Chamomile wrote:Star Trek doesn't really strike me as "entire civilizations are but pawns in our game" the way high-level D&D typically is.
That's only because the Federation chooses not to do things that way.
Roddenbury had a very utopian view of the future. This attitude continued until well after his death. You see it start to vanish around DS9.
Again, I don't really find anything "high level" about fabricate and in any event there was always something they could not do. Replicated food was never exactly identical to the real thing. Gold pressed latinum could not be replicated.
Teleport and scry does constitute the upper boundaries of mid level, but if confined to the standard dimensions it's not really the reality altering stuff of high level.
High level is more than just "I use more dice." The difference between a phaser and a rifle is effectlively "more dice."
I never said it was impossible, I just knew that in order to find any you'd have to go scraping up really obscure works that the vast majority of the actual players aren't familiar with.
Last edited by Chamomile on Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Chamomile wrote:I never said it was impossible, I just knew that in order to find any you'd have to go scraping up really obscure works that the vast majority of the actual players aren't familiar with.
I wouldn't consider Superman, Sandman (maybe Lucifer), or Doctor Who to be obscure.
I am a little curious as to where some of these opinions about high level stories come from. A 15th level wizard can do the following...
Control the weather
Block Teleportation/Scry
Imprison creatures/souls
Send mind control across worlds/planes
Eliminate people (banish, kill, etc)
Travel/scry to other worlds/planes
Does not care about or need to interact with the 'mortal' economy in regards to material goods
Summon powerful minions that can do comparable level acts, if different
Come back from the dead, if a bit worse for where (clone), or at least be impossible to kill by normal men
Polymorph stuff
If you can do a large portion of that, or acts of that scale/nature, you qualify as a high-level character. You don't even need to be able to do all of it at once on a whim, as wizards do have prep capability. The range may be great, but the total area of a high level wizard's influence is fairly small.
Superman in stories where they show/use his gadgets from the Fortress of Solitude pretty much elevate him to a high-level character. Red Son is a good example here, as is Morrison's All-Star Superman.
Last edited by virgil on Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
Chamomile wrote:I never said it was impossible, I just knew that in order to find any you'd have to go scraping up really obscure works that the vast majority of the actual players aren't familiar with.
You clearly said "any" work of fantasy that wasn't based off of D&D was valid, so stop trying to claim otherwise.
I asked him to show me any of them because I knew the examples would prove my point. Examples are obscure enough that quite possibly he wouldn't know of any, and even if he did they wouldn't be the sort of thing that the bulk of D&D's target audience would be familiar with. And since I specified fantasy, which pretty much rules out super heroes and sci-fi anyway, that is pretty much exactly what happened.
What I didn't expect was for him to dredge up a whole bunch of really obviously mid-level examples and try to pretend they were high-level. Like, y'know, freakin' Star Wars.
Okay. I can see that.
So how about Stranger in a Strange land? It predates DnD by more than a decade, has a protagonist who can do approximately "anything", and it's more popular than any other source material (with the possible exception of lord of the rings).
Or The Thousand Nights and a Night? Surely that's not too obscure?
Wheel of Time
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Way of Kings
Codex Alera
Dresden Files
Tinker, Windwolf, Elfhome
Red_Rob wrote:
I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
Wheel of Time
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Way of Kings
Codex Alera
Dresden Files
Tinker, Windwolf, Elfhome
Those are about as high level a story as Lord of the Rings. Power players that could potentially be high level characters are background/plot in the narrative.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
Wheel of Time
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Way of Kings
Codex Alera
Dresden Files
Tinker, Windwolf, Elfhome
Those are about as high level a story as Lord of the Rings. Power players that could potentially be high level characters are background/plot in the narrative.
In WoT there are plenty of people who can teleport, blow shit up with their mind, and do all sorts of crazy stuff. Dresden Files is a notch or two above that in craziness that magic does.
In LotR people stab each other with metal and wood as their primary means of combat, even for the uber mage plot device guy.
Wheel of Time
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Way of Kings
Codex Alera
Dresden Files
Tinker, Windwolf, Elfhome
Those are about as high level a story as Lord of the Rings. Power players that could potentially be high level characters are background/plot in the narrative.
In WoT there are plenty of people who can teleport, blow shit up with their mind, and do all sorts of crazy stuff. Dresden Files is a notch or two above that in craziness that magic does.
In LotR people stab each other with metal and wood as their primary means of combat, even for the uber mage plot device guy.
YO!!! Lord of Chaos marks the point where shit just went off the charts; and only got bigger from there.
*WARNING*: I say "fuck" a lot.
"The most patriotic thing you can do as an American is to become filthy, filthy rich."
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I just want to get in here and say that, while you people are all intelligent, I'm a very average gamer person, and I only recognize 2 of those: WoT from reading the first book, and Dresden Files from the name.
To me, that shit is obscure.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
Seriously? Codex Alera is low level? Flying, functional invisibilty and easy healing are standard powers for a large portion of soldiers. They use icebergs as ships, and create huge defensive positions from basically nothing. Absolutely everyone has some level of magic powers, while the elite magic users set off volcanoes to destroy armies. One main character is personally stopping several huge magic storms one after another from destroying the country in his spare time!
Two of the main characters fight a fucking sentient mountain in an aerial dogfight during an evil, murderous thunderstorm while fighting a nigh indestructible insect queen that has just fucked up an entire continent.
That is as high a story level as Lord of the Fucking Rings?
WoT series books are some of the best selling fantasy books currently. I don't think we can call them obscure by any stretch.
Dresden Files are a bit less popular, but still they are best sellers and had a TV series based upon them. His Codex Alera series also had novels ranked highly on the New York Times Best Seller list. I can't really call them obscure.
Harry Fucking Potter certainly has more powerful magic than LotR and obscurity is not an issue there.
I don't know all the others listed, but I'm just an average gamer too and since having a couple kids and what not I've been somewhat out of the loop for a while.
Way of Kings doesn't get past level 12, tops. We'll say Kaladin is a Fighter 7-8 who then multiclasses into a nice prestige class for 2 levels. Dalinar in full Shardplate with Shardblade is probably a 10th-level Fighter, while Szeth, the assassin in white is some kind of Druid-like thing between 7 and 11. Oh, and Jasnah is a Sorceror 6-7. These are also the movers and shakers of the world, the only sentient being more powerful is probably this Odium deity, and maybe Wit/Hoid, given his ability to plane-hop, but that's meta-knowledge, so he's something of an exception. If the Knights Radiant return, then Kaladin with a few more Knight Radiant levels and some Shards would legitimately be high level.
erik wrote:WoT series books are some of the best selling fantasy books currently. I don't think we can call them obscure by any stretch.
Dresden Files are a bit less popular, but still they are best sellers and had a TV series based upon them. His Codex Alera series also had novels ranked highly on the New York Times Best Seller list. I can't really call them obscure.
Harry Fucking Potter certainly has more powerful magic than LotR and obscurity is not an issue there.
I don't know all the others listed, but I'm just an average gamer too and since having a couple kids and what not I've been somewhat out of the loop for a while.
I meant everything else was obscure. I couldn't even pull a reference to Elfhome is I tried, and I have yet to meet someone in person who knows Codex Alera.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
Stubbazubba wrote:Way of Kings doesn't get past level 12, tops.
I wouldn't put LotR past level 8. However it sounds like the magic generally doesn't exceed that by much in Way of Kings by your description.
[edit]
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
erik wrote:Harry Fucking Potter certainly has more powerful magic than LotR and obscurity is not an issue there.
It's only 'certain' for 89% of the fellowship.
It's certain for 100% of the fellowship, and 100% outside of the fellowship, that none can do half the things that many, many adolescent wizards can do in the Harry Potter series. The closest they come is Sauron, and he's an immortal spirit/banished godling who is practically an environment effect.
Last edited by erik on Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
erik wrote:Harry Fucking Potter certainly has more powerful magic than LotR and obscurity is not an issue there.
It's only 'certain' for 89% of the fellowship.
It's certain for 100% of the fellowship, and 100% outside of the fellowship, that none can do half the things that many, many adolescent wizards can do in the Harry Potter series. The closest they come is Sauron, and he's an immortal spirit/banished godling who is practically an environment effect.
The biggest differences between Gandalf and Sauron are:
Gandalf works for Illuvatar (who wants the mortal races to learn to take care of themselves, which means he isn't going to just take care of all the problems himself), while Sauron works for Morgoth (or at least did, before Morgoth was banished from the world).
I wouldn't put it nearly that high. The Fellowship doesn't top level 4 for the most part, with perhaps the exception of Gandalf.
Harry Potter is definitely higher level than Lord of the Rings, since being able to pull dozens of powerful and flexible magic tricks out of your hat is the bar for entry to the plot and not the upper limit of power. It's not even close to high-level, though. Lord Voldemort, easily in the top three most powerful wizards in all of Britain, is only slightly more dangerous than a well-trained and well-armed muggle soldier.
Wheel of Time is definitely well known, but friends have warned me off the series so I'm not terribly familiar with it except in that it's apparently got all kinds of weird fetish fuel.
Last edited by Chamomile on Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
...You Lost Me wrote:I just want to get in here and say that, while you people are all intelligent, I'm a very average gamer person, and I only recognize 2 of those: WoT from reading the first book, and Dresden Files from the name.
To me, that shit is obscure.
Naturally it depends on how much you read.
It was some stuff I got, when thinking about high power (shure not necessarily high level).
erik wrote:
Dresden Files is a notch or two above that in craziness that magic does.
And in the Dresden Files RPG, you can do (if you specialize a little) things with an starting Wizard, which would need an high Lvl. Wizard in D&D.
Stubbazubba wrote:Way of Kings doesn't get past level 12, tops. We'll say Kaladin is a Fighter 7-8 who then multiclasses into a nice prestige class for 2 levels.
Looking at the visions of the past, I think its save to assume it will get much higher level.
Also Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker and Way of Kings all play in the same Universe (different worlds) with traveling between them (references are in the books, but very well hidden).
Erm, this looks a tad silly. Especially since none of those books fit into the dnd framework... I know you could second-guess salvatore's characters levels. But LOTR? Harry Potter? Dresden Files? C'mon...
What level would Legolas be, with him being a high elf, and being over 2500 years old, if I remember correctly...
Mariusz "Kot" Butrykowski
"The only way to keep them in line is to bury them in a row..."
Your kidding does that shit really happen? Sounds hysterical.
