gambit - finds no explicit support in the gospels save for Judas'.

And as I said, Jesus' literary story more closely mirrors Buddha than anyone else. And Buddha gained his Enlightenment XP via suffering too. You don't want Jesus? I give you Buddha then.

But the thread has moved on and the whole religion thing is in MPSIMs already anyway.

[Zinegata]

So back to the topic...

What about historical figures? Real people do seem to go through a leveling effect, so do stories about them count?

They should.

For instance, the life of Scipio Africanus...

1) His first mention in history is as the son of a Roman general. His dad goes up against Hannibal. His dad gets beaten and is cut off by the Carthaginian cavalry. Scipio rides out all alone as a level 1 fighter to try and save him. His higher-level bodyguards, shamed by the young boy's action, follows him and the dad is saved.

2) Scipio fights with the Roman army at the battle of Trebia against Hannibal. Romans are massacred.

3) Scipio gets command of a small unit for having survived Trebia. Said unit get sent with the Roman army to fight the Carthaginians at Cannae. It is a disaster of epic proportions. 50,000-80,000 Romans die. Scipio survives with part of his unit, one of the few to do so.

4) Scipio swears vengeance on Hannibal and starts a political career.

5) Scipio gains political clout, and gets his own army. He goes to Spain and kicks a lot of Carthiginian ass, including Hannibals brother.

6) Scipio returns to Rome and politics some more. He becomes Consul (highest office).

7) Scipio raises a volunteer force in Sicily

8) Scipio uses his volunteer army to invade Carthage, forcing Hannibal to go home and face him in battle.

9) Scipio and Hannibal meet. They have an awesome pre-battle meeting where the two guys have a parlay.

10) Scipio and Hannibal fight the last battle of the 2nd Punic War at Zama. Scipio kills or captures 40,000 Carthaginian troops, using the exact same tactics Hannibal used at Cannae.

And really, the Punic wars in many ways reflects how the Roman Republic levelled up. They started off as simple city state. They ended the war as an Empire. A really ballsy Empire that - after the disaster at Cannae - the Romans outlawed the word peace to show their grim determination to fight on. When Hannibal approached the city of Rome, the Senate voted to auction and sell off the land that Hannibal's army was encamped in - at full price.

And we haven't even gotten to the story of the Roman prisoners who were released by the Carthaginians to negotiate peace yet!

[Ganbare Gincun]

I'm very reticent to comment on Putin at all, Putin had at one point 22 years of his service with the KGB redacted. He didn't even bother to put a banal face on his service like Bush 41 did.

My money's on "snapping necks".

[Prak]

What I've gleaned is the reason Fighters can't have nice things is Jesus.

Well he is certainly the reason real people frequently can't have nice things.

[Juton]

So back to the topic...

What about historical figures? Real people do seem to go through a leveling effect, so do stories about them count?

They should.

For instance, the life of Scipio Africanus...

That's a pretty good example, he seems to follow the old OD&D advancement where Fighters get armies and castles. In 5e or whatever the next version is Fighters should at least get the interaction skills to make something like this possible.

Another example, although one I'm not as familiar with could be the welsh myths that where the foundation of the Le Morte d'Arthur. Anyone familiar with those?

[Zinegata]

So back to the topic...

What about historical figures? Real people do seem to go through a leveling effect, so do stories about them count?

They should.

For instance, the life of Scipio Africanus...

That's a pretty good example, he seems to follow the old OD&D advancement where Fighters get armies and castles. In 5e or whatever the next version is Fighters should at least get the interaction skills to make something like this possible.

Another example, although one I'm not as familiar with could be the welsh myths that where the foundation of the Le Morte d'Arthur. Anyone familiar with those?

Historical (Roman-based), or the more mythical version that was written by later English writers in the Middle Ages?

[Koumei]

Less than 2% of so called Christian country visit Easter Church Service,

When you live that close to Czech Republic, you have better things to do on Easter.

Anyway, for fighters that level up, I totally nominate Comrade Putin (we'll assume his KGB service happened, and later he gets the class feature "Replace all references to being a KGB man to just being that awesome").

And the Undertaker (the in-character stuff, not Mark Callaway the man who plays the role of the Undertaker and runs a shelter for abandoned "bad reputation" dogs.)

[cthulhu]

Rocky?

[Zinegata]

Rocky?

He gets old in the end, and that new young wrestler dude would probably have smashed him up if not for that critical hit on the hand early on.

Rambo though? Despite getting old his kill count goes up with every movie.

[8headeddragon]

Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido. Already a soldier and a martial artist, in 1924 he came back from Mongolia with the ability to dodge bullets.

...and he had found he could see flashes of light indicating the path of oncoming bullets.

No fluke, because he went on to be do even more epic dodging and was doing amazing things well into old age.

[Jilocasin]

Huh, I never realized but the stories surrounding him do mirror a leveling up progression pretty well. He's even got the training montages where he goes off to the mountains and gets some damage reduction.

[cthulhu]

Rocky?

He gets old in the end, and that new young wrestler dude would probably have smashed him up if not for that critical hit on the hand early on.

Rambo though? Despite getting old his kill count goes up with every movie.

Ahh, then Paul Kersey is your man.

[K]

Rocky?

He gets old in the end, and that new young wrestler dude would probably have smashed him up if not for that critical hit on the hand early on.

Rambo though? Despite getting old his kill count goes up with every movie.

Rambo is post-DnD, so he doesn't count.

I'm also going to disregard the founder of aikido since he doesn't seem to do anything I couldn't see at a Wild West show or performed by a stage magician.

And I've already voiced my objection to Indian myth that it doesn't seem to have power-ups since heroes explicitly are equals to gods who do things like create the world. It's a goddamn mess both as a story and a basis for the various and fragmented forms of Hinduism.

And real people don't count because they aren't fantasy characters. They don't kill dragons or demons, so they don't actually "power up" in any meaningful DnD sense.

The DnD mythology IS the incorporation of real world sensibilities to mythic material, so the idea of people growing in power and eventually fighting enemies orders of magnitude bigger than the ones they fought before comes into play. I mean, people understand that a copy boy can become president of a corporation with enough time, and they extend that idea to fantasy characters that they play.

What was the thread topic again?

[Jilocasin]

I'd disregard Ueshiba because he's obviously a wizard since he gets access to dimension door and time stop.

And it seems to me that this thread is about (sometimes) trying to reconcile irreconcilable differences. It's all like, "mang you got too much magic in my fighting." "nuh uh! you got too much fighting in my magic!" And then instead of a delicious peanut buttery chocolate treat there's just a huge explosion.

[violence in the media]

That's a pretty good example, he seems to follow the old OD&D advancement where Fighters get armies and castles. In 5e or whatever the next version is Fighters should at least get the interaction skills to make something like this possible.

Either that, or some more robust rules for leadership and loyalty, etc. I mean, what is the Diplomacy DC for a NPC to convince your cohort to betray you? How loyal to you/the crown are the soldiers under your lawful commission? What check needs to be made for one of those soldiers to resist a 1000 gp bribe? That sort of thing.

[Aryxbez]

I have to say, I do like these kinds of threads, good to see recent discussion on wanting to make the fighter types awesome, and fit for their power level. As for the original poster's query on Advent Children, I'd agree with the 16-20th "Epic" from this list by OneWinged4ngel:

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... um=10&pg=1

I felt the listing of things there is quite accurate enough, makes for a good reference, and something to add to this topic I think. As have been said before, the whole "Charles Atlas" Superpower, is pretty much the way to go here, for higher level fighter's power source. I would think it would be simple enough to reason, just like leveling up, increases the competency of things you're already capable, and gives a new power/option you can do.

I've read basically all of this thread so far, and has seemed pretty good. Save for the whole religious literature debate that seemed to be getting nowhere. I believe there was some things I wanted to reply to earlier in this thread, but I'll have to go back and check at whatever the hell those were.

I would like to see an RPG that delivers on fighter types actually having level appropriate abilities or superpowers. Aside from Tome, almost surprising this forum hasn't already created, or in process of creating a system like this, seems like quite the ideal place to do so. The Successor Project was an attempt to make a better D&D, that incorporated fighters having nice things, but sunk from lack of involvement.

[Leress]

OneWinged4ngel is a member here but doesn't post very often.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I'd disregard Ueshiba because he's obviously a wizard since he gets access to dimension door and time stop.

Nah, O-sensei was either a melee-specialized cleric with the trickery domain, or a Tome monk/Sohei. He was in pretty deep with Oomoto, and even had a few of his own divine revelations:

...I felt the universe suddenly quake, and that a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into a golden one. At the same time my body became light. I was able to understand the whispering of the birds, and was clearly aware of the mind of God, the creator of the universe.
At that moment I was enlightened: the source of budo is God's love - the spirit of loving protection for all beings... Budo is not the felling of an opponent by force; nor is it a tool to lead the world to destruction with arms. True Budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect and cultivate all beings in nature.

Also, an intimidating madman. In a good way.