The reason why fighters will never have nice things.

[Neurosis]

Depends on what you mean. If you're doing it like One Piece where obviously impossible abilities still aren't magic because they don't run off of any identifiable phlebtonium, that does work.

However, that other stuff you mentioned is simple low-grade action movie bullshit. Namely, the hero can do improbable things (such as have a million bullets in a row miss him) but he can't do impossible things (such as survive being shot directly in the heart with a harpoon). That's still a problem, because at higher levels you explicitly need to do something that's impossible to advance the plot under your own power

Warning: Ramble.

I don't watch a lot of anime these days and I have never seen an episode of One Piece/Naruto/Avatar so a lot of those type comparisons are lost on me. That said...

where obviously impossible abilities still aren't magic because they don't run off of any identifiable phlebtonium, that does work.

could describe like EVERY ANIME EVER. Even the "realistic" ones. And yes, that is fine by me. As long as the game is not set on the earth, I think the ideas of Fighters being able to eventually jump so far and so fast that they are essentially flying is fine. No explanation or rationale should be required, any more than for a wizard's spell. But I would prefer that the flavor text remain that 'it's not magic, he's just that good'.

Anyway, even within action movies there are tiers. John McClane James Bond could beat a wizard. It doesn't matter what the wizard does or what fucking retarded "game-breaking" powers he has. James Bond is a badass normal to the nth degree. James Bond always wins. I know that makes James Bond a pretty nonviable PC/Character Class. But in any case, I don't at all agree that the badass normal has a shelf-life of Level 5.

(In the above paragraph, replace James Bond with Batman if you prefer, unless it will lead to 'Batman is a gadgeteer' argument.)

John McClane might be able to kill a thousand terrorists, but none of his abilities do a damn thing towards helping him with the 'travel to another dimension and kill the hell king' plot unless you offscreenedly buff John McClane, nerf the unassailability of the adventure, or he gets the keys to the plot handed to him.

I think I would have a different approach to fix this problem because I think the actual cause of the problem is the GOD DAMN MULTIVERSE. In other words, 'GO TO HELL' should require a quest or a plot device, not just a class ability. And if it is a class ability, it should be one that every class gets at the same level. But having it be something that NO ONE can just 'do' is much cooler.

Basically, a lot of the reasons why "fighter-types can never be as cool/relevant/neato as wizard-types" arguments seem to boil down to 'because they cannot go to GOD DAMN OTHER DIMENSIONS'. I think, if we can't get rid of or downplay other dimensions (which is my preferred solution) or make it so everyone becomes an MtG Planeswalker at Level 20 by virtue of being Level 20, and before then everyone including the damn wizard needs some kind of plot device to go dimension hopping, that is a better fix than anything else.

Of course, this is all a subset of

MAYBE THE WIZARD SHOULDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO EVERYTHING

I think that outside of dimensional travel, you don't need such an 'everyone gets nice things or noone does approach'. Being 'better/faster/stronger' is a nice thing in-and-of-itself.

[Archmage]

If you can provide goods and services at some rate per day, that's not breaking the economy. That's acting in the economy. That's not even remotely the same thing.

Key issue: It breaks the quasi-medieval economy, and that's what people want from their D&D game. They want peasants and dirt-covered farmers and laborers. They want some arbitrary but smaller number of skilled craftsmen who make furniture and swords and armor for the king's men. And they want people to fight over material resources required to supply this medieval economy--lumber, the ore pits, salt mines, whatever.

Having a wizard show up who can just conjure a permanent wall of iron of measurable size totally screws up some people's conception of how a medieval economy is supposed to work, and that makes them profoundly unhappy.

People just don't understand how to mesh the ability of wizards to create wealth in a way that they can't conceptualize with their preconceived notions of how the feudal society of LotR or Arthurian legend is supposed to operate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

James Bond could beat a wizard.

Depends on the wizard, obviously. James Bond is about on the level of Niko or Harry Potter; you could make a strong argument that he's better than them. James Bond could take down Yoda or Zatanna if the stars were aligned just right, but is mostly just cannon fodder against them. There's no way James Bond could take out Dr. Strange or Pain unless you give him a 'lol no' plot device.

D&D sets the bar for wizards and other spellcasters pretty damn high. The game actually goes screaming past the point of 'it's improbable for you to take this wizard/monster/cleric/etc. down with mundane abilities' (which people with a busted WSoD are willing to accept) and easily reaches the 'it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to take this guy down with mundane abilities'.

Basically, a lot of the reasons why "fighter-types can never be as cool/relevant/neato as wizard-types" arguments seem to boil down to 'because they cannot go to GOD DAMN OTHER DIMENSIONS'.

Way to strawman. It's not just the 'go to other dimension' problem, it's just the most obvious one. Fighters also cannot do anything about the Trees of Might sucking out the souls of the fairies in Wibblie Dale, do anything about the Wall of Force surrounding the Dark Castle, do anything about the zombie apocalypse ripping through the eastern continent, etc..

All of the solutions I've heard are some variation of 'let someone else ferry the fighter around and tell him to go play Smash Bros. while the real people do stuff' or 'give the fighter a gift card to Plot Device Artifact Mart'.

Seriously, what does the fighter and all of his other retarded friends bring to the table? Like when everyone pools their resources together Legion of Doom style to combine their strengths, what does the fighter do besides fight?

[8headeddragon]

Meanwhile, the Knight character really can have lands and products and capital investments and shit to worry about, because he is a sword character that is being played by someone who is not twelve.

-Username17

Okay, I've seen DMs deal with "Trevor" before in this fashion and it tends to work out okay, but I admit I was hoping for better answers for all the sword people. It leads one to believe that if the fighter is to have nice things then yes indeed the free form wizard has got to go unless some railroady new rules for services are laid out.

Another age old topic that's been done to death is how the spellcasters are worth so much more than the fighters, and it needs no introduction. A mage is more likely to have his own land than anybody else is, and a generalist caster in particular can both own some land and in his spare time cast Telekinesis or Fabricate for even more lunch money. Regardless of whether this is broken or not, clearly the casters-- hell, probably most of the specialized casters even, have an edge.

Could it be that magic needs to be more expensive to use while still being cheaper than magic items? Or downtime services are measured by character level? There's not a lot that can seal that divide.

(Also, score one more for the Fighters Eventually Need Something Like Magic camp)

[Sashi]

One thing I think 5E should keep from 4E is rituals. Admittedly 4E rituals (and alchemy and martial practices) kind of blow, but the idea of separating abilities into strategic and tactical levels isn't a bad one. The difference between Dimension Door and Teleport shouldn't be that DD is lower level, it should be that DD serves a tactical purpose (moving yourself around on the battlefield) and Teleport a strategic one (moving the entire party to the next adventuring site). When it's moving the entire party it doesn't matter if the Teleport came from the party wizard or from Robin, the fighter's wizard hireling, or was even just purchased from some black market wizard in a tiny magic shop that The Rogue knew about.

So Trevor the Fire Mage really does just want the tactical "nuke shit in front of me" spells, and Girlfriendo The Barbarian would probably like an ability that lets her Dimension Door to right above the Evil Necromancer for a game of "death from above", but neither of them want the responsibility of having to cast Raise Ghost Ship to get from point A to point B or Discern Location to find the lair of the Evil Necromancer.

And the truth is it doesn't matter who has those strategic resources or how they're parceled out. Trevor the Fire Mage might not have them, but the last campaign could have had Mokor the Fire Mage run by Trevor's older brother, who took the Ritual Caster feat and totally knew Raise Ghost Ship, and Bran The Barbarian had a feat that hooked him into a spy network that gave him access to information and black market items.

[Judging__Eagle]

One thing I think 5E should keep from 4E is rituals. Admittedly 4E rituals (and alchemy and martial practices) kind of blow, but the idea of separating abilities into strategic and tactical levels isn't a bad one. The difference between Dimension Door and Teleport shouldn't be that DD is lower level, it should be that DD serves a tactical purpose (moving yourself around on the battlefield) and Teleport a strategic one (moving the entire party to the next adventuring site). When it's moving the entire party it doesn't matter if the Teleport came from the party wizard or from Robin, the fighter's wizard hireling, or was even just purchased from some black market wizard in a tiny magic shop that The Rogue knew about.

So Trevor the Fire Mage really does just want the tactical "nuke shit in front of me" spells, and Girlfriendo The Barbarian would probably like an ability that lets her Dimension Door to right above the Evil Necromancer for a game of "death from above", but neither of them want the responsibility of having to cast Raise Ghost Ship to get from point A to point B or Discern Location to find the lair of the Evil Necromancer.

And the truth is it doesn't matter who has those strategic resources or how they're parceled out. Trevor the Fire Mage might not have them, but the last campaign could have had Mokor the Fire Mage run by Trevor's older brother, who took the Ritual Caster feat and totally knew Raise Ghost Ship, and Bran The Barbarian had a feat that hooked him into a spy network that gave him access to information and black market items.

All of which convinces me that the next gen game will have all such option be part of an overall list of options, and players buy what they feel is appropriate for their character. Not being shoehorned by their class, and then having to patch with feats or items.

I'm now convinced that going with a "everyone uses the same system for buying any character form/ablity/resource" is the best way to keep thing transparant and non-confusing.

[Dean]

I'm just going to mention, and I apologize if this seems flippant, that I think a lot of these issues would disappear if we, as a group, came together to figure out a reasonable system for how Wizards work (or "magic users" lets say) in the canon we want to create. See I have never ever read any fantasy novel where people popped out walls of iron to be smelted up when they needed it. I don't think that fiction is the norm. The same goes for huge quantities of what Dungeons and Dragons Wizards can, and are expected to, do on a regular basis.

See in using a "kitchen sink" ability list given to every wizard to make sure that -every- permutation of "Magic user" was possible in the Dungeons and Dragons world we in fact ended up with something that NO canon exists for ANYWHERE that I know of. And this isn't just wanking on LOTR it is really just an observation on how the standard Dungeons and Dragons wizard really isn't like ANY Wizards in fiction you'd commonly find. And I think that that's an issue.

I think if we focused on what canon we want to emulate and then gave wizards abilities that would when used optimally cause them to emulate that canon then those Wizards would usually EMULATE THAT CANON. So if we want Wizards that are old as shit and not terribly powerful and generally stick to little prestidigitations but can occasionally blast off beams of scalding light or Jedi Mind trick people then we should create a list of abilities that makes that the normal, solid, mechanically optimal choice to make. And things like Dimensional shifting or Magic Jar-ing, or Simalcrum-ing, or any other effect that we might want IN OUR GAMES but not possessed by average characters should be made into things that are in the DM's realm of control.

So scrolls that you cannot permanently learn might allow you to Dimension Shift. So there's these ancient rare scrolls written in the Old Tongue that can let you access big bad magic that is potentially Game breaking but it's being given to you in a controlled fashion by a person (The DM) who conceivably has thought that through.

[Kaelik]

D&D is it's own Canon, and has been for a long time. I'd like for D&D to continue to emulate D&D cannon, and if you want to go play LotR, do that in a LotR game.

This:

So if we want Wizards that are old as shit and not terribly powerful and generally stick to little prestidigitations but can occasionally blast off beams of scalding light or Jedi Mind trick people then we should create a list of abilities that makes that the normal, solid, mechanically optimal choice to make. And things like Dimensional shifting or Magic Jar-ing, or Simalcrum-ing, or any other effect that we might want IN OUR GAMES but not possessed by average characters should be made into things that are in the DM's realm of control.

So scrolls that you cannot permanently learn might allow you to Dimension Shift. So there's these ancient rare scrolls written in the Old Tongue that can let you access big bad magic that is potentially Game breaking but it's being given to you in a controlled fashion by a person (The DM) who conceivably has thought that through.

Is the dumbest fucking thing ever, and no one sane wants that in their game, except power trip DMs might appreciate the sole control over all sorts of stuff, because they will never give it, and get to talk about how great they are, but no one actually wants to have shitty mages who play smash brothers until everyone starts crying and then save the day.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So if we want Wizards that are old as shit and not terribly powerful and generally stick to little prestidigitations but can occasionally blast off beams of scalding light or Jedi Mind trick people then we should create a list of abilities that makes that the normal, solid, mechanically optimal choice to make. And things like Dimensional shifting or Magic Jar-ing, or Simalcrum-ing, or any other effect that we might want IN OUR GAMES but not possessed by average characters should be made into things that are in the DM's realm of control.

So scrolls that you cannot permanently learn might allow you to Dimension Shift. So there's these ancient rare scrolls written in the Old Tongue that can let you access big bad magic that is potentially Game breaking but it's being given to you in a controlled fashion by a person (The DM) who conceivably has thought that through.

Is the dumbest fucking thing ever, and no one sane wants that in their game, except power trip DMs might appreciate the sole control over all sorts of stuff, because they will never give it, and get to talk about how great they are, but no one actually wants to have shitty mages who play smash brothers until everyone starts crying and then save the day.

Sad but true.

[Neurosis]

Depends on the wizard, obviously. James Bond is about on the level of Niko or Harry Potter; you could make a strong argument that he's better than them. James Bond could take down Yoda or Zatanna if the stars were aligned just right, but is mostly just cannon fodder against them. There's no way James Bond could take out Dr. Strange or Pain unless you give him a 'lol no' plot device.

I think you misunderstand James Bond. I don't want to get into a Spiderman Vs. Batman type argument, but my point was that James Bond always wins, regardless of the odds, so the opponent's power level is irrelevant. His defining trait is winning. The Incredible Hulk is super strong, Dr. Strange can cast spells, but James Bond wins every time. That is his super power. But this is tangenital to the topic, so let's drop it.

D&D sets the bar for wizards and other spellcasters pretty damn high. The game actually goes screaming past the point of 'it's improbable for you to take this wizard/monster/cleric/etc. down with mundane abilities' (which people with a busted WSoD are willing to accept) and easily reaches the 'it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to take this guy down with mundane abilities'.

I think we should back that up a bit. Killing wizard monsters should be improbable but not impossible, and Conan types should be all about doing the improbable. If we have to change something so that Conan types work, let's change that. Wizard monsters shouldn't be impossible to kill. Fuck, if I was designing the game nothing (with stats) would be impossible to kill.

Way to strawman. It's not just the 'go to other dimension' problem, it's just the most obvious one. Fighters also cannot do anything about the Trees of Might sucking out the souls of the fairies in Wibblie Dale, do anything about the Wall of Force surrounding the Dark Castle, do anything about the zombie apocalypse ripping through the eastern continent, etc..

If we completely remove other dimensions (not from D&D just for the sake of this argument), why?

* The fighter cuts down the tree of might with an axe.
* The fighter tunnels under the Wall of Force.
* The fighter kills the zombies. Kills all of them.

Your last example is (no offense) pretty laughable. Considering this is an argument about flavor and not power level, and I agree that Fighters and Wizards should be equal in power, why would you mention a zombie invasion as something that the Fighter could not Fight?

There are a bunch of zombies?

OKAY THE FIGHTER FIGHTS THEM.

A good DM could have a field day with this. Say the party is Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, Barbarian. All Level 15. The Wizard and Cleric are looking for the right spell that will end the Zombie Apocalypse. And the Fighter and Barbarian are out there smashing some zombie ass big time to keep the undead hellbeasts off of the casters' backs. Everyone has a role. And most people would actually prefer to be the guy 'holding the line' to the guy 'setting the charges'.

All of the solutions I've heard are some variation of 'let someone else ferry the fighter around and tell him to go play Smash Bros. while the real people do stuff' or 'give the fighter a gift card to Plot Device Artifact Mart'.

My solution to this is simple: keep fighting relevant. In a game like D&D where there are assgobs of stat blocks for enemies across 30 levels, this seems pretty easy to do. I have not played as much D&D as anyone here, I'm sure, but I've also never played in or GM'd in a game (AT ANY LEVEL) where combat was irrelevant. If I wanted to play a game where other things mattered more than fighting, D&D certainly wouldn't be my go-to game for that.

By the way, when you say "Play Smash Brothers" I don't know if that is a reference to combat in D&D or if you genuinely mean that they aren't playing D&D at all. So I wasn't sure how to respond.

[Lokathor]

By the way, when you say "Play Smash Brothers" I don't know if that is a reference to combat in D&D or if you genuinely mean that they aren't playing D&D at all. So I wasn't sure how to respond.

It means someone has turned on the N64 because there's no point for them to sit at the table because they have nothing to really think about for a long time so they don't bother to pay attention to the game.

[Neurosis]

Thanks. That's kind of the interpretation I leaned on with my post.

[Dean]

D&D is it's own Canon, and has been for a long time. I'd like for D&D to continue to emulate D&D cannon, and if you want to go play LotR, do that in a LotR game.

That isn't true. D&D doesn't have its own canon. It is a kitchen sink fantasy system made to allow DM's (or authors) to create a world using its tools. Yes Dragonlance has a canon, Forgotten Realms has a canon, Dark Sun has a canon. But the Dungeons and Dragons system does not have a stable canon, not even close, not even kind of. It has pieces of what you could call canon, but could just as well be called "traditions". Things like "Groups of approximately 4 people as protagonists" and "engaging in combat regularly in subterranean areas as the means of plot progression" etc.

A system that puts out "Races of Incarnum", "Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords" "Exalted Deeds" and "Complete Psionics" is NOT a game with a solid canon. It's a toolbox. I want to play something like Ebberon they want that, if I want to play something like Wuxia they want that and if I want to play something like LOTR then they want that too. It's also super absurd to say that if I don't want my game to have "Magic Jar" and "Simalcrum" I should fuck off and go play a different system because no ones game includes all the parts of the D&D toolbox. Desiring to exclude some spells to preserve a setting is not different than excluding some races to preserve a setting and my Wuxia game DOES NOT WANT the 14 seperate kinds of "Snake-man" DnD provides and my LOTR game DOES NOT WANT Simalcrum.

Is the dumbest fucking thing ever, and no one sane wants that in their game, except power trip DMs might appreciate the sole control over all sorts of stuff, because they will never give it, and get to talk about how great they are, but no one actually wants to have shitty mages who play smash brothers until everyone starts crying and then save the day.

There is not much substantive there for me to respond too. So I will try this instead: I am not in fact saying that the LOTR style canon is what we should be reproducing. I am completely fine WITH a game where Simalcrum and Dimension shift and Scry and Divinations are flowing like wine. And if that is the style of game we want then we could design with that game in mind and THEN we would only need to worry about things that break THAT the canon we would be trying to create there. So if we want a game that's basically "Sorcerer: The Ubering" then people should be using those effects a ton but effects that break THAT canon, like perhaps Planar Binding cheese, should be the things we take away from the average player but STILL KEEP IN THE GAME under some control by the DM to put in the game to keep D&D's goal as a kitchen sink fantasy system. So if we WANT Gate, but we DONT WANT your average player to be able to get Gate then I say keep Gate but disallow it to be gained entirely by normal ability-gain means because we have decided that definitionally Gate is not a normal ability in our setting.

[Ice9]

The problem with trying to emulate existing (non-D&D) Wizards is that they often function in ways that wouldn't be much fun to play. For instance, following the party around providing nothing but cryptic sayings for months, then a really tough foe appears and they vaporize it with a single spell of doom. You could definitely make a system that worked that way, but "being useless most of the time in exchange for making everyone else useless when you finally do something" is not what most players want.

Part of this is also the "practical Superman" problem - the fact that many fictional characters have vast powers that they either forget to use, choose not to use for vague reasons, or use in a highly ineffective way. When you put a player in control of those characters, you can't count on them doing that, and suddenly you have Gandalf summoning the giant eagles and destroying the ring himself, about 15 minutes after getting it.

However, I do think that 3E spellcasters are strong even by D&D standards, due to a high point in the transition between "crazy-powerful spells that are limited and hard to use" to "mediocre spells you can use all the time". Shifting them in either direction would probably reduce the peak.

[FatR]

I think we should back that up a bit. Killing wizard monsters should be improbable but not impossible, and Conan types should be all about doing the improbable.

Killing basically every monster with two-digit CR is flat-out impossible for a Conan-type, that has just usual weaksauce action hero powers, like limited luck, mostly ignoring bludgeoning damage and partially ignoring the probability of bleeding/shock. You can't allow Conan-types to remain relevant withour redefining the entire game, like 4E.

If we have to change something so that Conan types work, let's change that. Wizard monsters shouldn't be impossible to kill. Fuck, if I was designing the game nothing (with stats) would be impossible to kill.

I see a faulty logic here. Guys like Darkseid or Frieza are manifestly possible to kill. Just not for Conan-types.

[FatR]

Anyway, even within action movies there are tiers. John McClane James Bond could beat a wizard. It doesn't matter what the wizard does or what fucking retarded "game-breaking" powers he has. James Bond is a badass normal to the nth degree. James Bond always wins. I know that makes James Bond a pretty nonviable PC/Character Class. But in any case, I don't at all agree that the badass normal has a shelf-life of Level 5.

(In the above paragraph, replace James Bond with Batman if you prefer, unless it will lead to 'Batman is a gadgeteer' argument.)

Oh and this argument is really bad. "Being popular, therefore getting plot bent in your favor" and "Being main character whose death will end the series" are not viable shticks for an RPG character. So is "Being a comic books character, whose power level is horribly inconsistent".

[Lago PARANOIA]

but James Bond wins every time. That is his super power. But this is tangenital to the topic, so let's drop it.

No, it's actually very integral (... you know, this is the first time I noticed that math pun. ) to the conversation. Because even if you accept that as a 'power' (which I don't, it's just metafiction) the fact of the matter is that most of the other protagonists have that power, too.

James Bond is already competing for attention with other 'I always win' guys like Superman and Dr. Strange. So when they go 'we can do that already', what is James Bond supposed to do?

* The fighter cuts down the tree of might with an axe.

They're fucking Trees of Might, there's no way an action hero could cut those things down fast enough to make a difference. Seriously, have you seen lumberjacking done without power tools? It's an all-day affair and those are just regular trees. I mean, sure, Paul Bunyan could rise to the challenge. Sora could. But not Conan.

The fighter tunnels under the Wall of Force.

... only to find out that the walls of force extend underneath the ground, so no.
The fighter kills the zombies. Kills all of them.

Your last example is (no offense) pretty laughable. Considering this is an argument about flavor and not power level, and I agree that Fighters and Wizards should be equal in power, why would you mention a zombie invasion as something that the Fighter could not Fight?

Because only a goddamn moron attempts to fight a zombie invasion. Yes, the action hero could chew through tens of thousands of them and win. BIG FUCKING DEAL! You still lose the motherfucking adventure which was 'save the city against a zombie apocalypse' not 'kill every zombie'. I mean if you were going to kill the zombie hordes on hand you may as well not have even bothered.

The artificer could come up with a magical zombie cure/antibiotic. The paladin could force positive energy back into their bodies to cancel out the negative energy. The necromancer could soul-bind the original spirits back into their bodies, restoring their humanity. The wizard could just mass-transmorgify them back into humans and tell the cure to go fuck itself. That is how you beat a zombie apocalypse without having the keys to the plot handed to you and the fighter is sadly coming up short.

That isn't true. D&D doesn't have its own canon.

D&D has its own set of memes that are more deeply ingrained into fantasy gaming than probably anything. Memes like 'more brutish races have a shorter max lifespan' or 'fireball creates an explosion at long range' . Sure, there's no universal backstory, but there is definitely canon.

[Ice9]

The artificer could come up with a magical zombie cure/antibiotic. The paladin could force positive energy back into their bodies to cancel out the negative energy. The necromancer could soul-bind the original spirits back into their bodies, restoring their humanity. The wizard could just mass-transmorgify them back into humans and tell the cure to go fuck itself. That is how you beat a zombie apocalypse without having the keys to the plot handed to you and the fighter is sadly coming up short.

I don't know what context this is in, but I've seen similar statements in regards to D&D specifically. And I have to say - no, actually, they couldn't do any of that. While spellcasters certainly get more world-affecting toys than warriors, they don't get anything close to a complete set.

Now sure, they can achieve large-scale results in certain specific cases, and they hypothetically have infinite-power loops (which I've never actually seen a DM/group allow), but they certainly don't have the complete set of abilities you might expect someone who can vaporize Pit Fiends to have.

So if we're giving hypothetical Paladins the ability to channel positive energy into an entire zombie army at once, then I think we can give hypothetical warriors the ability to chop down trees fast.

[Kaelik]

That isn't true. D&D doesn't have its own canon.

Yes, it does. It has a cannon created by the types of things that area allowed to happen in games (and thus have happened to everyone) and the things that aren't allowed to happen, and thus have happened to very few people.

That's a cannon. Anyone familiar with D&D can tell you what sort of things happen in D&D, and what sort of things Wizards do. And in no case is is "stand around being a wise advice giver, then solo a boss so badass that it could TPK everyone else in the party, even if everyone else in the party spontaneously gained 5 levels and cloned themselves before hand."

A system that puts out "Races of Incarnum", "Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords" "Exalted Deeds" and "Complete Psionics" is NOT a game with a solid canon. It's a toolbox. I want to play something like Ebberon they want that, if I want to play something like Wuxia they want that and if I want to play something like LOTR then they want that too.

No, you basically can't play Wuxia, depending on how pure you define Wuxia, and you can't play LOTR at all. Not even a little bit. LOTR doesn't allow Nine Sworded folk, Psionic folk, Exalted folk, or incarnum folk. LOTR has an explicit requirement "No one can be any of those things. Or a Wizard higher than level 2."

It's also super absurd to say that if I don't want my game to have "Magic Jar" and "Simalcrum" I should fuck off and go play a different system because no ones game includes all the parts of the D&D toolbox.

1) If you don't want your game to have Magic Jar or Simalcrum, you have two choices. a) Play at lower level than level 9. b) Play a different game. That it.

2) "my game"? And what is your game? I don't want my game to have Holy uptight stick but warriors who ruthlessly murderize anything the wrong color while bitching at the rest of the party about how they need to give more money to charity. But I still don't try to bitch about designing the game to not include Paladins when someone else wants to be one.

Desiring to exclude some spells to preserve a setting is not different than excluding some races to preserve a setting and my Wuxia game DOES NOT WANT the 14 seperate kinds of "Snake-man" DnD provides and my LOTR game DOES NOT WANT Simalcrum.

You aren't (Okay, now you are, because you have to shift the goal posts to escape your previous stupidity) talking about excluding certain spells to preserve a setting. No one cares if you houserule your own games. You were advocating redesigning D&D to not have those spells at all, because they don't fit what you think of as the cannon you want to emulate, even though the cannon you want to emulate is fucking retarded, and everyone else in the world doesn't want to emulate it, which is why they play D&D instead of the many games that successfully emulate that cannon.

should be the things we take away from the average player but STILL KEEP IN THE GAME under some control by the DM to put in the game to keep D&D's goal as a kitchen sink fantasy system. So if we WANT Gate, but we DONT WANT your average player to be able to get Gate then I say keep Gate but disallow it to be gained entirely by normal ability-gain means because we have decided that definitionally Gate is not a normal ability in our setting.

No. There is nothing in the game, nor should their be, that we want in the game, but not in the hands of a player. Why should we trust the Mister Cavern with things but not the "average player"s?

I don't want Gate as it is currently written. I do want it's travel method, and I do want an ability that calls a diverse set of beings to fight for me. Both of those stay in the game, and they stay within the purview of average players. And you will never, at any point, find something that I want in the game, but only available to the Mister Cavern, because the Mister Cavern is no more or less a special snowflake than the Mister Paladin, or Mister Wizard, or Mister Ninja.

[Mask_De_H]

The Persuader, a villain from DC comics, is an example of a high-level Dumbass Melee Fighter. He can use his atomic axe to cut through anything. I don't mean, like through Dragonforce and Excalibur. I mean he could cut through gravity and send you hurtling into space, or cut open space and step through to wherever he wanted, or chop off sunlight and take away Superboy's powers.

Hell, I'd actually like to see a prestige class for that guy.

That would actually be pretty cool. Perceiver of Death, or something.

[PoliteNewb]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

1) If you don't want your game to have Magic Jar or Simalcrum, you have two choices. a) Play at lower level than level 9. b) Play a different game. That it.

---

You were advocating redesigning D&D to not have those spells at all, because they don't fit what you think of as the cannon you want to emulate, even though the cannon you want to emulate is fucking retarded, and everyone else in the world doesn't want to emulate it, which is why they play D&D instead of the many games that successfully emulate that cannon.

Kaelik apparently believes that anything that is in D&D is therefore a part of the D&D canon, and thus cannot be removed without...I don't even know. Destroying the purity, or some shit? So of course you can't get rid of Magic Jar and Simulacrum...even though Simulacrum didn't even fucking EXIST when D&D first came out, which means thousands of people played D&D that (according to word of Kaelik) is not in the D&D canon.

You have to understand: when Kaelik says "what's in D&D", he is explicitly referring to 3.5, which he seems to think sprang full-size from Zeus's forehead. So what Kaelik thinks of as "the D&D canon" does not include roughly half the stuff ever printed with the words "Dungeons & Dragons" on it.

C'mon, Kaelik, explain this canon to me:

1.) What are Balors, in the D&D canon? Are they creatures that cast Blasphemy and Implosion? Or are they creatures that DON'T cast those spells (2nd edition AD&D)? Or do they not exist (OD&D, and in 1st edition AD&D they were called "type VI demons", of which "Balor" was one specific dude)?

2.) What are Bards, in the D&D canon? Fighter-Thieves who cast Druid spells (1E AD&D)? Rogues who cast Wizard spells (2E AD&D)? Singing jackasses who cast Bard spells (3E AD&D)? Non-existent (OD&D)?

3.) What are assassins, in the D&D canon? Specially trained hired killers (1E AD&D)? Anybody who murders people for a living (2E AD&D)? Even-more specially trained killers who use spells (3E D&D)? Non-existent (OD&D)?

You can go on forever with this shit, but the fact is that D&D has gone through many different iterations, and has changed fairly drastically over that time. "What D&D is" depends on what edition you're playing, what setting you're in, who your DM is, and possibly even how old you are. D&D means many different things to many different people. But not to Kaelik.

To him, "D&D" = "Everything I like". And "NOT D&D" = "Everything I don't like". And if you dare to suggest playing something he doesn't like, he'll accuse you of trying to ruin D&D. Because god forbid anyone should play something he doesn't like and call it D&D.

Oh, and Lago:

The Fighter cuts down the tree of might with an axe.

They're fucking Trees of Might, there's no way an action hero could cut those things down fast enough to make a difference. Seriously, have you seen lumberjacking done without power tools? It's an all-day affair and those are just regular trees. I mean, sure, Paul Bunyan could rise to the challenge. Sora could. But not Conan.

You realize that's a tautology, right? Of course Fighters can't do "X", when you define "X" as "something fighters can't do, because I say so".[/i]

[Kaelik]

Polite newb, get back to me when you can pretend to be serious about understanding the conversation.

The comparison is not "Bards are either Fighter Thieves with Druid spells, or singing minstrels."

The comparison is "D&D Wizards are either equal party adventurers that cast a number of spells per day, each of which is potent but not all encompassingly awesome or 'are old as shit and not terribly powerful and generally stick to little prestidigitations but can occasionally blast off beams of scalding light or Jedi Mind trick people'"

D&D Wizards have never been Obi Wan Kenobi, they have always been Luke Skywalker. Whining about piddly shit like whether they Simulcrum, Magic Jar, or Gate in outsiders to do everything for them is immaterial to the point that they always get to break the action economy in half at higher levels in all D&D (except 4e).

But sure bitch about how much you hate 3.5 instead of addressing the actual issue of what D&D Wizards do and don't do. I'm going to be over here, being serious.

[CCarter]

On killing the zombie horde: Army of Darkness!
I guess its arguable that Ash is an fighter (rather than say an artificer) because he builds stuff as well as kicking ass and leading primitive screwheads (and failing UMD checks). But seems like there's at least some concept overlap between the fighter archetype and the smith or dwarf who makes their own magical/special weapon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You realize that's a tautology, right? Of course Fighters can't do "X", when you define "X" as "something fighters can't do, because I say so".

We already defined what fighters can do earlier in this thread--namely anything an action hero can do without being called weeaboo. And we already outlined what non-weeaboo action heroes could do earlier in the thread. Action heroes are allowed to handwave fatigue, non-visible damage (such as punches) as long as it doesn't go into the chunky salsa rule, and are allowed to perform any physical feat of peak human. Chopping down super-tough trees that grow really fast and suck out the lifeforce of the landscape before they turn the countryside into a wasteland is out of bounds for an action hero, so it's out of bound for a fighter.

So no, it's not a tautology.

[PoliteNewb]

That's some great dodging and insulting, Kaelik, but I'm addressing your own fucking words, right here:

If you don't want your game to have Magic Jar or Simalcrum, you have two choices. a) Play at lower level than level 9. b) Play a different game. That it.

And I pointed out that you can play D&D without simulacrum, and not play a different game. In fact, play something with "D&D" on it in big letters. So...that's a false statement. Completely.

So you have two choices. a.) be a big enough man to admit that you said something stupid, or b.) continue to be a raging asshole.

The bigger point is, you can totally take spells like Magic Jar or Simulacrum or Planar Binding or Gate out of the game without ruining it or making it "Not D&D". Considering the number of sacred cows people here are happy to slaughter, I don't see why certain problematic high-level options should suddenly be verboten because they are part of your "D&D canon", which you can't even define to the point where it encompasses all of published D&D.

"D&D Wizards are equal party adventurers that cast a number of spells per day, each of which is potent but not all encompassingly awesome"

I can totally live with that definition of wizards. Of course, it's somewhat less than useful because the words "a number of spells", "potent", and "all encompassingly awesome" are extremely vague, and so STILL mean very different things to many different people. But hey, it's a start.

But sure bitch about how much you hate 3.5 instead of addressing the actual issue of what D&D Wizards do and don't do. I'm going to be over here, being serious.

So...because I point out how much you seem to hate all other editions of D&D besides 3.5, you accuse me of hating 3.5? Leave me out of your projection issues.

I don't hate 3.5. Only one of the two of us is telling other people they're "doing D&D wrong", and it ain't me.