The End of 4e D&D.

[TheFlatline]

Okay... so how does the fighter take on the Solid Iron Demon?

He runs the fuck away and lures the solid iron demon into a trap, where he kicks it into the volcano/blast furnace/sphere of annihilation.

Seriously, the way you think this through is to take a WW2 tank, plop it down in the middle of the 12 century, and task a single man to destroy it. I *guess* you might be able to crush it with huge boulders, but that wouldn't work for a solid iron demon. He's solid, there's nothing to *crush*.

But he isn't going to pick up a wooden maul or an 8 pound mace and beat the thing to death.

[MfA]

There are people present which can turn the ground beneath it to mud, or lava, reverse gravity, transport it to other planes etc.

They are not running away.

[Danchild]

It's easy as long the fighter is actually a barbarian. He jumps on the demon, pulls it's fucking horn out and the stabs it to death while screaming "Croooommm!"

The warrior archetype in a lot of stories is often blessed by the gods or spirits. Sometimes they have a wizard mentor or some magical sword. They are effectively a magic user, despite the fact that they hit things and have no deep understanding of the powers they call on.

If a player wants to play a non-magical character in a supernatural world, then they are going to get curbstomped by an iron demon. They may be able to use their wits to confound the beast or even render it impotent, but there is no way they can go toe to toe with it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

He runs the fuck away and lures the solid iron demon into a trap, where he kicks it into the volcano/blast furnace/sphere of annihilation.

And I guess the demon is just dumb enough to follow the fighter into Trap Here! And like a volcano or a blast furnace is going to even tickle a demon. And the fighter can actually survive the trip to said death trap despite the fact that the demon TELEPORTS and MOVES FASTER.

I'm really starting to hate the 'Badass Normal' type 2. 'They exploit weaknesses that immortal demons don't think they have', 'they use their SKILLS rather than their POWERS' and 'You're Just Going To Have To Try Harder!' is some rather powerful Handwavium. Or denial. Whichever.

[Username17]

Okay... so how does the fighter take on the Solid Iron Demon?

He runs the fuck away and lures the solid iron demon into a trap, where he kicks it into the volcano/blast furnace/sphere of annihilation.

Seriously, the way you think this through is to take a WW2 tank, plop it down in the middle of the 12 century, and task a single man to destroy it. I *guess* you might be able to crush it with huge boulders, but that wouldn't work for a solid iron demon. He's solid, there's nothing to *crush*.

But he isn't going to pick up a wooden maul or an 8 pound mace and beat the thing to death.

That's exactly right. That is how an unenhanced mortal human warrior protagonist would defeat a solid iron demon boss. But that also clearly shows why such a character is wholly inappropriate for a high level D&D game.

• You aren't the fucking protagonist. You are a character. One. The game doesn't fucking revolve around you, and you don't get any fucking plot armor. You can't use up that much screen time on a rube goldberg trap. And it probably wouldn't work anyway, because you have to roll the actual chances rather than having it automatically work because it's the last desperate attempt at the en of the story.
• That's not even the boss. Seriously, that's not even the final monster, that's Iron Demon #7. And when you kill him the credits don't roll. Hell, you might not even move on to the big boss, because there could easily be six more in this encounter. They aren't using conservation of ninjitsu even, each one is just as powerful as when you did encounter one as the boss - five levels ago.
• You are fighting in a goat pasture. Since this isn't a piece of single author fiction with an ending written ahead of time, you won't get a set of terrain features geared towards providing a set of Chekhov Guns for you to use at a dramatic moment. It's just you and maybe your power ring. Anything you can't do with the shit on your character sheet is something you very likely cannot do.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think we need to come up with a new term for the 'Badass Normal' type two character who really isn't a badass after all.

How about we call them 'Boddice-Ripper Fighters'?

[Red_Rob]

I think there is some disconnect here. Everyone is aware that mechanically the fighter needs to be able to beat the Demon. Whether thats by simply dealing enough damage or penetrating his DR or Foiling his teleport or whatever.

The argument some people are making is that the explanation for his abilities should be kept as non magical as possible to avoid offending people who want to play the type of characters they see in the movies. The Tome Fighter has no obviously magical abilities at all and gets plenty of useful powers so thats not impossible.

Complaining that the physics of a guy who can chop someone in half but not lift houses are borked is missing the point. The fact is that people will suspend their disbelief to allow someone to train so hard they can do things that technically defy physics as long as they don't obviously defy physics. If you think of the things a standard action hero does on a logical level some of them are no more ridiculous than lifting a car, but because they are not obvious people give them a free pass.

Now, I personally subscribe to Frank's idea that whatever you give the action hero mechanically to make him equal to the magic classes he will still be fucked over because people will refuse to allow him to use his powers in obviously magical ways. However, saying the Fighter couldn't defeat a huge, indestructible monster using Action Hero tactics is bullshit, thats the ending to practically every film ever.

[Dr_Noface]

I think this iron demon discussion is kind of stupid. Do you guys really care if a fighter has to use a magic sword to penetrate a balor's DR?

I mean, the Tome fighter rocks even without Forge Lore. And it gives off a mundane fighter vibe at all levels.

[Archmage]

I think we need to come up with a new term for the 'Badass Normal' type two character who really isn't a badass after all.

How about we call them 'Boddice-Ripper Fighters'?

It's worth noting that these are TVTropes/literary tropes, not roleplaying game tropes. Roleplaying games are games, not stories, though they create stories as a side effect of their play. They would not be terribly interesting if they didn't; most people would go play a board game instead, except that most RPGs are so poorly designed that there isn't actually much left when you peel away the story synthesized by the interaction of player creativity with formal rules.

So everyone citing TVTropes shit is talking about fiction where you have an author or set of authors who controls the universe arbitrarily as opposed to a game where creating an interesting story is just kind of an emergent process of a complex system.

[TOZ]

I think this iron demon discussion is kind of stupid. Do you guys really care if a fighter has to use a magic sword to penetrate a balor's DR?

No. We care that he needs a cape of flying, goggles of seeing, ring of fire protection, belt of giant strength, armor of not exploding, AND the Sword of Kas to fight the balor.

[Username17]

I think this iron demon discussion is kind of stupid. Do you guys really care if a fighter has to use a magic sword to penetrate a balor's DR?

Yes.

While it is an acceptable answer to the "What if we face a powerful villain?" question to be "You have to be Green Lantern." It is not an acceptable answer to proclaim that characters need such items and simultaneously hand out the option of playing Huntress anyway.

Artificers and Gadgeteers are potentially playable at the levels when your enemies are Darkseid or Galactus, but Daredevil and Lady Blackhawk are not. If you say that getting the magic swords is mandatory in order to be able to defeat level appropriate opposition, you are in effect saying that the magic swords are themselves necessary. In short, you haven't really gotten away from the "must magic up the Fighter" situation at all.

Again and still, there are only two solutions to the dilemma: you can magic up the fighter, or you can cap the entire game so that the fighter doesn't need to be magicked up. NO OPTION THREE.

-Username17

[Dr_Noface]

How many of those items does a 20th level Tome fighter need to slay a balor with ease?

[TOZ]

How many of those items does a 20th level Tome fighter need to slay a balor with ease?

Fuck if I know, I don't get to play Tome. :/ but that is the problem the Tome Fighter was meant to fix.

[Username17]

How many of those items does a 20th level Tome fighter need to slay a balor with ease?

To face a 3.5 Balor, he needs two mobility items (flight and some sort of speed boost/teleport), a magic weapon, and magic defenses. The 3e Balor also requires a true seeing item.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Anyway, dealing with a creature made of metal with a hammer is worthy of a darwin award.

You're right, 100% metal is fucking tough, tough to the point that anything the wizard or fighter can toss at it is going to do precisely shit, so it's a non argument.

If you're saying it's 100% metal, then basically everyone is fucked. Seriously? A fireball? A lightning bolt? They're all gonna do precisely shit.

I'm talking about something with skin of steel (aka, built in plate armor or something). And yes, knights did deal with fighting people in metal armor, and they had weapons specifically made to fight against it.

Lets face it though, a creature of 100% iron, not running on gearwork or something else is basically going to be indestructible. That's basically a puzzle monster. Either a wizard has a very specialized spell to deal with it, or the creature has some glaring weakness, like it's not very strong and can't lift its own weight if trapped in mud or knocked down.

[CatharzGodfoot]

No, it just means that the warrior can hit super hard with a bow (hard enough to pierce even supernaturally strengthened hide), pin the demon with arrows to keep it from teleporting away, and is a skilled enough grappler to put the demon in a finger lock while deftly avoiding its natural weapons.

Hey look, guys, CG is doing exactly what I described. He's nerfing the demon offscreen while pretending he's not buffing the fighter.

You can't pierce his supernaturally strengthened hide with a fucking mundane arrow. Nonmagical swords bounces off him. Like it did to a werewolf many levels before him. What the fuck is a non-magic arrow supposed to do?

Stopping the demon by pinning him down with arrows. Next you're going to tell me that he gets the demon to trip by tying his shoelaces together.

And no. No amount of 'skill' is going to let you put the demon in a finger lock. He's as fucking strong as an elephant in a compact size. That's more offscreen demon nerfing.

A naked 3.5e 10th level fighter can punch his way through solid steel without harming himself in the least. If that's the kind of nonmagical skill that D&D players are willing to accept, I don't see why disabling Talos is out of the realm of possibility or requires "offscreen nerfing".

Look, I can do the same thing to 'prove' that druids can't compete at high level: The Servitor of Gaia is immune to all natural attacks and druidic magic. Bam!

[Juton]

Lets face it though, a creature of 100% iron, not running on gearwork or something else is basically going to be indestructible. That's basically a puzzle monster. Either a wizard has a very specialized spell to deal with it, or the creature has some glaring weakness, like it's not very strong and can't lift its own weight if trapped in mud or knocked down.

Isn't that basically an Iron Golem? Rust attacks, Thermite, Polymorph it into something squishy, teleport it to somewhere far away, magic super sword. If you have phlebotinum it's not that hard an enemy.

[RandomCasualty2]

Isn't that basically an Iron Golem? Rust attacks, Thermite, Polymorph it into something squishy, teleport it to somewhere far away, magic super sword. If you have phlebotinum it's not that hard an enemy.

That's an iron golem if treated realistically. Seriously right now an iron golem has no fire resistance. At all. It's immune to most magic, but you can still burn it to death. It also has a measly amount of hp, compared to how tough it'd really be.

And yeah, I'm saying that short of phlebotinum, you're not going to take that shit down with anything short of a tank cannon.

That's pretty much like saying the incredible hulk sucks because you can make him fight some enemy that's made entirely of adamantium that he can't damage at all and that he needs magic. Seriously, you can create a hoser enemy to any class if you want. At the point you want a fighter to beat stuff that has effectively uber physical defenses, I'm kinda wondering why you'd expect the fighter to be able to win that.

Based on the parameters of the battle, you've set up a combat he's supposed to lose. It'd be like saying "well wizards need combat skills because if there's this monster that radiates and antimagic field and negates all his spells, he can't do shit"

[Quantumboost]

Seriously right now an iron golem has no fire resistance. At all. It's immune to most magic, but you can still burn it to death.

wat

Iron isn't indestructible. Not by a long shot. Most kinds of thermal or chemical attack will mess up something made of iron. Hell, it practically does that on its own with ordinary water.

Iron burns. Anyone who has taken a metal shop class will tell you that. An intense enough fireball or flaming sword ability will cause it harm.

Iron corrodes. Like all metals, putting it in an appropriate low-pH solution will eat it away like nobody's business.

And if you heat it up enough, iron deforms - and creatures don't usually handle the material they're made of deforming very well.

[A Man In Black]

A naked 3.5e 10th level fighter can punch his way through solid steel without harming himself in the least. If that's the kind of nonmagical skill that D&D players are willing to accept, I don't see why disabling Talos is out of the realm of possibility or requires "offscreen nerfing".

Players often aren't willing to accept that. I've seen many a GITP/ENW/Paizo thread about how breaking things down with a sword/dagger/punch isn't realistic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A naked 3.5e 10th level fighter can punch his way through solid steel without harming himself in the least. If that's the kind of nonmagical skill that D&D players are willing to accept, I don't see why disabling Talos is out of the realm of possibility or requires "offscreen nerfing".

Yeah! And in 4E, three small children can punch through an adamantine wall without any kind of phlebtonum faster than a catapult could!

That's a quirk of the rules, CatharzGodfoot. Most Type 2 Badass Normals in fiction couldn't do that shit, not without the audience crying 'foul'!

Complaining that the physics of a guy who can chop someone in half but not lift houses are borked is missing the point. The fact is that people will suspend their disbelief to allow someone to train so hard they can do things that technically defy physics as long as they don't obviously defy physics. If you think of the things a standard action hero does on a logical level some of them are no more ridiculous than lifting a car, but because they are not obvious people give them a free pass.

That's a really specific level of suspension of disbelief. They can suspend it enough to accept a non-magical fighter punching out a demon who we just saw deflecting bullets off of their skin, but they can't accept the same fighter lifting up a car in a later scene.

Why are we catering to this bullshit? This entire bout of cognitive dissonance is why fighters can't have nice things. If people couldn't suspend their disbelief at all then we wouldn't have inferior high-level fighters (because there wouldn't be ANY high-level fighters) and if they could suspend their disbelief enough then we wouldn't have inferior high-level fighters either.

I don't mind which side of the fence people fall on. I'm okay with having Rob Lucci and Kenshiro and Gokou. being examples of high-level martial artists. I'm also okay with banning Aragon and Conan after a certain point in the game.

I'm not okay with having Aragon and Conan get to 17th level and the game making then suck wizard cock and then LIE about them being able to get this far mostly due to their abilities. That's fucking bullshit.

[Psychic Robot]

I like how people think that nerfing melee training so that you only add half the relevant stat to damage is a huge deal.

Aparently future updates will make 4e forward compatible with Essentials, rather than Essentials being backward compatible.

My head hurts now. That amount of marketing doublespeak is both brilliant and nauseating.

[RandomCasualty2]

Iron isn't indestructible. Not by a long shot. Most kinds of thermal or chemical attack will mess up something made of iron. Hell, it practically does that on its own with ordinary water.

Over time, sure. But there's nothing on a battlefield short of extreme firepower that's going to take out something made of that much iron.

I mean if you look at an iron golem, you're not just dealing with an iron man, it's a fucking iron giant. That's like at least 2 feet thick of iron. Now short of something like Thermite, and honestly even Thermite will take a while, you're just not going to get temperatures close to melting that with instantaneous heat sources.

The most heating it up is going to do is make it fucking burn you when it punches you. Remember we're not talking about any kind machinery inside you can overheat or smash. This isn't a tank. It's more heavily armored and has no machinery whatsoever. It can't be disabled in any way, it will keep coming until you smash the fucker to bits. On the short term, there's very little you can do to stop that short of using phlebtonium that either turns it into something that's not a giant iron statue or stuff that ignores iron far better than pretty much any modern weaponry.

[Username17]

I like how people think that nerfing melee training so that you only add half the relevant stat to damage is a huge deal.

Aparently future updates will make 4e forward compatible with Essentials, rather than Essentials being backward compatible.

My head hurts now. That amount of marketing doublespeak is both brilliant and nauseating.

It actually is a big deal within the context of 4e. If you are out 2 or 3 points of damage, you're going to be deeply inferior to the other players. There is a lot of grind, and enemies have a lot of hit points. You have to hit your enemies many times, so 2 points per hit is actually a huge setback.

-Username17

[sake]

I like how people think that nerfing melee training so that you only add half the relevant stat to damage is a huge deal.

Considering it was already a feat tax for something every melee class should of had out of the box...yes, doing less damage than similar classes else can do for free, just because some Dev decided to be "creative" when making your class is a pretty annoying deal.