The reason why fighters will never have nice things.

[FatR]

Ichigo from Bleach can dodge huge blasts that destroy buildings, but he can't fly, or even travel long distances at superspeed.

Uh, at what point you've stopped following Bleach? He can. With hollowfication active he stands and runs on air regularly.

Why must non-flying people automatically be defined as low-level?

Because there are very few examples of high-level people who can't fly and have no other super movement modes to compensate. They are either dumb muscle, like the Hulk or Doomsday, or get into the club only through plotdevice end-season magic, like the anime version of Sailormoon, and these are not good PCs niches. People from the former group often can jump so high there is no effective difference anyway.

I was ready to disagree, but after rereading what you said I agree. So, again: why are ranged attacks a must? The pat answer is because all bad guys have them, but I can think of plenty of bad guys which could be defined as "high-level" who either have or prefer to mix it up in melee...dragons, for example (in most cases they can breathe fire, but that is not long-range, can be limited in use, and does not need to be their primary attack; most iconic dragon fights I can think of from movies and such involve a lot of biting and clawing).

"The pat answer" is correct. Dragons do, in fact, have ranged attacks. In an optimized DnD game meleeing is generally more productive for them, because all or nearly enemies can reach them anyway, but if you can't, they totally will strafe you to death. This tends to be true for powerful dragons (those with actual city-destroying capabilities, starting from Smaug) in fiction as well.

And again...why? Superman is high-level, right? He doesn't influence socio-politics for the most part, even though he's entirely capable of destroying other countries.

He does. He simply was raised in belief that the existing status quo is alright, so he actually strives to conserve it at any cost, and therefore limits himself to vigilantism. He's pointedly not under the control of any higher authority, though.

Why can't high-level people be powerful, but limited in how widely they can employ that power? (aside from simply defining it that way)

Because if their power is functionally unusable in most circumstances andtimes, they are not really high-level; and moral limitations basically mean defining people who use their powers proactively and for change as supervillains. Which can be kinda-sorta justified in a world similar to ours, if you squint hard enough and avoid thinking about it too much, but can't be in the world where the status quo is nothing short of horrible, like nearly any DnD setting.

It's the returning from long death (in some cases, years or more) that bugs me.

Well, actually yes, the game can live without things like this and be better off. As long as you have some solution for short-term life failures, or those are virtually guaranteed to not happen, at least unless the whole party is destroyed.

[FatR]

1. I suggested the Authprity particularly because it really doesn't change that much power level wise,

Ahahahaha.

No. Fuck, no. The Authority (past the initial run) has one of the most inconsistent powerlevels out there. Two of the members (Doctor and Jenny Quantum) oscillate between functionally omnipotent on multi-universal scale to barely capable of blasting some mooks, depending on what the current plot needs them to do. It is one of the reasons I stopped reading in disgust.

[sabs]

Superman could easily effect Socio-Political things if he wanted to.

He's a BoyScout who only worries about 1 city. Even though he has the power and ability to change things if he wants. There are several alternate time line Red Shift Blue Dimension version of Superman where he does in fact /take over/ the world.

Superman is a terrible strawman argument, because he's as powerful as he needs to be for the story, and he's self limiting. Neither trait being something that PCs have.

[BearsAreBrown]

First, I've heard those stories, and they're bullshit. No monster is just going to sit there while you deal 3.5 damage to him every other round or so. So no, while you can crunch some math that says it's theoretically possible, it is a massive fail to say it will actually happen, unless you play the Tarrasque and other melee brutes as rocks that sit there and get shot.

Second, I never said it was "wrong" to like flying artillery; I said it was boring, AND that it was not necessarily intrinsic to a definition of "high-level" unless you accept it as a base premise. Which you do not have to do.

You're right, the stories are exaggerated. But the fact is if you can fly and the opponent can't then the fight is already decided. I never said you said it was "wrong" to like flying artillery, you did however say it was incorrect that flying artillery is necessary in high level situations. Your basis for this decision still seems to be "I don't like it."

[shadzar]

Ichigo from Bleach can dodge huge blasts that destroy buildings, but he can't fly, or even travel long distances at superspeed.

yes he can effectively....well could before he lost his shinigami powers using the 3rd level of his bankai.

You've probably read further than me (I'm only partway through the Arrancar arc...Nel just transformed back to her true form), but to date:

1.) I have not seen Ichigo fly under his own power. Make huge leaps, yes...stuff that will let him avoid combat or even slash a flying foe, but not something he can use to fly across the Atlantic, or to the moon.

2.) I have not seen Ichigo use Shunpo to really go anywhere; again, for in-combat dodging and stuff, yeah, he's hella fast. But he doesn't use that to run at 600 mph for hours. As far as I can tell, even Yoruichi who is a master of Shunpo can't use to, say, cross the country. That's why I said "long distances"...it's not a travel power.

he pretty much walks on air before meeting Nel in Las Noches. HE does it when fighting Grimjaw before even going after Orihime. maybe hard to see in what you have read, but he pretty much jsut walks on thin air in all worlds...

does a travel power have to be high level? Ishida uses the Quincy version from the beginning of meting Ichigo...

[tussock]

But the fact is if you can fly and the opponent can't then the fight is already decided.

Missile weapons. Things on the ground you care about. Hard cover. Concealment. Sure, on the plains of Hungary winged archers are even better than long range artillery, which was better than horse archers, but come night time they still land somewhere and the fifth column can kill them in their sleep.

Like IRL, air power's awesome, but it doesn't hold any ground or protect any valuables. At some point you've got to send in the infantry, and they can run across a tank parked in a shed somewhere, or a bulette as the case may be.

[BearsAreBrown]

Missile weapons. Things on the ground you care about. Hard cover. Concealment. Sure, on the plains of Hungary winged archers are even better than long range artillery, which was better than horse archers, but come night time they still land somewhere and the fifth column can kill them in their sleep.

That was a part of my overall point. That not only is flying essential but so is a level appropriate ranged attack. I'm not arguing that flying is the end all game winner, I'm arguing that a large portion of battles can be decided by the ability to fly or not to fly. Just as you can name 30 battles that don't require flight I can name 30 which do require flight and 60 that flight makes a helluva lot easier.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look, flight is only a series-defining ability in series that fetishize melee combat.

In Shadowrun, constant, all-day flight is dead easy to get. Seriously. Magicians can grant party-wide flight as a parlor trick. But no one really gives a fuck, because the weapon de jour are guns. Only people optimizing for stealth, having completely tricked-out melee weapons (like a grade 12 weapon foci), or goddamn idiots specialize for melee combat.

D&D is a series that fetishizes melee combat and a lot of the more powerful monsters fly. It's just a good way to have a consistent and easily-recognizable 'you must be this high to ride' metric for badassery. Like having a battle aura or regeneration. It totally is one.


Speaking of which, trying to set universal breakpoints for High Level is a fool's errand, as seen by the flight example I just gave. The best you can do is come up with a set of mythologies and scenarios that you want to emulate and then run thought experiments about how much power a character would need to gain in order to conquer the scenario. Here's an easy one:

How much power would you need to take out Spider-Man in melee combat? Here's some things you have to keep in mind:

1) Spider-Man is very strong. It depends on the adaptation, but it's not unreasonable to assume that he could lift up a car and throw it at you. This forces a minimal level of power; he can't be taken down by throwing large number of mooks at the problem, unless you have some sort of 'trick'.

2) Spider-Man has great reflexes and a danger sense. This raises the bar to take him down even further. This means that even if you equip your mooks with machine guns/bows and arrows and go hog wild A-Team style, Spider-Man will still come out on top. This pretty much eliminates a wide swatch of VAHs from ever taking him on in a fair fight, unless the plot is sucking their cocks.

He has a lot more tricks than that up his sleeve (such as science shit, mass group disablers), but those are the two big ones. Right away we can see that he completely outclasses heroes like movie!Aragorn, Conan, Han Solo, Rocky, etc..

But the story doesn't end right there. As cool as Spider-Man's powers are, there are people who can beat him. And not just in a 'fight-to-a-standstill' way like Venom and Cyclops, but I mean totally outclass. Superman, Hercules, Monkey D. Luffy, so on. Even though Spider-Man is badass, he ranks only in the middle of the list of possible heroes (and stories) in the range of power. If you go up the list of possible inspirations, you'll find that you're not going to do much better for power than, say, Goku. Like 99% of action adventure heroes he'll just curbstomp. So you put him at the top end of the scale. Then you deconstruct what he can do.

This principle doesn't just apply to heroes, it can also be done for adventures, too. For example: take over the Death Star. Not 'run in and rescue a prisoner' I mean 'invade the Death Star as a foreigner and take it for your personal use'. Here are some facets of the challenge.

1) First of all, you have to locate and get to it in the first place. Like the flight example, the difficulty of this task depends on the genre. If you're a sci-fi hero, this might not be too hard. If you're a fantasy or modern-era hero, however, this very quickly shrinks the pool. Not to say that it couldn't be done, but this just gives you an idea of the scope of the task.

2) Next challenge: subdue the inhabitants. The staff of a death star is about the size of a small moon and they have no real reason to fear you. Why should they? Even if the staff onboard was literally unable to hurt you and you had nothing to fear from Darth Vader, you'd need tons of badassery. I mean, the Death Star is simply big enough for the staff to ignore you and run it on your own. Now there are some characters who could rise to the challenge. Superman can just laser the Death Star in half with his heat vision or chuck it into the sun. Xemnas could just release the Heartless/Nobodies until it took over the station (the entire Org 13 would be needed to do this and there's still a good chance they'd fail). Goku could move so fast that he could personally punch everyone onboard in the nuts within the span of an hour. So on. The point is, this task is impossible without some uber-badassery or some weird hax like Agent Smith getting into the network.



tl;dr: High-Level in stories goes pretty goddamn high. And notice that the higher in power you go the harder it is to define benchmarks. There are a few recurring ones (super speed, flight, invulnerability), but they're not enough to neatly divide into a 20-level system.

[PoliteNewb]

Speaking of which, trying to set universal breakpoints for High Level is a fool's errand, as seen by the flight example I just gave. The best you can do is come up with a set of mythologies and scenarios that you want to emulate and then run thought experiments about how much power a character would need to gain in order to conquer the scenario.

I agree completely.

As cool as Spider-Man's powers are, there are people who can beat him. And not just in a 'fight-to-a-standstill' way like Venom and Cyclops, but I mean totally outclass. Superman, Hercules, Monkey D. Luffy, so on. Even though Spider-Man is badass, he ranks only in the middle of the list of possible heroes (and stories) in the range of power. If you go up the list of possible inspirations, you'll find that you're not going to do much better for power than, say, Goku. Like 99% of action adventure heroes he'll just curbstomp. So you put him at the top end of the scale.

This is, again, the part I take issue with.
You are taking somebody like Spider-man (fucking spider-man!) and calling him "mid-level", just because there are people out there somewhere in the entirety of fiction who are higher level than him.

Why the fuck do you think it's a good idea to design a game with Aragorn at the bottom and Goku at the top?
If you want to play a game with Goku and Alucard, play that game. And if you want to play a game with Conan and Aragorn, play THAT game. But putting all of those guys on the same 20 level scale is a waste of time.

Levels in a game system should not exist to show you the difference between guys who are already radically different...that's why there are different games. Levels should demonstrate lesser but noticeable differences between guys who you might actually expect to be in the same piece of fiction.

[DragonChild]

Uh... at no point does Lago say Spiderman is "mid-level" in that post. He specifically uses the phrase "middle of the list", which is true. I mean, you can debate how long the list is in eager direction, but that seems to totally ignore what he's going for? He's just arguing that there are people both stronger and weaker than Spiderman.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I regret ever using the term 'high-level', because it's causing some confusion.

I should have said 'high-powered'. In a game with a wide range of power discrepancies like D&D this should mean the same thing, but talking in abstract it's not. It depends on what kind of stories you want to have represented.

Now I'll admit that the people who seem to write primary D&D sourcebooks and secondary campaign settings (Dawnforge, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Relics and Rituals, etc.) don't actually want high-powered plots in their setting. Indeed, as entertaining as Races of War/Dungeonomicon are, a lot of the humor/insights rely on deconstructing the tropes and spells of D&Ds in ways that the authors almost certainly never intended. Order of the Stick goes out of its way to neuter the characters, so maybe that attitude is more prevalent. Yet I can't imagine Roy, even with all of his magical trinkets, ever getting more powerful than Spider-Man.

Maybe this whole conversation is pointless, because when people say 'fighters should be relevant at high levels' they mean 'fighters should be relevant at low-medium powered plots'.

[shadzar]

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

[PoliteNewb]

Uh... at no point does Lago say Spiderman is "mid-level" in that post. He specifically uses the phrase "middle of the list", which is true. I mean, you can debate how long the list is in eager direction, but that seems to totally ignore what he's going for? He's just arguing that there are people both stronger and weaker than Spiderman.

All right...I was making the (I thought reasonable) assumption that "the list" that Spider-man was in the middle of was "levels in the game".

Yes, of course there should be people stronger and weaker than Spider-man. There are people stronger and weaker than EVERYONE. But no game can adequately handle power levels that encompass EVERYONE. If you're playing Mouseguard, Spider-man is not middle of the list, he's way off the top of the list. If you're playing RIFTS, Spider-man is kind of a pussy.

I regret ever using the term 'high-level', because it's causing some confusion.

I should have said 'high-powered'. In a game with a wide range of power discrepancies like D&D this should mean the same thing, but talking in abstract it's not. It depends on what kind of stories you want to have represented.

Now I'll admit that the people who seem to write primary D&D sourcebooks and secondary campaign settings (Dawnforge, Kingdoms of Kalamar, Relics and Rituals, etc.) don't actually want high-powered plots in their setting. Indeed, as entertaining as Races of War/Dungeonomicon are, a lot of the humor/insights rely on deconstructing the tropes and spells of D&Ds in ways that the authors almost certainly never intended. Order of the Stick goes out of its way to neuter the characters, so maybe that attitude is more prevalent. Yet I can't imagine Roy, even with all of his magical trinkets, ever getting more powerful than Spider-Man.

Maybe this whole conversation is pointless, because when people say 'fighters should be relevant at high levels' they mean 'fighters should be relevant at low-medium powered plots'.

This is probably the clearest thing you've written on the subject, and I thank you for it. I mostly agree.

When people say "fighters should be relevant at high levels", they mean that at the upper limit of what your game is designed to handle, fighters should be as good as anyone else. That means you game should top out at low-medium powered plots.

So really, the argument is more about what kind of plots D&D should be designed to handle. But that's kind of a pointless argument, because it's entirely a preference issue.

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

NO. Absolutely wrong.
The fighter (or any other PC) becomes irrelevant when the structure of the game (including the power level of the plots it's supposed to accomodate at a given level) does not allow that character to be relevant. Player action is entirely beside the point. That's like saying "the only time you ever lose at bowling is when the other players dont' let you win".

[shadzar]

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

NO. Absolutely wrong.
The fighter (or any other PC) becomes irrelevant when the structure of the game (including the power level of the plots it's supposed to accomodate at a given level) does not allow that character to be relevant. Player action is entirely beside the point. That's like saying "the only time you ever lose at bowling is when the other players dont' let you win".

yeah, cause it is impossible for a group of players to exclude anothers choices from being valid within the game for whatever reason....

it has never happened where the wizard is always using knock so the rogue has no use to pick locks....which is at the crux of the "why X can't have nice things because wizards can do it to"

just because the wizard CAN take knock, doesnt mean he should always be using it if there is a rogue that can do the lock picking WITHOUT expending resources like spells.

yeah player action is entirely beside the point of making another player actions irrelevant... uh-huh..

[For Valor]

shadzar, your extremes make me cry. Maybe what you meant to say is this:

In the scenario with the following restrictions:
1. A fighter's environment allows him to contribute to combat (the opponent's are weak enough)
2. One or more of the players in the fighter's team can contribute to combat in the same way the fighter can
3. The player(s) who can contribute to combat the way the fighter can do so equally or better
4. The player(s) who can contribute to combat the way the fighter can don't actually have something better to do.

If those requirements are filled, then your statement is correct. But right now, it's a load of nonsense.

[shadzar]

shadzar, your extremes make me cry. Maybe what you meant to say is this:

In the scenario with the following restrictions:
1. A fighter's environment allows him to contribute to combat (the opponent's are weak enough)
2. One or more of the players in the fighter's team can contribute to combat in the same way the fighter can
3. The player(s) who can contribute to combat the way the fighter can do so equally or better
4. The player(s) who can contribute to combat the way the fighter can don't actually have something better to do.

If those requirements are filled, then your statement is correct. But right now, it's a load of nonsense.

if you say so...

too drugged right now to figure out what you are saying...

i am just saying that the game isnt required to make ANY player's actions irrelevant when the players can do that no matter what game or system is used.

IE: the wizard using knock all the time when a rogue is there.

why is the wizard doing this? min-maxing? trying to outstage the rogue and have more of the "spotlight"?

when a player's choices are demeaned it doesnt matter if it is the DM or other players, it is still the same thing and possible, no matter what the game allows for...so NOT working together as a team...aka group of PCs, rather than individuals out to compete...can contribute to a players/characters irrelevance.

[Midnight_v]

Fact checking reveals.
... I was wrong...
I'm not to big to say it. That is all.

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

Very wrong.

NO. Absolutely wrong.
The fighter (or any other PC) becomes irrelevant when the structure of the game (including the power level of the plots it's supposed to accomodate at a given level) does not allow that character to be relevant. Player action is entirely beside the point. That's like saying "the only time you ever lose at bowling is when the other players dont' let you win".

very right.

yeah, cause it is impossible for a group of players to exclude anothers choices from being valid within the game for whatever reason....

It's really a different thing when its the gamestructure that obviates that players choices.
It seems really difficult to think in terms of the "Castle" when there are multitudes of enemies that walk through walls.
In our world for instance "The knight" (the armored man using a sword, non specific enough) kinda looses a lot of battlefield efficacy when confronted with weapons that destroy grid coordinates.
Sadly also when confronted with a grizzly bear, or a man with a sufficiently powerful ranged weapon.
No one group is eliminating his options. . . his concept is inherently limited. On some level I think I"m starting to get what lago is getting at.
The problem with the fighter is a conceptual one.

[Archmage]

If I understand correctly, Shad's argument boils down to:

"It's okay if the game gives wizards spell that makes the rogue obsolete, because the wizard shouldn't use it when the rogue is around out of politeness. Only a douche would do that."

Which is of course completely the wrong idea when we're talking about designing a fair game. If the wizard isn't supposed to upstage the rogue, he should NOT have powers that let him do so! Full stop!

[shadzar]

@midnight:

but even agaisnt the ranged weapon a fighter has meaningful choices, even if you or others dont see them as meaning full, such as waiting out the flyer until they have to land. take that cult or whatever that was surrounded by the army and such, they just cut off their food until the cult had to do something...the end result wasnt what was wanted, but the advantages they had with location and height being one advantage, was taken away by fatigue. the concept of the fighter isnt the problem, but again, maybe how people play and what they expect form them, or even expecting instant gratification from actions.

@archmage:

thanks for the laugh, i always find it funny when people talk about a "fair game" in the way you do as if the players are supposed to be competing against each other rather than working together. the "fair game" is because the players work TOGETHER against what the DM throws at them. if the DM is constantly TPKing the PCs...then you have a problem with a fair game...the rest is up to party cohesion to make work...and the party should be working together, rather than against each other like Gimli and Legolas trying to see who can kill the most. even those two did it while working together and didnt actively prevent the other from "winning" their little competition so that the entire mission failed or ones actions became irrelevant because of the others.

There can be no "upstaging" if you are not trying to compete for spotlight anyway. Work together as a group of PCs should.

[fectin]

In our world for instance "The knight" (the armored man using a sword, non specific enough) kinda looses a lot of battlefield efficacy when confronted with weapons that destroy grid coordinates.
Sadly also when confronted with a grizzly bear, or a man with a sufficiently powerful ranged weapon.
No one group is eliminating his options. . . his concept is inherently limited. On some level I think I"m starting to get what lago is getting at.
The problem with the fighter is a conceptual one.

Essentially, no fighter can have nice things, because No True Fighter Would Have Nice Things.

[Krakatoa]

You ought to reword it thusly: the problem is our conception of fighters. If you want to have a game where Wizards and other casters can have nuclear levels of power, then to keep fighters relevant, their core abilities must scale to keep up. Dungeons and Dragons (and other RPGs) are built on artificialities, so unless you're just a stickler for a value of realism that accomodates Wizards as realistic, there's no reason this shouldn't be the case.

Maybe a fighter, in 5th Edition, or whatever hypothetical future edition, will be able to pull out a hammer and knock nuclear-level fireballs into orbit by sheer effort of muscle.

I guess at some point, one will argue that this is no longer what you signed up for when you decided to play Dungeons and Dragons, but I think that argument doesn't really hold water considering that the level of power DnD has accomodated has changed drastically from edition to edition. And if you just want an old school dungeon crawl, then you still have low levels, or older editions, if you wish.

[Midnight_v]

In our world for instance "The knight" (the armored man using a sword, non specific enough) kinda looses a lot of battlefield efficacy when confronted with weapons that destroy grid coordinates.
Sadly also when confronted with a grizzly bear, or a man with a sufficiently powerful ranged weapon.
No one group is eliminating his options. . . his concept is inherently limited. On some level I think I"m starting to get what lago is getting at.
The problem with the fighter is a conceptual one.

Essentially, no fighter can have nice things, because No True Fighter Would Have Nice Things.

Yeah pretty much exactly or at least thats my interpretation of several peoples in this threads point.
I don't personally buy into that bullshit myself, considering its pretty clear that the fighter(or barbarian or what have you) can be powered up to actually matter.
The more I think of it the more I'm reminded of our earlier example of the fighter becoming somekind of demigod of battle.
Couldn't we reasonalby start giving the fighter divine ranks as a baby wargod before level 20? It does suck in someway cause I KNOW 4th ed had some "the demigod" prc or path or some such. . . but to appease the people who Do feel the "No true fighter argument" is really the deal, cause basically it seems lots of people need a really good reason to give fighters nice things... damn I'm sleepy. .....

[Roy]

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

Paizil forums are that way.

*casts Banishment*

[Midnight_v]

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

Paizil forums are that way.

*casts Banishment*

I do wonder why shad isn't playing that, they sound like him in so many ways. . .

[Roy]

...and the only time a fighter, or any other PC becomes irrelevant, is when the other players make them so by not letting him be relevant.

Paizil forums are that way.

*casts Banishment*

I do wonder why shad isn't playing that, they sound like him in so many ways. . .

Probably because there are too many rules to ignore.