Ten Levels

[Whatever]

it remains a relevant part of your build your whole career because it's the only ability in the game that lets you ignore armor and ignoring armor is almost always a good thing.

But some wizard will argue that his armor is magic bullshit, and that a normal person shouldn't be able to bypass it with precision or brute force. And at best, you're ignoring armor bonuses. You never negate cover (the way a homing-device spell like Magic Missile can), you never bypass hardness (good luck stabbing the door with your armor bypass ability), and you can't adapt to the inevitable counter (okay, I'll just have a spell that makes me blurry or something, it won't be "armor" at all).

Game mechanically, the ability might be good enough that you still use it at every level. But it's nevertheless crippled by being "mundane".

[Maxus]

...Or, as you gain in levels, you can say that you keep working your armor bypass until you really do know how to stab through a door. Or through a breastplate. Or see past the blurry ability.

I mean, you and fluff it however you want. Maybe even turn it into a Anvil-of-the-World Key-of-Unmaking type talent that means you, by magical means or letting your eyes unfocus or watching to see where the blurs are centered, see weak points and exploit them.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I think you might be in the wrong thread. It's already established that the ability is being used in combination with blatantly supernatural effects to make them more effective.

If Shatterstrike explicitly benefits from the armor-ignoring when you send magical tremor waves to mow down a battalion of terra cotta warriors, then arguments about the scalability of mundane effects wore out at level 4, when you grabbed Hero and started adding elemental templates to all your basic attacks.

[K]

it remains a relevant part of your build your whole career because it's the only ability in the game that lets you ignore armor and ignoring armor is almost always a good thing.

But some wizard will argue that his armor is magic bullshit, and that a normal person shouldn't be able to bypass it with precision or brute force. And at best, you're ignoring armor bonuses. You never negate cover (the way a homing-device spell like Magic Missile can), you never bypass hardness (good luck stabbing the door with your armor bypass ability), and you can't adapt to the inevitable counter (okay, I'll just have a spell that makes me blurry or something, it won't be "armor" at all).

Game mechanically, the ability might be good enough that you still use it at every level. But it's nevertheless crippled by being "mundane".

Isn't that the fault of you having at least three armor mechanics (cover, hardness, armor)?

Enforce a little discipline. Just include design rules like "if an effect makes it harder for you to be hit for whatever reason, it increases your Armor Value. Don't make a new mechanic because you want a different kind of armor."

Then be overly general with your description like, "Surprise Attack is broad tactical knowledge and ability to always know the best place to attack enemy defenses, regardless of whether they are mystical like spell effects, physical like armor, or circumstantial like darkness or smoke. Ignore Armor Values when calculating attacks usinf this ability."

One of the flaws of DnD has not just been a lack of rules that people want, but also far too much overlap is existing rules like DnD 3.X's cover, concealment, armor class, DR, and overall massive storehouse of similar and unique mechanics like Mirror Image and interrupting Immediate actions.

Editions of DnD have never really tried to unify mechanics in the way that they advertised (interesting mechanics and easy mechanics).

[Username17]

4e's style of every single person being on the same power schedule is a prerequisite for open multiclassing working at all. If psions are spending points and crusaders are shuffling maneuver decks and wizards are preparing specific spells for later use, you're always going to have some sort of ghastly multicaster problem if you try to mix the classes.

Personally, I support distinct resource management systems. And in such a framework, open multiclassing has to go.

For example, let's say that you have Surprise Attack be an ability that comes in Rogue level 1-3 and it lets a person ignore armor on any attack for some stacking penalty until you rest.

As you well know, that's not really an ability, that's a bonus. Yes, bonuses still matter at every level - provided that you're allowed to add those bonuses to actual level apparopriate things. You'll be glad of every +2 to your Willpower Saves, whether the source is nominally magical or mundane. But while a mundane bonus to your magical ability may well be just as valuable as a magically themed bonus, your actually mundane themed abilities still suck and will always suck.

This sounds like something a clearly insane person or the writer of the Epic Level Handbook would say.

We're comparing the 4th edition PHB2 to a hypothetical PHB2 where instead of being "the other eight classes we obviously should have released in the original book" it was "our new Paragon Class System plus rules for playing a character at level 11+".

The actual splitup that they did for 4th edition was considered insulting and strangled the line before it even came out. Splitting it up some other way almost certainly couldn't have done any worse.

-Username17

[K]

For example, let's say that you have Surprise Attack be an ability that comes in Rogue level 1-3 and it lets a person ignore armor on any attack for some stacking penalty until you rest.

As you well know, that's not really an ability, that's a bonus. Yes, bonuses still matter at every level - provided that you're allowed to add those bonuses to actual level apparopriate things. You'll be glad of every +2 to your Willpower Saves, whether the source is nominally magical or mundane. But while a mundane bonus to your magical ability may well be just as valuable as a magically themed bonus, your actually mundane themed abilities still suck and will always suck.

Ok, how about Seduction, an ability that lets you get favors from people in some defined way? Make Seduction an Aristocrat 1-3 and Rogue 1-3 ability and make it better in many ways than the Charm and Dominate that people get later on. Give it some unique thing like maybe it can't be blocked or negated with a spell, doesn't need any maintenance actions to keep it going, and doesn't have any social side-effects like a magic compulsion, for example.

Later effects like Charm and Compulsion can have their own benefits. Maybe Charm works super fast and only stops hostile actions and Dominate allows direct control of actions and requires constant concentration, and both make the target hostile after and can be countered with spells like Dispel or blocked by protection spells.

Seduction then has a role even if you get the later effects that are powerful in different ways.

"Mundane" really can be flavored like the Extraordinary abilities of 3.X and people buy it. They really don't mind that there can be a "mundane" way to shoot acid as long as there is any reasonable excuse like acid glands or something.

3.X's failure was always that it never spent the word count on mundane stuff and spend far too much on magic. Flavoring things like "has a body of tactical knowledge on matters both mundane and magical" really is a tag that people can apply as well as "disintegrate ray."

Hell, Evasion really could have been a great mundane ability that got applied all the time to unique situations if they'd spent as much word count as even a 1st level spell.

[Username17]

Ok, how about Seduction

This really seems like a point you could have made on the Mundane Superpowers Thread, save for the fact that it was already made there.

Yes, different types of mundane abilities expire at different rates. Diplomantic abilities are a pretty good example of a mundane ability that expires very slowly, because the ability to influence the actions of NPCs scales automagically as the NPCs you are confronted with continue to be scaled to your level.

But even then, the scaling is not perfect. As you go up in level you are confronted with noticeably less NPCs who are basically humans of roughly your level. Humanoid enemies become more numerous and relatively less powerful (making your ability to seduce one less important) and the level appropriate NPCs you encounter become more alien (making your ability to seduce one less plausible).

Yes, we pretty much expect that seducing King Draxal's daughter runs on much the same system and principles as seducing Asmodeus' daughter. So it is possible for the seduction ability to keep mattering when you're conquering hell. But the ability is going to get a lot less traction if you're in Mechanus and the relevant female royalty is either a giant ant or a giant column of gears with floating eyes facing in all directions. And while it will still function against the daughter of an orcish warrior, it's not likely to matter if the orcish warrior in question is part of a mob of 300.

Diplomancy is mundane action's very best ability at resisting expiration at higher levels (slightly edging out "research ancient legends", "hide in plain sight", and "avoid being surprised"). And it still inevitably becomes discounted in a higher level environment.

-Username17

[K]

Ok, how about Seduction

This really seems like a point you could have made on the Mundane Superpowers Thread, save for the fact that it was already made there.

Except that the main point, that early abilities have to become useless, is still an assumption that does not have to exist with magical abilities either.

You can just make single-target Sleep the province of Magician 1-3 and then make sure that you create a game where people can't use AoEs like single-target spells. Then the ability put a single enemy to sleep without putting PCs in melee with that enemy to sleep is a valuable role that can't be replicated elsewhere.

But to get back to your point on Seduction, losing some value because you have other abilities is not unique to things you get early in your career. Every ability, regardless of power or scale, loses value when you have options and other abilities to solve the same problem, and that's not particular to abilities with a small scale that you get early in your career or large-scale abilities that you get later.

I mean, Seducing is less valuable when you are expected to kill 300 orcs at a time on a regular basis right until you make it the perfect ability to get the King of those orcs to take his army elsewhere.

[Libertad]

Yes, we pretty much expect that seducing King Draxal's daughter runs on much the same system and principles as seducing Asmodeus' daughter. So it is possible for the seduction ability to keep mattering when you're conquering hell. But the ability is going to get a lot less traction if you're in Mechanus and the relevant female royalty is either a giant ant or a giant column of gears with floating eyes facing in all directions. And while it will still function against the daughter of an orcish warrior, it's not likely to matter if the orcish warrior in question is part of a mob of 300.

Diplomancy is mundane action's very best ability at resisting expiration at higher levels (slightly edging out "research ancient legends", "hide in plain sight", and "avoid being surprised"). And it still inevitably becomes discounted in a higher level environment.

-Username17

The less traction ability is more due to suspension of disbelief in regards to non-magic.

I say, why not allow non-magical seduction and social interaction to work on these NPCs? Your hero's so charming that he moves the cold, stone heart of the Earth Prince of Elemental Evil. When an illithid from beyond space and time contacts him telepathically, the hero frames his feelings and thoughts in such a way as to convince the monster that he can trust him and grant him some eldritch power.

In regards to mundane "superpowers," the flavor text should be "you're just that good at action A that you can do things previously thought impossible."

[hogarth]

This sounds like something a clearly insane person or the writer of the Epic Level Handbook would say.

We're comparing the 4th edition PHB2 to a hypothetical PHB2 where instead of being "the other eight classes we obviously should have released in the original book" it was "our new Paragon Class System plus rules for playing a character at level 11+".

The statement was that there might be more people buying the 11+ rules supplement than those who actually bought the core rules. That`s nuts.

[Username17]

This sounds like something a clearly insane person or the writer of the Epic Level Handbook would say.

We're comparing the 4th edition PHB2 to a hypothetical PHB2 where instead of being "the other eight classes we obviously should have released in the original book" it was "our new Paragon Class System plus rules for playing a character at level 11+".

The statement was that there might be more people buying the 11+ rules supplement than those who actually bought the core rules. That`s nuts.

No. Read his post again. He said that there would probably be more people willing to buy the 11+ rules than people who bought the actual PHB2 that they released. That seems pretty likely to me.

You're condemning a position no one actually had.

-Username17

[ModelCitizen]

The less traction ability is more due to suspension of disbelief in regards to non-magic.

I say, why not allow non-magical seduction and social interaction to work on these NPCs? Your hero's so charming that he moves the cold, stone heart of the Earth Prince of Elemental Evil. When an illithid from beyond space and time contacts him telepathically, the hero frames his feelings and thoughts in such a way as to convince the monster that he can trust him and grant him some eldritch power.

In regards to mundane "superpowers," the flavor text should be "you're just that good at action A that you can do things previously thought impossible."

I don't think many people would pick up a seduction ability so they can sex up mind flayers at high level. Well, some people would, but I don't want to game with them.

Someone who rolls a level 3 courtesan-assassin to seduce guards and corrupt nobles probably isn't aspiring to level into seducing lobster demons and giant pillars of fire. It would probably be less damaging to the character concept to require that they eventually grow up and learn some fucking magic.

[Username17]

Someone who rolls a level 3 courtesan-assassin to seduce guards and corrupt nobles probably isn't aspiring to level into seducing lobster demons and giant pillars of fire. It would probably be less damaging to the character concept to require that they eventually grow up and learn some fucking magic.

Very much this. Even if your DM would be OK with you using your natural sexiness to get into the pants of modrons, nightmares, and manticores, which they will not, that is really obviously not what you signed up for as a player who selected the sexiness ability all those levels ago. Very few people are going to be OK with being told that it was all well and good to be able to get nymphs, drow priestesses, and succubi to look at your junk back at mid level, but now that you're high level you have to be a horse fucker to stay level appropriate. Yeah, from time to time you're going to encounter Glasya, the Dark Prodigy, Diabolic Mistress of the Sixth and you're going to have a high level adventure where seduction seems like a reasonable course of action. But that's going to be rare.

But to get back to your point on Seduction, losing some value because you have other abilities is not unique to things you get early in your career. Every ability, regardless of power or scale, loses value when you have options and other abilities to solve the same problem, and that's not particular to abilities with a small scale that you get early in your career or large-scale abilities that you get later.

Yes. But the thing is that Seduction is still the absolute best mundane super power at staying level appropriate in a higher level environment. Yes, it's perfectly fine for the Hero to need to use a different ability when he faces the giant robot (just as the Wizard needs to rely on something other than "putting people to sleep" when he faces the giant robot), but what else does the mundane hero have? The other mundane powers became depreciated long ago. Lockpicking? Horseback riding? Climbing? Jumping? Running Fast? Literally all of that got depreciated the moment a non-mundane archetype character got shadow step.

There are a few mundane abilities that can stay relevant in your high level tool kit. But they become narrower in application just like any other ability does, and there are not enough mundane abilities that aren't shit to fill in the gaps. Your mundane scouting, diplomancy, leadership, and research abilities can indeed continue to be relevant at higher levels. But that's not enough to be a character that participates in the Hell adventure. Even if your seduction was a trump card that would get Glasya on your side, you still need non-mundane abilities to even get there in the first place.

It's not that you can't have meaningful mundane abilities at high level. It's that you can't have a fully functional character who has only mundane abilities at high level. You have to be some sort of phlebtonic archetype who has mundane abilities on top of that. It's OK to be Thor, it's not OK to be Hawkeye.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Read his post again. He said that there would probably be more people willing to buy the 11+ rules than people who bought the actual PHB2 that they released. That seems pretty likely to me.

You're condemning a position no one actually had.

I don`t know what to tell you. Read it again. He talks about the sales of a PHB that was 75% the length running through level 10, and the sales of a PHBII running from level 11+ being the same or better. I can certainly understand that you`re stretching to read it in a non-insane way, but maybe mlangsdorf can clarify his statement for us.

[Username17]

Read his post again. He said that there would probably be more people willing to buy the 11+ rules than people who bought the actual PHB2 that they released. That seems pretty likely to me.

You're condemning a position no one actually had.

I don`t know what to tell you. Read it again. He talks about the sales of a PHB that was 75% the length running through level 10, and the sales of a PHBII running from level 11+ being the same or better. I can certainly understand that you`re stretching to read it in a non-insane way, but maybe mlangsdorf can clarify his statement for us.

Are you illiterate? He posited a PHB1 that outsold the 4e PHB1 by being 75% as long and having twice as many classes in it by cutting the untested lategame content and moving in the extra base classes that they were keeping in reserve for the next major release. Then having a PHB2 that outsolf the 4e PHB2 by having late game content instead of trying to sell itself merely on "here's some classes that should have been in the PHB but weren't".

I have no idea why you keep insisting on comparing potential sales of a hypothetical PHB2 to actual sales of a tragically fucked up PHB1, but it's a stupid comparison. No one except you is comparing those things, because they are not similar items. PHB1 is being compared to PHB1, PHB2 is being compared to PHB2. And you're still being an idiot because this is now the third fucking time this is being explained to you.

-Username17

[hogarth]

He posited a PHB1 that outsold the 4e PHB1 by being 75% as long and having twice as many classes in it by cutting the untested lategame content and moving in the extra base classes that they were keeping in reserve for the next major release.

Let's assume that "X is good and Y is even better" doesn't mean that Y is better than X.

Then at any rate, I certainly don't believe that as many people would have migrated from a level 1-20 3E D&D to a 4E D&D that only ran up to level 10 in the core book. Or is the idea that you publish PHB pt. 1 and PHB pt. 2 at the same time, when you launch?

[Libertad]

I don't think many people would pick up a seduction ability so they can sex up mind flayers at high level. Well, some people would, but I don't want to game with them.

Someone who rolls a level 3 courtesan-assassin to seduce guards and corrupt nobles probably isn't aspiring to level into seducing lobster demons and giant pillars of fire. It would probably be less damaging to the character concept to require that they eventually grow up and learn some fucking magic.

I was referring to social interaction in general, not just seduction. Sorry for the misunderstanding. My main point was that we should allow super-strong/smart/charming mundanes to replicate magical effects through being "just that good." The Scholar archetype is so smart he can predict enemy movements and actions without even seeing them (scry, divination), the strong guy's so strong he can clap his hands together for a cone-based sonic attack, a nimble guy's so light on his feet that he can cross water as though it were solid ground.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Let's assume that "X is good and Y is even better" doesn't mean that Y is better than X.

So... You're saying "X<Y!=Y>X"? That's kinda fucked up. If "X is good and y is even better" like you say, that pretty definitionally means Y is better than X.

[ModelCitizen]

I was referring to social interaction in general, not just seduction. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Yeah, I know, but I think the same reasoning applies to other kinds of social abilities. An actual diplomat probably wants to play the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil endgame by uniting various human(oid) factions against the cult, not by marching up to Imix and convincing him to fuck off back to the Plane of Fire. Having Intimidate work on the high priests could be cool but having it work on Imix is pretty anticlimactic, and so on. You need persuasion abilities to sometimes not work so that you can tell stories about, well, anything else, just like you need some creatures to be immune to Charm and Dominate.

The Scholar archetype is so smart he can predict enemy movements and actions without even seeing them (scry, divination), the strong guy's so strong he can clap his hands together for a cone-based sonic attack, a nimble guy's so light on his feet that he can cross water as though it were solid ground.

But Shout and Water Walk aren't high level abilities. They debatably cross the line from "mundane" into "weeaboo superpower," and they're still only 3rd and 4th level spells.

[NineInchNall]

The other mundane powers became depreciated long ago. Lockpicking? Horseback riding? Climbing? Jumping? Running Fast? Literally all of that got deprecated the moment a non-mundane archetype character got shadow step.

It seems to me that a major problem facing mundane abilities' scaling capacity is that their implementation is always restrictive. For instance, Running Fast might be implemented as "+30' to land speed." That's fine and all for a low level character, but rather pointless for a level 20 godslayer. Even if we were to increase that value as the character levels, it would still reach a point where shadow step kicks its teeth in.

Might it be that the problem here is not the speed increase per se but the restriction to affecting land speed? (Or to mundane movement, more generally.)

Perhaps we could set it up as a "+X units to all [Movement] abilities" or something, making sure to tag something like, oh, shadow step, as [Movement]. Or perhaps, if mere range or velocity is expected to go obsolete, make it instead something like "may use an additional [Movement] ability/action each round". Either way, someone with both Running Fast and Shadow Step is getting value from both.

Obviously, this doesn't negate the fact that if the high level character didn't have the nice, supernatural [Movement] ability to augment, then Running Fast would be less than impressive. It might be the case that the only way for some mundane abilities to remain relevant is for them to modify supernatural abilities or to affect how supernatural abilities are used.

[Foxwarrior]

Yes, NineInchNall, phrasing mundane things as bonuses to categories of actions that include the magical forms of those actions is good. Then wizards can be more effective when they cast their buff spells on the more mundane people than when they cast their buff spells on theirselves and everyone can feel valuable, see?

And the thing about mundanity is that there is no such thing as an exclusive mundane ability. Every truly nonmagical action is one that a normal person could imagine theirself doing with sufficient bonuses to strength, reflexes, intelligence, luck, and training, right? The reason I see that exclusive mundane abilities exist as a concept at all is because putting maneuvers that most people don't have the stats to even begin to attempt into the core rules section is pointless and unhelpful.

[NineInchNall]

Yes, NineInchNall, phrasing mundane things as bonuses to categories of actions that include the magical forms of those actions is good. Then wizards can be more effective when they cast their buff spells on the more mundane people than when they cast their buff spells on theirselves and everyone can feel valuable, see?

Are you being sarcastic here? I can't tell.

[Foxwarrior]

No, not really. It's more that I've been thinking along those lines for long enough that your statement seemed too obvious.

[NineInchNall]

It seemed painfully obvious to me, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.

[Wrathzog]

My main point was that we should allow super-strong/smart/charming mundanes to replicate magical effects through being "just that good."

I agree with this. I think we lose out on a lot of design space if we say stuff like, "No, you can only do that with MAGIC." and then just sort of cross your arms and frown.

But Shout and Water Walk aren't high level abilities. They debatably cross the line from "mundane" into "weeaboo superpower," and they're still only 3rd and 4th level spells.

Then let's go with effects like Earthquake, Dominate, or (fuck it) Time Stop. When there are dudes out in the world with a 30+ to their primary attribute, why isn't it feasible that those people could cause Localized Tremors by stomping the ground, convince someone to literally follow them into hell and back, or move so fast that they get multiple turns in the initiative order?