The Mundane Melee fighter can go fuck himself.

[NineInchNall]

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)

A) It's all about how people compartmentalize crap into little dissonant boxes, giving names to things based not on those things' essential/distinctive/constitutive properties, but based on Giant Frog.

B) Jesus = Yahweh = Holy Spirit. And even if you separate the two, by any reasonable application of the term, God used magic to bring Jesus back from the dead zone.

[ishy]

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

I think you're underestimating the self-denial ttrpg players have.
Take a look at the Tome of 9 papercuts, many people will claim that the spell casters in that book are not using magic. In fact many will be greatly upset with you when you point out that the whole point of the book was to create martial spellcasters.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Of course, then they worry that you're 'stepping on the rogue's toes'. So, you just can't win.

Give the rogue full base attack bonus, proficiency with all martial weapons, and proficiency with all armor and shields.

Then declare that all characters who were fighters or rogues before this change now have the new class instead.

[JonSetanta]

God used magic to bring Jesus back from the dead zone.

I remember having that argument with my mother as a child.
Never argue with a Catholic about their imaginary friend stories, it's a sad ending either way.

[nockermensch]

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

I think you're underestimating the self-denial ttrpg players have.
Take a look at the Tome of 9 papercuts, many people will claim that the spell casters in that book are not using magic. In fact many will be greatly upset with you when you point out that the whole point of the book was to create martial spellcasters.

Define "magic".

Under "impossible to happen in reality / supernatural" definition, every D&D character past a certain level can survive falls from arbitrary heights every single time. So I think they're all magical beings, anyway.

If you define spell as "discrete invokable ability on your character sheet", then sure, the martial maneuvers are spells, just as psionic powers.

Quite obviously, the real beef is not with these definitions. When people complain that they don't want magical characters, I'd like to believe they're talking about flavor, not that they "don't want characters that can deal burst damage/special effects when activating a spell/power/technique/super move". Because one of these things is impossible to deliver, while the other only requires slightly adjusting your fantasy paradigm.

[sabs]

Yeah, and those people are grognard assholes who need to shut the fuck up.
People who bring real world physics into a high fantasy rpg need to be told repeatedly to sit down and shut up. It's a Fantasy paradigm, it's all magic. It's not SPELLS. But it's all magic.

[tussock]

So the solution is, basically, to give 1st level fighters a power source.


* Wizards are vessels for dark lore.
* Sorcerers awaken the blood of ancients.
* Clerics wield the favour of the gods.
* Druids command all of nature to their whim.
* Rogues are the edge of a shadow in the night.
* Fighters are ...? Metal? Quickening? Jason? Dead folk walking?

Something. So they still just run around and swing swords and shoot arrows, but when someone lands a mountain on them, they pull out their "this is D&D and I am Thor in the Iron-Man suit" card and carry on swinging.

Then all you'd need is a power source for Rangers (the frontier?), Paladins (society?), Bards (song!), Monks (woo), and Barbarians (animal dragon spirits).


Whatever, just so long as it stops being "thumbs", and every other class claiming all the classic Fighter tricks without giving anything back.

[Wiseman]

So the solution is, basically, to give 1st level fighters a power source.


* Wizards are vessels for dark lore.
* Sorcerers awaken the blood of ancients.
* Clerics wield the favour of the gods.
* Druids command all of nature to their whim.
* Rogues are the edge of a shadow in the night.
* Fighters are ...? Metal? Quickening? Jason? Dead folk walking?

Something. So they still just run around and swing swords and shoot arrows, but when someone lands a mountain on them, they pull out their "this is D&D and I am Thor in the Iron-Man suit" card and carry on swinging.

Then all you'd need is a power source for Rangers (the frontier?), Paladins (society?), Bards (song!), Monks (woo), and Barbarians (animal dragon spirits).


Whatever, just so long as it stops being "thumbs", and every other class claiming all the classic Fighter tricks without giving anything back.

I've always given rangers the same power source as the druid as the concept comes down to basically a druid/fighter, same with the paladin being a cleric/fighter. Bard's power obviously comes from the POWAH OF ROCK! and monks use chi/qi/ki/chakra whatever you want to call it. Barbarians and totem power could work. Even still, I have a hard time coming up with anything that fits the fighter at all due to the entire concept of fighter is completely vague and can't really be made into anything without it not being a fighter anymore.

[JonSetanta]

Fighters get chi, but since that's not part of LOTR therefore grognards shout it down every time.

[Grek]

The obvious answer is that they take their magic power by force. The fighter leverages their martial powers into stealing a magic artifact, enslaving a magical creature or ruling a country with access to mages. Then they make it do magic on their behalf.

[MisterDee]

There's really no good way to dodge the issue - after a certain amount of level, the fighter class has to end and force the player into a level-appropriate prestige class.

What D&D needs to do is to acknowledge that, and also acknowledge that people really want to do cool-but-mundane stuff.

The first is easy - limit the pure fighter class to a few levels (I'd say 10 in an hypothetical new version) and clarify IN BIG BOLD LETTERS IN THE GODDAMN OFFICIAL RULEBOOK that it's because past the max level for that class, you need magic powers to play along.

Make it also clear that for your mundane stories, the top level is 10. No exception.

But that brings me to the second point: make the mundane tier cool, too. Rejigger your monster manual and have cool, but level-appropriate, monsters for the PCs to fight. Get rid of the reskinned goblins at every level, and think up more Remorhazes. Publish mundane adventure paths that have players doing awesome stuff, not track down smugglers at level 8.

At the top end of the mundane tier, your characters shouldn't be lieutenants in the army, they should have won their fucking kingdom. If the campaign ends there, that's fine.

If the campaign doesn't end there, though, then you don't get to be mundane anymore.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I'm not convinced that there's any reason other than precedent to have the fighter be a PC class, even at level 1.

The first step to convincing me is to describe the associated character archetype in a way that doesn't amount to, "armed hobo".

It also needs to not be a rogue, a knight, someone who derives power from ancestry, or a clothes-rack.

[JonSetanta]

I'm also in favor of capping Fighter at level 10.

I don't understand why Tome classes such as Fighter, Samurai, or Barbarian go up to 20.

[Username17]

I'm also in favor of capping Fighter at level 10.

I don't understand why Tome classes such as Fighter, Samurai, or Barbarian go up to 20.

Because when I wrote the Knight, it was an experiment. And a whole lot of people screamed like raped apes when the class didn't go to 20 because going to 20 was "what classes did" in D&D. But of course, compare to d20 Modern, where classes generally do that - no complaints.

If you want people to accept 5 level or 10 level Fighters, you have to make the Wizard and Druid classes the same number of levels. If you make some classes levels go to 20 and other classes go to 10, you'll have a lot of complaints that it "isn't fair" even though that is flipping retarded. So you can have mandatory prestige classes, and you can make some of those prestige classes be what is essentially a continuation of Sorcerer or Cleric, but you can't literally have the Wu Jen class go 1 to 20 even though it obviously could.

So the solution is, basically, to give 1st level fighters a power source.

No. The solution is to force Fighters to prestige class out at level 6, and make sure that all of their prestige class options have a power source. At 1st level, you actually can get by without a power source. burning Hands doesn't melt stone anyway, and most things are accomplished with ten foot poles and ropes and pitons no matter what. Madmartigan has no problem adventuring with Willow, he just doesn't really contribute anything to Raziel's adventures.

One of the things that 4th edition showed us very clearly is that the "Martial Power Source" is bullshit. It doesn't work on a conceptual level. Martial Power Source characters may be able to compete (or even dominate) in the board game portion of the game, but as soon as things turn into an actual RPG it all goes to shit. Rogues are getting double jump at twenty somethingth level and people still complained.

Definitely don't bother trying to define a power source for 1st level Fighters. They can get by at 1st level without a power source, and any power source you gave them would be anemic and mundane enough that it couldn't grow with them. Force them to take a real power source when player characters start having powers that are really superhuman enough that it matters. At 6th level a Fighter can get chosen by the gods or become a thunder lord or something.

A high level Rogue should just be making illusions whenever he wants. A high level Fighter should be flying and shooting lightning bolts. And no power source you hand out to mundane flavored characters at first level is going to provide that when the time comes.

-Username17

[tussock]

I would note that unless you make the level 1 Fighter have his power source already, with some sort of mechanical touch that other classes don't ever get, I don't think it will really sink in for people that they need one.

Like, the 3e fighter is the "feat guy" because his mechanical touch from 1st level is more bonus feats than anyone else. And feats are crap like +1 to hit so the Fighter is crap too.

AD&D Fighters are the "fighter-only treasures" character (vorpal blade and belt of making things die), starting with superior mundane combat gear and better stat mods (and better number of attacks to deliver that in the expansions).

If you want a character to shift aside mountains, cleave forcecages or timestops or imprisonments or planeshifts, call out the very gods for some one-on-one, and physically beat them down for submission, they need a mechanic for that tied to some thematically similar abilities at 1st level. Even if it's just opening a stuck door, blocking a ray of frost, calling out some goblin archers, and having a torch-bearer. With a mechanic the other classes are not quite allowed to have.

It's not that they need it, it's that if they have it, people will be happy for it to go somewhere all on it's own.


The Wizard doesn't start by tearing apart reality, but he starts with the same sort of spell prep mechanic that eventually will. A scalable power source, tied to a class-feature mechanic. Pathfinder Paladin: a smite mechanic that went somewhere. People love it. 3e's Rogue sneak attack, a 1st level mechanic that goes somewhere, unlike the 8 skill points where everyone else gets skills anyway.

[Username17]

I would note that unless you make the level 1 Fighter have his power source already, with some sort of mechanical touch that other classes don't ever get, I don't think it will really sink in for people that they need one.

You make power sources be a thing for Prestige Classes. Don't even talk about explicit power sources for the trainee level classes. The pre-prestige divine casters can just have no listed power source. I mean, you can kind of figure out that their divine spells are probably divine sourced, but they're expected to spend a lot of time hammering in pitons and hitting people with maces, and those actions aren't divine powered.

The Prestige Class gives prestige abilities, and those have to have a power source. And then you don't fucking write up any stupid power sources that top out at double jump. By tying a specific level to gaining an explicit power source, people will accept that their character is magic now.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

Letting at least some archetypes choose a power source later also has the side benefit of letting people start out as plucky dirt farmers or burly blacksmiths without forever being locked out of the good adventuring paths.

[tussock]

I'm not a fan of that mid-track-forking thing for character dev though. Prestigue classes are spectacularly successful as filler, but the amount of use they get is microscopic compared to the core feats and skills and ... well, everyone who stops playing around the time they come online.

Sure, Frank's right, a game can make everyone pick a new path at 4, or 7, or 10, or whatever level you like, and because it's a thing that everyone does that'll be fine (unless people decide to stop playing instead, hello E6). But it's putting a bulk of the interesting content of your game in a place where it gets a lot less use.

Point against: in D&D a pre-prestige Src/Wiz is casting spells. Rogue is sneakily assassinating things. Paladin is smiting evil things that he can detect. Cleric is totally turning undead and blessing and healing the sick. Druid is manipulating nature. Barbarian is very angry sometimes. And a bunch of them aren't going to want to fake-change power source just because it's level 7 now.

And no one wants to wait 'till level 7 to play their Ice-Mage. Even Diablo2 didn't do that.


Of course, I really wish I had some data, because I'm not proof-sure that people like mechanical hooks for things that much, I'm just going by osmosis.



#blacksmiths. That shit is background fluff and you buy it with your background fluff pick. If you're really fussed you can provide an optional progression from that 0-level shit to proper 1st level characters.

[Username17]

I'm not a fan of that mid-track-forking thing for character dev though. Prestigue classes are spectacularly successful as filler, but the amount of use they get is microscopic compared to the core feats and skills and ... well, everyone who stops playing around the time they come online.

But everyone else loves them. Seriously, Prestige Classes were the most popular thing in 3e even though they were badly done.

Now, I agree with you that forking classes is a bad use of space. And by "bad" I mean that it would take hundreds of pages to give even minimal coverage to all the upgrade options that the standard classes would need, and it would still be bullshit because people would end up writing "Dagger Master" for the Rogue and "God King" for the Cleric. But there is another way. And bizarrely, 4e showed us that way as well.

4e gives two layers of mandatory character shtick upgrade. The first is Paragon Paths that kick in at level 11, and the second is Epic Destinies that kick in at level 21. And it's important that no one really complained about being "forced" to grab either kind of upgrade. What's really interesting is that while the Paragon Paths are locked in "forked upgrades" for each class and take up dozens of pages, the Epic Destinies are essentially open enrollment and fit on just a couple of pages.

Yes, I know that people don't play the levels 21-30 nearly as much as they play any of those other levels, but the fact is that there just weren't that many epic destinies in the book and that was OK. People made Ranger Demigods and Fighter Demigods and Warlock Demigods and it was all good in the hood. By just letting people take the same advanced paths with different classes, the amount of required material shrunk by an order of magnitude. That's not an exaggeration, it was literally an order of magnitude.

And it's less prone to shtick expiration that way. If you introduce prestige classes (or paragon paths or epic destinies or whatever the fuck you want to call them) that are tied to specific classes, obviously we'll be right back where we started and Fighters will find themselves with prestige class options that allow them to get an extra +1 to riding a horse while the archmages and war wizards are getting upgrades to their fireballs that allow them to turn whole cities into ash. But if the prestige classes are written in a vacuum without knowing whether they are going to be applied to Wizards or Warriors, then you'll get a list of things like Demigod and Witch Queen that actually can pull their damn weight at the level they are introduced.

-Username17

[codeGlaze]

TL;DR Anything new and/or interesting happen in the past.... 6 pages?

[Josh_Kablack]

TL;DR Anything new and/or interesting happen in the past.... 6 pages?

Well I made my will save against starting a "That dead horse is overdue for anuther whoopin'" thread.

[MisterDee]

Now, I agree with you that forking classes is a bad use of space. And by "bad" I mean that it would take hundreds of pages to give even minimal coverage to all the upgrade options that the standard classes would need, and it would still be bullshit because people would end up writing "Dagger Master" for the Rogue and "God King" for the Cleric.

From a business perspective, it's a good thing though. You'd probably have to go to a Basic/Expert/Companion style segregation, and probably also forking out in Complete Blah class splatbooks, but on the other hand you're going to do that anyway.

What you need is for your power classes to be very low on prerequisites. You don't want "must be a level 10 rogue" qualifiers, you want "be a level 10 character with maxed Acrobatic skill." So your fighter or wizard can qualify for the Spider-Man prestige class if he wants. And your fighter qualifies for mid-level spellcasting by having max ranks in Knowledge Arcana or having taken an available-for-everyone Sorcerer's Blood feat or whatever.

EDIT: and yes, I'm basically agreeing with the later part of your post here. Brain went on a tangent for a while.

[Username17]

TL;DR Anything new and/or interesting happen in the past.... 6 pages?

I kind of like the idea of giving power sources to prestige classes and also making prestige classes mandatory as a way to stealth in forcing Fighters to man up and get some fucking phlebtonium when they go up a tier. That seems like it's pretty solid.

EDIT: and yes, I'm basically agreeing with the later part of your post here. Brain went on a tangent for a while.

Heh.

4th edition was created with the ability to churn out an essentially limitless amount of shovelware content. nWoD was as well. And both of those systems were failures, in no small part because it turns out that people don't actually want to buy three books of over a hundred thousand words a piece each month.

But it's important to take a step back and realize that you don't need to tweak your game so as to maximize infilling opportunities. There are a lot of monsters in the old Monstrous Compendium, a lot of monsters in actual legends, a lot of monsters in Pokemon, and a lot of demons. And you do not need "Troglodyte with a spear" and "Troglodyte with a club" to be separate full monster entries. If you dropped five hundred monsters in your first monster book and three hundred in each expansion book, you'd still be able to put out a monster manual every year for eight years without actually having to produce any original content. There is simply nothing to be gained by creating new monster infilling opportunities.

And that goes for everything. You don't need to pursue the 4e thing of needing to write new material (whether it be new classes or new "builds" or whatever the fuck) to support rogues who have morningstars or woodsmen who use spears. Classes don't need to be that absurdly narrow, because there are a lot of potential character classes. Classes don't have to be as narrow as a Gauntlet character to leave space for writing new class materials - you can just write new classes and kits and themes and whatever the fuck for as long as you want. Four new classes a month for 8 years straight would still only be 384 extra classes, and you could throw that down without ever having to debase yourself making shit called "Dragon Shaman." Hell, Magic the Gathering has over a hundred potential class names, just on Merfolk. And while you probably wouldn't use all of them (like "Schoolmaster" or "Bailiff"), there is still plenty to keep you occupied for a solid year before you start looking at goblins or elves for inspiration.

In the mid to late 00s, game companies for some reason decided that they needed to make room for expansion material. This was stupid. There is always room for expansion material.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

#blacksmiths. That shit is background fluff and you buy it with your background fluff pick.

Well, no shit.

Look, the thing about mundane background details is that they're easily overshadowed. At some point, every PC is going to have to accept that they're known more for heroics than having been a backwoods dirt farmer, but I don't think that necessarily needs to begin at level 1 nor do I think you have to create a level 0 tier just to have burly villager PCs who start out with level 1 Fighter stats for no reason.

[JonSetanta]

So what to do about "+1 Spellcaster level"?

I never was a fan of that separation and the drag it created for noncasters.