The Mundane Melee fighter can go fuck himself.

[Koumei]

I still can't tell who wrote what, and IIRC that was your intention.

[Chamomile]

.... We have even respected posters like K....\

Shit, when did I become a respected poster?

I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks that I'm insane and 100% of all credit for the Tomes is attributed to Frank.

For what it's worth, I think you're insane and split the credit for Tomes 50/50. My impression is that you produced much more coherent material when working within the framework of fixing 3.X, and only go completely off the rails when you start trying to redefine fundamental gameplay concepts.

[Cyberzombie]

This is a non-sequitur. Fighters don't need to be a sad and pathetic class and everybody else don't need to be depowered for melee combat to shine. You can have a paradigm where if a "fighter" takes their 8th level, they get to pick stuff like:

And most of the abilities you state are in fact superhuman feats, which just goes back to the initial point that you need to be supernatural to be awesome. Once you get to the point of fighters making 30 ft leaps and forcing things to make will saves or temporarily mind controlling them, you've gone beyond Conan.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you can't pretend that you're still talking about a mundane fighter anymore.

[DSMatticus]

.... We have even respected posters like K....\

Shit, when did I become a respected poster?

I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks that I'm insane and 100% of all credit for the Tomes is attributed to Frank.

For what it's worth, I think you're insane and split the credit for Tomes 50/50. My impression is that you produced much more coherent material when working within the framework of fixing 3.X, and only go completely off the rails when you start trying to redefine fundamental gameplay concepts.

I don't respect any of you. You're all clearly poorly programmed, lifeless automatons stuck in an infinite loop. It's the only explanation for why you're all posting in another fighter thread.

Oh god, I'm here too.

BEEP BOOP WHY DO THE HUMANS STEALTH NERF EVASION? IT IS NOT RATIONAL. THE ORGANICS ARE INFERIOR ROLEPLAYERS AND MUST BE PURGED.

[Omegonthesane]

This is a non-sequitur. Fighters don't need to be a sad and pathetic class and everybody else don't need to be depowered for melee combat to shine. You can have a paradigm where if a "fighter" takes their 8th level, they get to pick stuff like:

And most of the abilities you state are in fact superhuman feats, which just goes back to the initial point that you need to be supernatural to be awesome. Once you get to the point of fighters making 30 ft leaps and forcing things to make will saves or temporarily mind controlling them, you've gone beyond Conan.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you can't pretend that you're still talking about a mundane fighter anymore.

This.

Though, is there really any particular supernatural path that Conan would naturally progress to? Short of a world-specific fluff note that "While there is enough doubt for ecumenical questions, a force which most people call "the gods" provably exists and likes badasses, so starting at level 6 will invest in your continued badassery in the form of tweaking your aptitudes so far past human norms and physical laws it's hardly even funny. Rogues with Improved Evasion are infinitely bendier than human flesh and human bone allow when dodging things, for example."

[PhoneLobster]

I still can't tell who wrote what

Every time I've ever seen any vague hints of attributions, it seems K was the one who wrote, or at least made an admirable attempt to write actual practical crunch and Frank wanked on the fluff.

[Username17]

It's not just evasion, either. Recall Andy Collin's weird tirades about small rogues sneak attacking. Hell, I remember a debate on this very board in which RC2 said that he wouldn't allow a rogue with +30 to sneak to try to slip past a guard in a featureless, narrow hallway but would allow a wizard with invisibility to try.

Even though you only need to roll 20 to spot an invisible creature.

Yep. Invisibility is a +20 to your hide check, and a non-magical +30 to your hide check is very plausibly not as good. This is because in a table top role playing game, it is often as important to be able to tell the other players how you're going to do something as it is to have a large numeric bonus to doing it. At the very basic level, having a plausible sounding plan of action is worth a point or two of bonuses, while having an implausible sounding plan is worth a point or two of penalties. But at the far end, if you can't convince the MC that your ability is relevant in the first place, you don't even get to roll the dice.

Most situations are not going to allow you to use your Knowledge Religion to land a killing blow on an evil high priest, nor are they going to let you use your Knowledge Architecture to hit someone with a chair. Your very high attack bonus won't help you appraise the value of a horse, and your willpower won't help you disarm a trap. If a number on your character sheet doesn't apply to the course of action, then it doesn't fucking apply and it doesn't matter how high or low it is.

So if you have something like a really high mundane hide bonus, you still have to tell the other people at the table how you intend to have that apply to your current situation. And if the situation is something simplistic and dumb like "The guard is standing at the other end of the featureless hallway looking down it," that might be very hard to do. And if you have a magic hide bonus, regardless of how high or low it is, explaining how it applies is very simple. Because:



If you need to be "not seen" and you have magic that makes you "not get seen," then you can skip the entire explanation phase of how your powers work. It just fucking works. You could skip straight to the part where you compare number penises. Or hell, you could flip it around and ask the people who are looking for you to explain how their plan to find your magically hidden ass is supposed to work.



At any numeric bonus, a magical ability is better than an ability that isn't magic. Because it wins at magical teaparty sections of the game that mundane abilities would lose at.

-Username17

[icyshadowlord]

Reality is magic's bitch.

That's why magic always wins.

[nockermensch]

.... We have even respected posters like K....\

Shit, when did I become a respected poster?

I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks that I'm insane and 100% of all credit for the Tomes is attributed to Frank.

I can't find the original quote in this thread.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or, hell, if evasion/hide/sneak attack isn't enough for you, how about we refer to a post made just yesterday? By yours truly, but still:

After all, team monster can cast charm/dominate person on them. What's the difference?

Well.

[*] Having NPCs diplomatize PCs opens up a brand new frontier in laying down shiny railroad tracks. We've had a couple of DMs on these boards who openly salivate at the thought of being able to diplomatize PCs *coughRandomCasualty2Swordslinger* and I see nothing good coming from this.
[*] Even if every DM was reasonable about it, if your diplomacy system generates a plausible but unusual result like pissing on yourself in public pranknet-style or having your militant lesbian/straightjacket/bear character seduced by someone of their non-preferred gender you'll have some players throw a bitch fit anyway. It doesn't matter if the result is realistic or plausible or even likely; once your character trades their loyal warhouse mount they've had for several years for a sack of magic beans, people will demonize the system as 'bullshit randomness telling people how to roleplay their character'.

The reason why people are okay with charm/dominate but not mundane diplomacy is threefold.

[*] The first is, well, mundane diplomacy is mundane. People have odd conceptions about dualism or how they'd defy the implications of the Milgram experiment and they just won't accept mundane diplomacy making them do what they see as 'extreme' things.
[*] Secondly, charm/dominate have a build-in escape hatch as far as characterization is confirmed. The way they're fluffed is that whatever results were generated by these game effects they're not really 'you' and don't reflect anything about your character. No one really thinks that Mindbender King Howard compelling your character to lynch a retarded teenage boy in public with his evil eye means that you're a bad person.

However, if Smooth-Talking Bastard Hannibal Minderbinder convinces your character to lynch a retarded teenage boy in public with his diplomacy, it casts your character in an entirely new light. Your character development from now on is 'willingly murders children if whipped up enough'.
[*] Charm/dominate are exceptional methods of character control. Like once-a-session, if that, methods of an NPC dictating player behavior. If you make it more common than that, trust me, people will start to complain.

Problems 2, 3, 4, and with some interpretation 5 go away once you obsolete non-magical influence and force everyone to use some kind of magic -- doesn't have to be crude like dominate either, you could have something as low key as Ace Attorney where your magical candy and interdimensional chess matches forces people to say things that they don't want to.

[Schleiermacher]

Though, is there really any particular supernatural path that Conan would naturally progress to?

No, and that's the problem. There is no "one size fits all" supernatural path that will suit even a plurality of all "nonmagical warrior" concepts that didn't come with one prepackaged to begin with. Most warrior players will, in my experience, readily accept getting magicked up, but they all have spesific, different requirements for how. That is why I think the Tome Knight is the best model for warrior advancement past level 10, but it has the problem of requiring a massive classplosion in order to give players enough options.

[nockermensch]

This is a non-sequitur. Fighters don't need to be a sad and pathetic class and everybody else don't need to be depowered for melee combat to shine. You can have a paradigm where if a "fighter" takes their 8th level, they get to pick stuff like:

And most of the abilities you state are in fact superhuman feats, which just goes back to the initial point that you need to be supernatural to be awesome. Once you get to the point of fighters making 30 ft leaps and forcing things to make will saves or temporarily mind controlling them, you've gone beyond Conan.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you can't pretend that you're still talking about a mundane fighter anymore.

This goes back to something already said in this thread: Everybody here already agrees that "being 8th level" requires being super-human. Grognards that want "real world human limits" at that point and beyond need to be laughed at and/or be told that they should stick to playing levels 1-6.

But then again, the grognards' reaction doesn't exist in a vacuum. People seriously expect Conan from 1-20 because they have been lied to by the artwork in these games. D&D is saddled with 30+ years of art showing casters being all kinds of awesome while the fighters just ... stand ... there ...

Consider for example the awesome charging red dragon vs. knight picture posted earlier in this thread. If you want that guy to exist in that kind of situation, you need to be able to picture how the fight resolves in a way that he can win. I think that D&D never had designers that even thought about that. I think their entire thought process went like:

1) that's a 15th level fighter, and that Dragon is CR 15
2) COGNITIVE DISSONANCE!
3) The fighter has a 50/50 chance to win

With designers like these, commissioning artwork like these, it's no surprising that the game has players/DMs that don't get that unless the knight in that picture can Matrix-jump over the dragon's full attack (or pull some other equivalent superhuman bullshit), then he has no business standing there. To pick another well known example, if Tordek in this picture can't shout: "NOW I HAVE YOU EXACTLY WHERE I WANTED!", then your game shipped broken.

[infected slut princess]

I think Conan can be a level 20 character because all the sluts are eager to blow him.

[Omegonthesane]

I think Conan can be a level 20 character because all the sluts are eager to blow him.

I think grognards would be offended by the 8th level class feature "Has a slutty 6th level Wizard with Free Silent Spell attached to your crotch by his or her mouth".

[infected slut princess]

I think Conan can be a level 20 character because all the sluts are eager to blow him.

I think grognards would be offended by the 8th level class feature "Has a slutty 6th level Wizard with Free Silent Spell attached to your crotch by his or her mouth".

Mack Some Bitches (Ex): At level 1, the Fighter can mack on some fine ass bitches at will. This works just like charm person but it is move-action and non-magical in nature.

[nockermensch]

I think Conan can be a level 20 character because all the sluts are eager to blow him.

So, is the main draw of "Fighter" that they're the class that gets the girl in the end?

To turn this thread into something positive, why not attack the problem that in fantasy fiction, it makes a whole lot of sense to give the protagonist the most mundane perspective? You want the public to relate, so even if the world have immortal elves and world shattering magic, you still want to start the story about a boy/girl that the readers/watchers can identify with.

---

EDIT:

Mack Some Bitches (Ex): At level 1, the Fighter can mack on some fine ass bitches at will. This works just like charm person but it is move-action and non-magical in nature.

*YOINK*

[infected slut princess]

Yes, getting the girl in the end is part of the problem. As I said earlier, Fighter fappers want to have a special role in the party. They want to be the guy that is just so awesome he doesn't need magic to beat magic. Which means he is the best, most awesomest guy ever. Which means: 1) He shag a lot of sluts, 2) he will always make the killing attack on the boss monsters, 3) he will solve problems with "outside-the-box" solutions.

Now this can easily be satisfied with a Fighter class who gains the following powers at level 1:

1) charm person at will, -10 save penalty if target is a slut (Ex)
2) if there is a Fighter in the party, the boss monster keeps fighting normally when it should be otherwise get the [Dead] or [Dying] condition UNLESS it gains these conditions from damage inflicted by the Fighter.
3) cast wish once per hour as an ability (Ex).

[sabs]

Are we really going to do this AGAIN? Well let's get this out of the way. Yes mundane fighters suck. But this guy can jump like the goddamned hulk and his super power is "knows muay thai" in high fantasy martial arts should=super powers. End of story. There is no reason not to.

You do realize his 'powersource' is Chi right?
In Chinese and Japanase fantasy culture, High Chi can let you do crazy things. Fight Typhoons with Kung Fu, amongst other things.

You're pointing out a guy whose power source is "Inner Magic" and you're saying, "look he's mundane" That's just stupid.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Which means: 1) He shag a lot of sluts, 2) he will always make the killing attack on the boss monsters, 3) he will solve problems with "outside-the-box" solutions.

You know, that sounds an awful lot like a rogue.

[NineInchNall]

... Chi/ki is exactly as magical as the soul. Many people think the soul not magical. They make this odd distinction between magical things like "wizard throws fireball" and non-magical things like transubstantiation or "Jesus resurrects himself". There's actually a significant amount of sociological literature on explaining how and why people make that distinction, starting with Emile Durkheim (and contemporaries).

[Longes]

... Chi/ki is exactly as magical as the soul. Many people think the soul not magical. They make this odd distinction between magical things like "wizard throws fireball" and non-magical things like transubstantiation or "Jesus resurrects himself". There's actually a significant amount of sociological literature on explaining how and why people make that distinction, starting with Emile Durkheim (and contemporaries).

I'm warning you man, Bruno was burnt for claiming Jesus was a magician. Don't repeat old mistakes.

[sabs]

In chinese culture, Chi sorcerors shoot fireballs with their Chi . Yes, it's not Moshu, but you're drawing a strange fucked up line in the sand.

And Jesus did not ressurect himself. God ressurected him, using Divine Intervention. So that's just a dumb ass argument. (If Jesus was real, which he aint)

[JonSetanta]

In Dragonball everyone except a select few magicians use chi.

Including Piccolo, who does things like clairvoyance and telekinesis, which always confused me.


In the series Negima there was a clearly defined distinction between chi and magic, which could be combined as an energy source, but when Rakan began blasting energy orbs it lapsed back into Dragonball territory.

[sabs]

Pointing at Anime Kung Fu characters who do incredible things and saying, "they're not using magic" is just.. being stubborn and dumb.

[deaddmwalking]

Which means: 1) He shag a lot of sluts, 2) he will always make the killing attack on the boss monsters, 3) he will solve problems with "outside-the-box" solutions.

You know, that sounds an awful lot like a rogue.

Yeah.

The rogue is not penalized as heavily with 'mundane' requirements. Besides sneak attack which allows him to deal scaling damage that is largely appropriate, the literature is rife with rogues learning 'minor magic', so having access to Use Magic Device allows them to participate in magic encounters. Since they get magic equipment too, just like the Fighter, they have those options. Finally, they actually have useful skills that can advance the story outside of combat, such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Forgery, and Stealth...

Thus so much of the cognitive dissonance. People want 'mercenary that swings a sword' to be a concept that can advance to high level, but anytime someone suggests giving a class called a Fighter any ability not directly related to 'fighting', people throw a fit about realism.

A gestalt Rogue/Fighter would really make a lot of these people much happier... Especially if they can replace Sneak Attack with something more heroic... Of course, then they worry that you're 'stepping on the rogue's toes'. So, you just can't win.